David Lehman, the author of seven volumes of poetry, examines what is Jewish about American popular song, and how Jewish songwriters “were reinventing themselves as American and changing America itself at the same time,” in A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs (Nextbook/Schocken).

Inspired by both African-American blues and jazz and Jewish liturgical music, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen et al., along with lyricists such as Lorenz Hart, Richard Rodgers and Ira Gershwin, created a song track for generations of lovers, as they “were conducting a passionate romance with America,” writes Lehman.

Here’s the Nextbook trailer for A Fine Romance:

A Fine Romance from Tablet Magazine on Vimeo.

Rabbi Mordechai Yitzchok Friedman vents in Brooklyn

Although this “Jewish Tea Party” meeting took place on Purim, apparently it’s not a joke. In a report for the Forward, Gal Beckerman finds a small group, no more than 15 people, gathered in a Brooklyn synagogue basement for an interactive session with Rabbi Mordechai Yitzchok Friedman.

The rabbi sticks to some central points in his talk, which was videotaped:

Almost everyone is an antisemite, even most of the “so-called Jews” you know; the “Jewish way” to solve Israel’s problems is mass murder; all blacks in America want to see Jews dead; oh, and a revolution must take place in Israel so that it can fulfill its true promise and become a theocracy. It is his unified theory of Jews and their place in the world.

The modest gathering, in Friedman’s view, amounts to the founding of a “Jewish Tea Party,” an attempt to jump on the bandwagon of the movement that is rattling the Republicans and providing grist for the mainstream press mill.

Here’s a taste of what went on:

Jewish Tea Party from Jewish Forward on Vimeo.

When one thinks of the Nazis and film, the name Leni Riefenstahl might come to mind. But the now largely unknown Veit Harlan was the most popular director in Germany during the Third Reich.

In a fascinating new documentary, Harlan: In the Shadow of “Jew Süss,” director Felix Moeller looks at Harlan’s career and plumbs the controversies about the notorious director — who enjoyed a privileged lifestyle while making films for Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels — in interviews with Harlan’s children, nieces and nephews, and grandchildren.

Harlan’s niece, Christiane Kubrick, was married to the late director Stanley Kubrick, who was Jewish; she tells a story about Kubrick’s apprehension about meeting Veit Harlan and other family members in Germany. Also, she reveals that Kubrick explored making a film about Harlan and how he worked within the Nazi bureaucracy, but the project never came to fruition.

In another twist of interest to film fans, reviews of the documentary have noted that Harlan’s 1945 epic Kolberg was the basis for the film-within-a-film, Stolz Der Nation, in Quentin Tarantino’s Oscar-nominated Inglourious Basterds.

The documentary’s title refer’s to Harlan’s diabolically anti-Semitic film, Jud Süß (1940), or Jew Süss, which film critics, and Harlan’s descendants, view as a cinematic tool of murder. Goebbels ordered that Nazi SS officers and concentration camp guards be made to view the film, a melodrama about a powerful and wicked Jewish character in 18th century Germany.

Harlan was twice tried for war crimes, but was acquitted both times. He continued to make movies — which were dated and mediocre — in the 1950s.

Here is more about the documentary:

Veit Harlan died in 1964, on the island of Capri, Italy.

Harlan: In the Shadow of “Jew Süss” will have its local premiere next month at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival. The American Jewish World will publish a story about the film and director Felix Moeller prior to its festival screening. — Mordecai Specktor

In its latest investigation into the demise of Home Valu, the home improvement firm founded by former Sen. Rudy Boschwitz, Fox 9 News reported last night that the Anoka County Attorney is investigating allegations that the company defrauded subcontractors hired to install products.

Here is an excerpt from Fox9.com:

Gary Miller, a subcontractor who installed floors for Home Valu, is waiting to be paid $15,000 by the home improvement chain founded by former U.S. Senator Rudy Boschwitz.

Miller is one of dozens of installers across Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin who say “Home Valu” collected hundreds of thousands of dollars from customers then didn’t pay the subs that completed the jobs.

