The Arts

For all the stories of Maccabees and cruses of oil, Chanukah is ultimately a holiday about family togetherness. So mused the multitalented artist Arthur Yorinks when he sat down more than a decade ago to write “The Flying Latke,” a children’s book about a Chanukah pancake that magically circumnavigates the globe. Now the tale’s play version, which sold out its run last year in Tribeca at The Flea Theater, returns to the same theater just in time for this year’s Festival of Lights.

The collaboration of world-class painters and opera companies is an old story by now, but remains a fascinating object of study nonetheless. Chagall, Hockney, Dali, Cocteau, Picasso — the list of those who designed opera sets encompasses some of the greatest visual artists of the 20^th century.

In our collective consciousness, New York City during World War II often conjures up imagery of sailors “On the Town,” the “Stage Door Canteen” and Alfred Eisenstadt’s iconic photo of a sailor and a nurse in Times Square celebrating Japan’s surrender with a kiss. Except for an occasional History Channel glimpse of a troop ship leaving the harbor or a nod to the distant past from a gentrifying Brooklyn Navy Yard, the city is remembered, if at all, as a convenient recreational stop before American GIs moved on to more serious work overseas.

For the ancient Romans, life was short but art endured — “vita brevis, ars longa,” as the Latin saying goes. Alas, the helpless Yiddish writers in Nathan Englander’s first play, “The Twenty-Seventh Man,” directed by Barry Edelstein, can count on neither, as they face the extinction of both their earthly existences and the entire Jewish cultural life of Russia. 

Does an artist have a responsibility to anything other than his or her art? In Chaim Potok’s novel, “My Name is Asher Lev,” a young chasidic painter in Brooklyn discovers that his artistic talent clashes irreconcilably with the dictates of his family and community.

The legal system of the occupied West Bank is something of a conundrum. The tenets of international law that govern the actions of an occupying power are fairly straightforward, but they weren’t designed for a situation that has lasted 45 years.

Call him the Jewish Mack the Knife. Benya Krik, the corrupt but compelling anti-hero of Isaac Babel’s Odessa stories, springs back to life in Denis Woychuk and Stephen Brennan’s new musical, “Isaac Babel and the Gangster King.” 

The degree to which European nations have acknowledged their complicity in the crimes of the Nazis varies wildly to this day. Allowing for the comparative size of its film industry, you can tell by the degree and number of feature films on the subject that a country produces just how willing it is to deal with guilt for the murder of six million Jews.

The Torah enjoins us to honor our parents. But if your forebears were monstrous criminals who killed hundreds of thousands, even millions, what is your responsibility?

Nathan Englander’s first play, “The Twenty-Seventh Man,” is about a struggling, unknown Jewish writer named Pinchas Pelovits apprehended by Stalin’s secret police along with prominent Yiddish poets slated for execution. Englander talked to The Jewish Week about the experience of becoming a playwright.