The Arts

Of all the enticing myths about America that drove Eastern European Jews to uproot themselves and immigrate to these shores, perhaps the most seductive was that the streets were paved with gold. Nor was it just the streets — America itself was known as the “goldene medina.”

Mishpokhe. Familia. Family. Oy.

Israeli documentary filmmaker Arnon Goldfinger knows from family. His first major film released in the United States was “The Komediant” (2002), about the great Yiddish entertainer Pesach Burstein and his extended family, seemingly all of which was also on the musical stage. His latest film, “The Flat,” which played Tribeca and opens theatrically on Oct. 19, forces him to focus closer to home, on his own (over-) extended family, and he does so to great effect.

WIESEL, TURTURRO DISCUSS ‘THE TRUCE’

The nuclear family breeds secrets, lies, resentment and anguish. The Jews have known that since Eve enticed Adam with a lunch snack. The entire book of Genesis is a catalog of such behaviors, and it could be argued that all Western literature has followed its example. It would be absurd to expect filmmakers to do otherwise.

It scandalized audiences with its lurid tale of greed and forbidden love. When Sholem Asch’s “God of Vengeance” opened on Broadway In 1923, it caused such a furor that the entire cast was thrown in jail. Now the play returns in a new production at the Marvell Rep, as part of a series of plays that were “banned or burned” at some point in their production history. Directed by Lenny Leibowitz, the play runs through the end of the month in Midtown.

Michael Chabin’s ‘Sailboats and Swans’

Jacob Garchik is back where a lot of his family roots are. Although the brilliant young trombonist-composer was born in San Francisco, he “realized that New York is the musical center of the world” when he was 17. He now lives in Brooklyn, “not that far from where my mom and grandma spent their lives until they moved to California.”

He gladly admits, “It’s a homecoming, that’s a very good way to put it.”

Once the walls of the ghetto came down, the range of career opportunities for Jews became similar to the one for non-Jews. Even with the burdens of anti-Semitic quota systems, the Jewish people have made a global impact in the physics, medicine, government, literature, the visual arts and — magic.

Magic, you say? Well, there was Harry Houdini, born Erich Weiss, a rabbi’s son but...
Yes, there was Houdini, but he was only the most prominent of many Jewish practitioners of the mysteries of prestidigitation.

Is any human need deeper than the need to know where we came from? In Rock Wilk’s one-man show, “Broke Wide Open,” directed by Stephen Bishop Seely, the poet and performance artist explores his conflicted identity about the time he was given away at birth and then adopted by Jewish parents. The play opens this weekend at the 45th Street Theatre for a month-long run.

In a recent interview in these pages, Richard Peña, the retiring director of the New York Film Festival, remarked on the explosive growth of the Israeli film industry during his quarter-century in that post. Appropriately enough, this year’s festival, celebrating its 50th anniversary, offers three examples of how the industry has matured.