Brilliant Klezmer musician Andy Statman, along with other musicians, play regularly at the Charles Street Shul, aka Derech Emunah (Path of Faith) in the Village. Last night we experienced concert number 431 at the shul. The shul has been hosting Andy’s concerts since 1998.

This is truly an experience, it is not just a simple matter of attending a concert.

Concert time was 8:30, we arrived at 8:30, so of course we were 45 minutes early and we helped set up the chairs in the long, narrow library/meeting room a flight below the sanctuary.  We were also treated like family: greeted by Director, Herman Lowenharr and his  3 year old grand-daughter– so cute, so smart, so sweet, she showed us the lovely party dress that was being hand-sewn for her, and let us play silly games with her, and home-made brownies were pulled from the oven before burning and offered to us.  Nice. 

The concert had a full house, and the music was glorious. Andy Statman on clarinet with a drummer played Chasidic niggunim in Andy’s unique style. Andy takes you on an emotional trek through each piece. Then after a short break, Andy switched instruments and genres, and played his mandolin in Bluegrass style along with a visiting Singer/Guitarist, and the drummer. It was excellent music and pure fun. He has a long history in a Bluegrass style.

Check out their schedule and go. There are Jazz nights as well. All too good to miss.

This link will take you to Jon Kalish’s excellent interview with Andy Statman which includes his trio playing at the shul, and Andy on mandolin.  

http://youtube.com/profile_videos?user=DerechAmuno&p=r

The photo of the shul was taken by Hubert J Steed.

If the full posting didn’t display, please enter “Limmud”  in the GothamGirl search screen to the left in order to see the article and comments.

Five Real Jewish Women - Three of them Mothers - All Dead of Cancer Before 60 ….by guest author NYCGuy.

 I sat between Lily and my mom at the afternoon screening of Making Trouble, a doc about three generations of Jewish comediennes, three of whose careers I experienced in real time: Gilda Radner, Wendy Wasserstein and Madeline Kahn. A Q and A followed with director Rachel Talbot and editor Philip Shayne in the Jewish Museum hall that could only be described as a sea of silver-haired ladies. I asked the director what it was like to deal with three boomer women whose lives had been cut short way too soon.

Talbot, a boomer, seemed taken aback, but Shane interceded that they were filming Wasserstein vis-a-vis Kahn’s acting career and her role in her Sisters Rosensweig when the playwright died. So, she became one of those profiled as well as the segue into the Kahn segment. I later discovered I’d erred about the very sexy, sharply funny Kahn. Her birth preceded the baby boom by four years.

 The film used the vehicle of four contemporary Jewish comics or comedy writers fressing at Katz’s delicatessen, for propulsion, but I don’t somehow recall mention of lives foreshortened. The film, with significant support from the Jewish Women’s Archive, is ostensibly about six pioneers - Molly Picone, Fanny Brice, Sophie Tucker and the still kicking Joan Rivers - but the sadly serendipitous inclusion of Wasserstein, a single mom and sole non-performer, added a woman as shammas whose extraordinary gift for story telling set ablaze the careers of many fine actresses.

So, you ask, who were the other two whose lives were cut short?

This evening I attended the closing festival screening with my friend M. The documentary, Orthodox Stance, looked at the boxing career of a Soviet immigrant, Dmitriy Salita, who takes on what was the sport of the earlier generation inter-war Jewish immigranmt boys who also sought a route out of poverty.

Dmitriy, who sat on the step next to us as the film rolled, began his training in the Starrett City Boxing Gym, a white kid among Black and Latin youths, with a legendary elderly Black trainer, Jimmy O’Pharrow, who, during the Q+A, Dmitriy named as his surrogate grandfather.

Early in his training, his mother develops and eventually succumbs to cancer. The husband of her Orthodox Jewish hospital roommate connects Dimitriy with a Chabad Lubavitch rabbi in Flatbush, setting a different spin on the young man’s life. His focus on boxing was also a way of dealing with the loss of his mother. The film opens theatrically at Cinema Village on January 25. Go see it!

Lily alread wrote about Praying with Lior. Isaw this with Lily and her husband sitting on one side and my friend G on the other. I had immediately checked off that film as a must see by the compelling picture of Lior in the Frestival brochure. In the course of the doc, via family film footage, we see the loss of Lior’s birth mother, a rabbi, and later discussion about this threaded throughout. His dad, also a rabbi, Mordechai Liebling,  a prominent thinker in the Reconstructionist movement eventually remarries. Lior’s new mom sees him into his current adolescence and with his dad to the pivotal preparation for the celebration of his bar mitzvah. On the eve of this event there is a scene with Lior and his dad at the birth mom’s gravesite. If there’s anyone unmoved their heart is clearly made of stone.