FOX 9 previously reported that the Boschwitz family run business is also under investigation by police in the Milwaukee area, suspected of violating the Wisconsin “theft by contractor” law, which can be a felony. Minnesota’s law is similar except it’s a gross misdemeanor. Both states mandate that if a company such as Home Valu is paid by customers, its first obligation is to pay the subcontractors regardless of its own financial problems.

And here’s the Fox 9 video:

Adath Jeshurun’s ‘Jews, Food and Planet Earth’ Synaplex Shabbat will feature environmentalist Nigel Savage

When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not pick your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger: I the Lord am your God. — Leviticus 19:9-10

By MORDECAI SPECKTOR

As it turns out, there is more to the subject of Jews and food than bagels and lox. And kugel, brisket and gefilte fish.

Nigel Savage, founder and executive director of Hazon, the largest Jewish environmental group in the United States, has been busy promoting what he calls the “new Jewish food movement.” Through the annual Hazon Food Conference, Savage and his associates are spreading the word about contemporary food issues — Jewish food culture, cutting-edge food law and policy, kosher meat issues, health and nutrition, cooking and gardening, and Israeli food and agriculture.

Hazon’s Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) Program links consumers with small farmers, which enables the Jewish community to support local, sustainable agriculture. In the CSA program, individuals and families pre-purchase a share of a farmer’s produce for an entire season.

As part of Adath Jeshurun Congregation’s Synaplex Shabbat program, which will take place March 12-13, Savage, a native of Manchester, England, will speak about the Jewish food movement and other topics as the shul’s Numero-Steinfeldt Scholar.

Savage spoke on the phone with the Jewish World last week as he was preparing to leave San Francisco for New York City.

Keep reading →

Dr. Sabina Zimering’s story of masquerade and survival is again brought to life at History Theatre through March 21

By DORIS RUBENSTEIN

It’s always hard to do a good job when your boss is looking over your shoulder. For the actors in Hiding in the Open, which premiered Feb. 25 at the History Theatre in St. Paul, it’s even harder to perform well with the real-life protagonist of your play sitting in the audience.

Hiding in the Open, directed by Hayley Finn, tells the survival story of St. Louis Park resident Dr. Sabina Schwartz Zimering and her sister Helka. It is based on Zimering’s memoir of the same name and adapted for the stage by Kira Obolensky.

A Theater Review

The play has yet deeper roots in Minnesota because it owes its genesis to a Star Tribune article written by Peg Meier, also in the audience on opening night — another reason for an actor to be jittery.

Despite all these pressures, the cast of Hiding in the Open does an admirable job of bringing Zimering’s story of masquerade, deception, intrigue, loyalty, altruism and hope to the stage.

American Jewish World readers know that one way for Jews to survive the Holocaust was to take on Christian identities, and this was the survival method of Sabina (Elise Langer) and Helka (Devon Solorow), who are mere teenagers when the story begins in 1939 Poland.

Their family is forced to leave their comfortable, middle-class home to share an apartment for three years with grudging strangers in the ghetto. Scenic designer Erica Zaffarano does an excellent job of creating a sense of imprisonment for the family with her use of sparse props of metal and metallic gray to enclose the family’s room and the ghetto outside their window in Act One.

At their mother’s urging, and with the help of their caring Polish teacher (Laura Esping), the sisters obtain false identification papers and start their journey across Poland and Germany. This is the first, but not the last time that they encounter and are helped by Righteous Gentiles whose memories are planted at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

Keep reading →

In a world premiere, choreographer Stuart Pimsler adapts an evocative children’s book for the stage

By MORDECAI SPECKTOR

In the first collaboration between Stuart Pimsler Dance and Theater and SteppingStone Theatre, choreographer and dancer Stuart Pimsler chose to adapt the children’s book Tales of a Gambling Grandma by Dayal Kaur Khalsa.

Pimsler says that “as a rookie father,” he read the book to his daughter, “when she was quite young. I became fond of [Khalsa’s] work. My Grandmother’s Tsotchkes: Tales of a Gambling Grandma, which will have its world premiere March 12-28 at the theater in St. Paul’s Historic Hill District, stays true to the book and adds some new elements.

Khalsa, a New York City native, told the story of an immigrant woman who embodied “a combination of street smarts and old-world superstition,” according to Pimsler. In adapting the work of the illustrator turned author, Pimsler weaved in stories and life lessons passed on by his own grandmother in New York — along with her treasured keepsakes from the Old World, hertsotchkes.

