The Arts

The Ghost Of Bubby's Past

Dani Shetrit — Wed, 23 May 2012 00:09:00 +0000

Theater

Ted Merwin

Special To The Jewish Week

How deeply do we have to bury the past to keep it from erupting into the present? In Andrew Rothkin’s “Bubby’s Shadow,” in which the playwright also stars, the spirit of a deceased grandmother reunites a deeply divided Jewish family and restores its connection to Judaism. The play, an earlier version of which ran Off Broadway in 2008, returns starting June 3 at a theater in the West Village.

Andrew Rothkin Bubby's Shadow

A Lens For Healing

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 22 May 2012 19:14:00 +0000

Film

George Robinson

Special to the Jewish Week

The Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers behind '5 Broken Cameras', a portrait of life in a West Bank village, look beyond their anger.

Seen together, filmmakers Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi could be one of those clichéd “odd couple” pairs so beloved of unimaginative contemporary Hollywood action comedies. Davidi is Israeli, tall, thin, weedy, mercurial. Burnat is Palestinian, shorter, solid, graying and insistently sober in demeanor. The peculiarly theatrical atmosphere of a morning with them is amplified by the central object in the chic quiet of their Midtown hotel — a large cylindrical aquarium filled with exotic fish.

5 Broken Cameras Emad Burnat filmmakers Guy Davidi

Second Avenue Redux

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 15 May 2012 23:45:00 +0000

Film

George Robinson

Special to the Jewish Week

Michael Tilson Thomas remembers his grandparents, the Thomashevskys, the first family of Yiddish theater.

The story of Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky is a classic American success narrative. Although they were born only a few miles apart in “the middle of a Ukrainian nowhere,” as their grandson Michael Tilson Thomas puts it, they met in Baltimore when he was performing with a traveling Yiddish theater troupe and she was a star-struck girl working in a tobacco factory. They went on to fame and acclaim, stars of the Yiddish theater from the late-19th Century until the Depression.

Bessie Thomashefsky Michael Tilson Thomas Yiddish Theater

Netanyahu Recalls His Heroic Brother

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 15 May 2012 21:08:00 +0000

Film

Staff Report

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, commenting on “Follow Me,” a documentary film opening here this week on the life of his heroic older brother, Yonatan, told The Jewish Week: “This film will show an American audience about Yoni’s humanity, his leadership, and his commitment to Israel.”

Yonatan Netanyahu, a highly decorated Israeli soldier, was killed leading the Entebbe rescue in Uganda in 1976 that saved the lives of more than 100 Israeli hostages.

Benjamin Netanyahu documentary Follow Me: The Yoni Netanyahu Story Yonatan Netanyahu

Kafka’s Rage — Toward His Father

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 15 May 2012 21:07:00 +0000

Theater

Ted Merwin

Special To The Jewish Week

As they reach maturity, children sometimes feel obliged to pour out their resentment and rage toward their parents, whom they blame for the deficiencies of their childhood. In his vituperative “Letter to My Father,” the Czech Jewish writer Franz Kafka excoriates his father for abusing him both physically and psychologically.

Brooklyn franz kafka

Israeli Filmmaker Aiming ‘Big’ On Herzl Project

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 15 May 2012 20:10:00 +0000

Film

Eric Herschthal

Staff Writer

Prestigious N.Y. Public Library fellowship a large step forward for Shimon Dotan’s ambitious biopic.

Imagine a biopic about Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Daniel Day-Lewis. Talk about a dream team. But the match-up is a wild dream that the accomplished Israeli director and former Hollywood filmmaker Shimon Dotan got one step closer to realizing last month.

Shimon Dotan Theodor Herzl

A Father-And-Son Team Take On Freud And Mahler

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 15 May 2012 20:05:00 +0000

Film

George Robinson

Special to the Jewish Week

Percy and Felix Adlon tease out the famous counseling session in ‘Mahler on the Couch.’

When he began working with his father, Percy Adlon, on the script for their new film “Mahler on the Couch,” Felix O. Adlon felt a heavier than usual weight on his shoulders.