I don’t know if the organizers of what was the NY Jewish Film Festival 17 realized that the loss of vibrant women not due to the holocaust was woven through three very different documentaries that very much need to travel and be discussed.

That apparently is the desire of all the film makers.

In January 2009, the Festival turns 18, chai, life in Jewish numerology. What might this bring? Who might be missed?

Limmud NY filled the Nevele Grande in the Catskills with about 1,000 people for their annual study event during the long Martin Luther King, Jr weekend. Limmud means “study” in Hebrew. There were over 350 study sessions, workshops and films over the four days. There was a camp for the kids. Many different style minyans were held and there was a shuk selling books and Judaica, also many organizations looking for volunteers and distributing information.

The participants came mostly from the North East of the US but there was a sizable number of Brits, Canadians (of course) and lots of Californians, and some Israelis. All ages came, there were many families with children, many of high school and university students too.

It was an incredible marathon with so many choices and activities, and so many interesting people to meet. Really wonderful. There were many performers including musicians, comics, and a one-man play. Events started and 7:30 am and ended at 2 or 3 am…It was sometimes difficult to choose exactly what to attend. My friend told me the best joke of the event:

How do you tell the neurotic from the psychotic at an event like this? The neurotics do not sleep and the psychotics don’t go to the bathroom.

The sessions we attended had real variety, intellect and depth, once I stumbled into a “new age” class and left quickly- not my cup of tea at all, but the others in the room were happy…very happy with it. I have a limited appetite for Kabbalah, or demons and devils as well…it is the “Litvak” in me that just cannot  listen to this for very long but I did go to a session about all of this stuff. I did enjoy the sessions on the Mussar movement. There was something for everyone.

I attended a few discussions which were a true pleasure. People of differing opinions discussing serious topics with respect and humor, that is without the bile and without monsterizing the other’s opinions as we usually hear in so-called “discussions” the media.

One was “Who Wrote the Torah- a Conversation on Bible Scholarship and Faith” with Everett Fox, Nigel Savage, Rachel Berkovits, and Danial Goldfarb. Excellent.

There were many films, and an extraordinary session with slides on the history, false Soviet propaganda and reality of Birobijan, the soviet “Jewish” state, by a person who was born there. The slides were incredible: a soviet brochure with photos of palm trees (!) in Siberia, moving stories of the people who came in hope and mostly experienced tragic ends.

Alicia Svigals, the great Klezmer fiddler not only played on Sunday night for a dancing, happy crowd which included dancing children (who the adults lifted up in chairs during the dancing) and dancing adults in the Nevele nightclub called the “Stardust Room”. I love these Catskills- this evening was timeless! The next day, Alicia lead a session on the history of Klezmer music, played some excerpts and also explained why so many “Jewish” names come from instruments such as Feidler, and Zimbalist etc. It was all fun.

We had hoped to get to the indoor pool and to take a freezing walk in the snowy woods, but we were just too busy. I did see about thirty Canada Geese fly in and land on the half-frozen lake honking loudly and we had a great view of the mountains from our window…

My best and most extraordinary moment: meeting the warm, happy woman I would never have expected to be at Limmud. We had not seen each other since she was a teen about 25 years ago. She had lived with our family for a short time. It must be the real reason I was meant to be there.

One more note: Limmud takes place in many locations around the world, and will be at the Nevele next year. If you look up the Nevele Grande on the net you will see horrible reviews which have no validity at all. I do not know who those writers are or what their motivation was but I can tell you that what they wrote is completely untrue. The Nevele is clean, perfectly pleasant and the staff was helpful and always positive.

A new residence is being built on the corner of 86th Street and West End Avenue (by Extell), which can’t be ignored. It will be 22 stories and have one apartment per floor of about 8500 square feet each (!) I hope this finally gives people enough room for closets. Also, each unit will have extra sized kitchens making it very attractive for families that keep kosher, if that indeed is the builder’s intent on this avenue with a large Jewish population.

Each apartment will cost about $14,000,000. So much for a real estate slump, not here! I am sure the units will be sold and probably very quickly too.

This is an ideal location, close to Riverside Park on the Hudson River, one block from Broadway shopping and transportation, on WestEnd Avenue.

West End is a quiet, old world, elegant avenue lined with pre-war, doorman buildings. On Shabbat and Jewish holidays, families stroll to the local synagogues. The building height matches the surrounding buildings and the size and price of each unit is in it’s own category. There is nothing else like this to my knowledge on this avenue.