During a conversation with the Jewish World last week, Pimsler discussed the creative process for his latest work — the first stage adaptation of a book by Khalsa — and how his cast of mainly non-Jewish young actors approached the material.

My Grandmother’s Tsotchkes tells the story of a Jewish Russian immigrant and her American granddaughter, May, through dance and movement. The grandmother offers such pearls of advice as, “Always keep borscht in the refrigerator in case the Cossacks come to your house in Queens!”

Keep reading →

The sixth annual observance of anti-Israel activism, “Israel Apartheid Week,” is in full swing across the United States and around the world; a schedule of IAW events has been planned in Duluth, Minnesota.

Jewish pundits are weighing in about the consequences of these activities. Should Jews actively confront what they see as anti-Zionist and sometimes anti-Semitic expressions? Or are these manifestations of little consequence and best ignored?

Blogging on New Voices, the digital version of the “National Jewish Student Magazine,” Sam Melamed points out that IAW is actually a 14-day event; and he would like to brand it as “Two Weeks of Bashing Bibi and His Cronies in Israel’s Military-Security Complex, But NOT Jews In General, While Also Shedding Light on Legitimate Palestinian Grievances.” Looking at Israel’s treatment of Palestinians on the West Bank, Melamed concludes that calling ”Israel an Apartheid state is not without provocation.”

In point/counterpoint fashion, Ben Sales gainsays Melamed’s blog post. He writes: “The fact is that Sam is wrong in his characterization of both IAW, as well as of Israel as an apartheid state. Sam writes that IAW is not anti-Zionist, but IAW’s website states that ‘Prominent Palestinians, Jewish anti-Zionists, and South Africans have been at the forefront of this struggle [emphasis mine].’ In addition, the IAW logo illustrates the land of Israel/Palestine in completely Palestinian colors, flanked by two Palestinians. In its own words, IAW is anti-Zionist.”

Keep reading →

Dozens of groups, from across the gamut of political ideologies, send e-mails to the American Jewish World. It’s hard to keep up.

Today, I checked out the links to an outfit called the Unity Coalition for Israel (UCI). Based in Shawnee Mission, Kansas, UCI displays a clear anti-Muslim bias; perhaps, in their minds, this constitutes support for Israel.

However, UCI has posted a Web video that is a mish-mash of deceptively edited clips under the heading “Obama Admits He is Muslim.” This kind of garbage qualifies UCI for the Wingnut File.

You can find the video HERE.

It is one thing to offer skewed and specious arguments; posting propaganda fit only for the paranoid political fringe puts the Unity Coalition for Israel beyond the pale, so to speak. — Mordecai Specktor

From the production team that created Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West, comes Crossing the Line: The Intifada Comes to Campus, a documentary about anti-Israel activism on college campuses. The rollout of the film — which is directed by Wayne Kopping and produced by Raphael Shore — comes ahead of Israel Apartheid Week events which create “an insidious environment where Jews are verbally and even physically attacked on campus,” according to publicity for the 32-minute documentary.

Here’s a clip from Crossing the Line:
The makers of Crossing the Line argue that a line “is crossed when anti-Zionist rhetoric turns into a pure form of anti-Semitism.”

“Behind a veil of criticizing Israeli policies, professors, teaching assistants and other university authorities are putting Jewish students at risk,” says director Kopping. “This film provides a critical understanding of a dangerous trend on campus that we unfortunately see is growing.”

He adds, “What we have noticed on many campuses is that Jewish students know the accusations made against Israel are abusive and anti-Semitic but they do not know how to respond. Empowering students through education and knowledge is the only solution to the growing epidemic of anti-Semitism on campus.”

In the case of Obsession, a previous Kopping and Shore collaboration, that video is long on violent footage, heightened by ominous background music, and short on any constructive solutions. There is certainly an area where anti-Israel sentiments veer into vile anti-Semitism; but Crossing the Line looks like another hyperbolic effort to stir up fear (with the trademark spooky music), a la Obsession, again with scant attention to building inter-ethnic and inter-religious bridges. — Mordecai Specktor