Felix Adlon Mahler on the Couch Percy Adlon

Sebald: ‘Don’t Put Me In A Box

Dani Shetrit — Fri, 11 May 2012 14:35:00 +0000

Film

George Robinson

Special to the Jewish Week

Film looks at the life and work of German novelist W. G. Sebald.

There are times when you are out walking that a kind of hypnotic paralysis overcomes you. You are enwrapped in the rhythms of your gait, the pleasant sameness of the countryside, and you become oblivious to anything but the forward motion, the almost imperceptible bobbing of your gaze.

Fight For Your Right To … Be Jewishly Proud

Lisa Shimabukuro — Wed, 09 May 2012 18:49:00 +0000

Music

Andrew Furman

Special To The Jewish Week

Remembering the Beastie Boys’ Adam Yauch and the thorny question of cultural authenticity.

It never would have occurred to me that the passing of the Beastie Boys’ Adam Yauch (aka MCA) would hit me so hard. Yet I’ve been awfully sad ever since reading the headline across the CNN crawl last week. It’s not something I’ve contemplated much until Yauch’s death, at 47 from cancer. But the Beastie Boys really did mean something to me when they first emerged on the national scene almost three decades ago.

The Mame Loshen Has Legs

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 08 May 2012 20:39:00 +0000

Theater

Ted Merwin

Special To The Jewish Week

‘Yiddish is my mother language, and a mother is never really dead,” reflected Isaac Bashevis Singer in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1978. Indeed, the mame loshen continues to play a vital role in the cultural life of the city, as one gathers from two overlapping productions running this month — one a translation of a rarely seen Yiddish play, and the other an evening of Yiddish music and poetry.

Baruch College Mendy Cahan Yiddush Yiddush performances

The Art Of The Steal

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 08 May 2012 19:35:00 +0000

Film

George Robinson

Special To The Jewish Week

The story behind the provenance fight over Egon Schiele’s ‘Portrait of Wally.’

It’s not a very large painting, not much more than a square foot of oil on canvas. But Egon Schiele’s portrait of his beloved mistress Walburga Neuzil shook the art world in ways that the Austrian painter could never have imagined. This earthquake had almost nothing to do with the quality of the painting, “Portrait of Wally,” and everything to do with the sinister intersection of the sometimes shadowy world of art dealers and the black hole that was the Shoah.

documentary Egon Schiel

The ‘Middle’ Movement Affirms, Updates Its Middle Path

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 08 May 2012 19:19:00 +0000

Books

Diane Cole

Special To The Jewish Week

Ten years in the making, ‘The Observant Life’ charts a course for between ancient wisdom and say, Internet file sharing, for Conservative Jews.

What does it mean to be an observant Jew in the 21st century?

Conservtive Judaism Observant Life

Kill The Jews — Satirically Speaking

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 01 May 2012 21:25:00 +0000

Theater

Ted Merwin

Special To The Jewish Week

Hannah Arendt was deadly serious when she coined the term “the banality of evil” to refer to the matter-of-factness with which the Nazis committed genocide. But in the hands of playwright Ken Kaissar, the contemplation of the mass murder of the Jews becomes a springboard for outrageous satire. His play, “A Modest Suggestion,” opens next week in Midtown, and it features Jeff Auer, Bob Greenberg, Ethan Hova, Russell Jordan, Jonathan Marballi and Robert W. Smith.

Ken Kaissar play satire theater

Amos Kollek’s Latest ‘Crisis’

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 01 May 2012 19:48:00 +0000

Film

George Robinson

Special to the Jewish Week

Seven years in the making, the Israeli filmmaker’s new, very personal work to open here.

Amos Kollek is back in New York. Although he has lived in the city “for long periods,” he says, he is now living in Israel full time, and is back for what he suggests is a fool’s errand: supporting the May 4 opening of his latest film, “Chronicling a Crisis.”

Amos Kollek

Writing Between Worlds

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 01 May 2012 19:46:00 +0000

Books

Sandee Brawarsky

Jewish Week Book Critic

Life and art collide in the work of Israeli Arab novelist Sayed Kashua.

When I ask Sayed Kashua about the roots of his humor, he says that he isn’t sure, but that it probably has something to do with his discovery, as an Israeli Arab attending a Jewish high school, that humor could protect him.

Sayed Kashua