Most interesting is that diagonally across the street from this incredible building is the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew, which is a small, liberal Methodist congregation dedicated to possitive interfaith and social action. It also houses the West Side Campaign Against Hunger, a supermarket style food pantry which helps provide food for about 900 needy families per year. Also, Congregation B’nai Jeshurun (West 88th Street) meets in this church for Saturday morning services and for holiday overflow services. The church building is in poor shape and the congregation hopes to renovate and sell it’s air rights to secure income for it’s future, a plan that has been opposed by some community groups.

Perhaps the future condo owners of 535 West End can be convinced to become respected community neighbors by keeping the needs of the pantry in mind. This season the shelves became quite bare and the local synagogues and churches asked their members to donate (checks not food) in order to restock the shelves. Helping to support this pantry certainly would cost the new owners only a fraction of the cost of a small closet and would do a great deal of good for the needy and for their respect in the neighborhood.

 PS: See the comments for more about the neighborhood and the UPDATE AND PHOTO on the March 20, 2008 posting.

Praying With Lior will open shortly at the Village Cinema, and perhaps elsewhere. We saw it at the Jewish Museum as part of the  Jewish Film Festival followed by a fascinating discussion panel.

Make time to see this film.

This is a loving, compelling documentary about the world of Lior, a young man with Down’s Syndrome, his amazing family which includes four siblings, his community, how he deals with loss, and his preparation for his Bar Mitzvah. (warning:bring tissues).

It is most interesting to see how people choose to project onto Lior what they would like to see- a Magical Child- and how Lior, his parents and siblings deal with reality. It is wonderful to spend time with this family.

This film festival has had so many special films that I want to comment only very briefly on just a few of them. Most of these will be shown in other festivals in the future, try to see them:

The Hebrew Lesson, documentary in Hebrew, Chinese, Russian and other languages, the drama of real peoples’ lives, with the kind of uniqueness and details that fiction can not dream up.

Someone to Run With, in Hebrew based on a novel by David Grossman- a riveting drama which takes place in Jerusalem. Extremely well done.

Love One Another, a restored print of a 1922 silent film with Danish and English titles, by Carl Dreyer (not Jewish) is a protest against anti-semitism in Csarist Russia. Very remarkable film. We saw it with a live pianist. Some of the actors are from the Moscow stage and eventually performed in the NY Jewish theatre of the 20’s and 30’s and in Hollywood.

Two Ladies,in  French and Arabic, Jewish Esther and Moslem Selima’s mother, are both Algerian born and living in France. They share a fascinating friendship in spite of the surrounding extremism and prejudice.

Each year I go to this festival and no matter how many films I manage to see, friends see a few I haven’t seen, they tell me how wonderful they were, and I have the feeling I have missed too much!

This is the 350 anniversary of the Flushing Remonstrance, a document written by the residents of Flushing 1654, in protest of the policies of Peter Stuyvesant, the Governor of New Amsterdam, in response to his harassment and oppression of Quakers in this Dutch colony.

Last night we took part in a fascinating study workshop about the history and meaning of this document lead by Rivka Widerman, who is a retired attorney, law professor and scholar.  Historians feel this is the first document for separation of church and state and freedom of religion from that time period and may have influenced the writers of the US Constitution. Members of a local church took part in the workshop which was held at Congregation Ansche Chesed.

From the beginning, New Amsterdam/New York had a variety of people, religions, and more bars than churches…read Russell Shorto’s book “The Island in the Center of the World “ for an in depth, very readable history of this time period.

The same year as the Remonstrance, 22 Jewish people arrived in New Amsterdam from South America,  and were denied entry to the colony by Stuyvesant, but appealed to his employer, the Dutch West India Company, and won the right to live and pray here. The congregation they formed still exists, and is now called Congregation Shearith Israel also known as The Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue. They have a small museum in the synagogue and an historical society as well.

There still is a Dutch Reformed Church in Flushing and the local High School is named for John Bowne, the Quaker leader of that time period.

This is all worth noting because New York City is constantly rebuilding and reinventing itself, or as we say, “it’s a great city- if they ever finish it”. Unlike Boston  and Philadelphia, New York doesn’t focus very much on it’s own history even though there is so much history here.

