By Masha Leon
ntroduced by comedienne Judy Gold, it was the surreal Purim shpiel of Susie Essman that had the guests at the March 3 Jewish Museum’s Purim Ball at the Waldorf-Astoria spinning graggers and roaring with laughter. Titled “Surreal Soiree,” the gala was listed as paying homage to “painter, poet, photographer, sculptor, Surrealist, Jew, Man Ray” (nee Emmanuel Radnitzky; his Russian-immigrant father was a garment worker), the subject of the museum’s recent exhibit “Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention.”
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By Masha Leon
In the 1920s, David Meyerowich wrote the music and lyrics to the wrenching Yiddish lament “Vu Nemt MenParnosseh?” (“How Does One Make a Living?”); in 1931, Yip Harburg wrote the lyrics to Jay Gorney’s Great Depression anthem, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” On March 2, at the JCC in Manhattan, the UJA-Federation of New York brought the issue of unemployment full circle by holding one of its Connect to Care job fairs. UJA-Federation expected 400 clients. More than 700 came! In addition to some 30 employers with job offerings, there were specialists to help in the areas of legal and financial matters and in matters of employment. Jonathan Katz, director of the Jewish Connections Program at the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services, a UJA-Federation affiliate, said, “We try to give them a feeling that they are not helpless…. We will help a person throughout the duration…. It is harder to live the Jewish life, because they have dues for synagogue, Jewish camps, religious school, bar/bat mitzvahs.” Alex Roth-Kahn, planning manager of the UJA- Federation’s Caring Commission, informed that this $6.8 million initiative allocation for what has evolved into a one-stop-shop model “will end in June 2010.” Katz added, “To date, more than 15,000 people have availed themselves of the services throughout the region.”
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By Masha Leon
“This is going to be the most art-supportive administration since [Franklin] Roosevelt,” declared special guest Rocco Landesman, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, at the February 22 Citizens Committee for New York City black-tie New Yorker for New York Awards Gala, held at Gotham Hall. Matthew Broderick described Landesman as “a producer [who] produced ‘Angels in America,’” and with a twinkle in his eye, added, “and another show I was especially fond of, ‘The Producers.’”
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By Masha Leon
“By adding ‘Jewish’ to our title, we now get [more] media attention!” joshed American Sephardi Federation/Sephardic House President David Dangoor to the February 4 opening night crowd at New York’s Sephardic Jewish Film Festival, which ran until February 11. The evening’s hit was the New York premiere of “Coco” (in French, with English subtitles) starring Gad Elmaleh as the film’s eponymous character, a frenetic nouveau riche Moroccan Jew with an ego off the Richter scale. He dazzles the public! He dazzles the powerful! And he had had the French-savvy audience at the Center for Jewish History roaring and me laughing and cringing.
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By Masha Leon
L’chaim! to an American-Israeli Yiddish shidekh, or match! At the February 2 “Bridging Israel and American Jewry” reception celebrating the Yiddish Studies Partnership between Ben-Gurion University of the Negev & New York’s Jewish Theological Seminary, David Roskies, the newly appointed director of the New Center for Yiddish Studies at BGU, remembered his lerers, or teachers, at his Montreal Folkshul school, “who taught me — like the Beatles would say — to believe in yesterday.” Addressing more than 50 guests at JTS, he offered an overview of the “shtetl’s social service network, from cradle to grave.” Where “everyone spoke Yiddish, including the Shabbos goy and the village policeman.” Roskies noted, “Reading about the shtetl in Yiddish and later in Hebrew sensitized us Canadian-born children to poverty social and gender inequality, political instability and ethnic hatred.” Reflecting on the culture shock he encountered in 1975 when he joined the faculty at JTS (where he is the Sol and Evelyn Henkind Chair in Yiddish Literature and Culture), Roskies said: “JTS was the place that believed… in the Jewish present…. Now I’m off to the last frontier — the Negev — charged with the mission to believe in the future! To be prepared to teach Yiddish literature to Bedouin students… bring Yiddish back to the aliyah from Russia and Ukraine, where most of Yiddish literature was incubated… find new ways of translating Yiddish into Hebrew… possibly partnering Yiddish with Ladino.”
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