Rivka said that she has presented this workshop in several locations around the city and always asks which issue would you choose to write a remonstrance about today. This is a short list of some the responses she has gotten:

environmental issues, freedom from prejudice about religion,  the immoral status of “illegal aliens”, the use of benign laws (such as zoning regulations) for purposes other than they were intended, reconsideration of the drug laws…an interesting list…

I have only one peeve about this fabulous film festival: how can they have so few showings of some of these films? We bought our tickets well in advance of the screenings and we were lucky enough to buy the last available tickets to at least two of the showings. If you hope to see any of these films, review the listings on the link and buy the tickets now since many showings will be sold out. Here is the description from their brochure:

“Presented by The Jewish Museum and the Film Society of Lincoln CenterWelcome to the 17th annual New York Jewish Film Festival, a global survey of innovative and provocative films—most receiving their New York or U.S. premieres—that explore the multi-faceted Jewish experience. To mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel, this year’s festival showcases ten new Israeli films. We pay tribute this year to the late Austrian stage, television, and film director Axel Corti with screenings of four of his masterpieces. A total of 32 shorts, dramas, and documentaries from Germany, France, Argentina, Russia, Hungary, the United States, Mexico, Canada, Israel, the United Kingdom and Austria add up to an exhilarating worldwide journey.”

In a future post, I will comment on four of the films seen so far.

Here is a handsome photo of Jock Soto, the retired NYC Ballet principal dancer, taken by Daniel C. Miller in the lobby of the Walter Reade Theatre in Lincoln Centre after a showing of “Waters Coming Together” the documentary about his life and  career by Gwendolen Cates.  The film was wonderful.

We had seen some of the exerpts of dance shown live in performance.

His personal story, as a young dancing boy on the Navaho reservation in Arizona, then as a young teen completely on his own in New York, his devotion to dance, his beautiful talent and career  were all very compelling.

We witness the tough work and behind the scenes pain of dance not often depicted in film.  Also, so many other wonderful dancers are shown.

Makes you want to dance.

Even on a dark, gray rainy day there is always something new happening. This afternoon, after the rain stopped we noticed the Red-tailed Hawk soar by after pigeons and  spotted  six police officers and a suspect in a pink shirt and black cap, on a nearby rooftop! This not anything that we commonly see. It was a first.

One officer searched the rooftops. The others cuffed the suspect, secured him further with something that resembled reins or a leash.

The officers waved at a neighbor in a nearby window, and lowered the suspect carefully into the building onto the staircase or ladder that led to the roof.   The officers followed down the staircase and took the suspect’s full backpack and helmet with them.

We know nothing more.

We will let you know if we learn more. When we walk the dog, we will walk by and ask one of the best sources of local news: a doorman. Doormen are better than much media.

The Jewish Museum building on 5th Avenue and 92nd St, was once the Warburg family mansion; it has been adapted into a museum, expanded and has kept it’s grace and beauty.

The exhibit has William Steig’s  creative, original, delicately colored, beautifully drawn, drawings from his New Yorker cartoons, and from his wonderful children’s books.

The museum information about the work and the artist is unusually good too. Steig’s Bronx childhood and his life in New York, have the familiarity of listening to family story. Part of the exhibit includes his notes with the animators of Shrek and the animators drawings.

Also,  Steig’s gentle voice fills the gallery, from a video interview. Visiting kids had stories read to them in special story rooms at the exhibit. It is wonderful to be absorbed into Steig’s esthetic and humor. Did you know that schrek means “fear” or “scream” in Yiddish? 

Upstairs, there is an absolutely not to be missed video of I.B.Singer. The project was funded as a documentary but the film-maker/photographer, Bruce Davidson, and Singer wanted to produce Singer’s story called “Mrs. Pupko’s Beard”. They produced this ”documentary” in which Singer narrates his story, and we see the story acted out, and meet Mrs. Pupko and her great beard. We get to enjoy what is best about being completely idiosyncratic.

When you watch this video, don’t miss the details of the background in the shots of Singer feeding the pigeons on Broadway: there is the Upper West Side before the banks, drug stores and big mall stores took over the shops. 

The Camille Pisarro show had some startling information about some of the Impressionist painters. They respected Camille Pisarro as a founder of Impressionism, and even called him “Pere Pisarro”.  

When the Dreyfus Affair happened, some sided with Dreyfus: Pisarro, Monet and Cassat while “Renoir, Cezanne and Degas sided with the French government and even made anti-semitic comments against Pisarro, their former friend and colleague.”  This is something one would not learn in another museum.

During the holiday week we saw five films. Two were new releases, After The Devil Knows, and The Bucket List and three were Bob Fosse revivals which we saw at the Reade Theatre at Lincoln Centre,  Lenny, All That Jazz, and Caberet.

In just a breath: The Fosse films knock the pants off of the new films we saw.

After The Devil Knows was chilling and very well done,  The Bucket List has a concocted “charm”.  Please just explain to me how can running away from it all, and leaving the people you love, be the right thing to do if you know that you do not have long to live? My “bucket” list would be vastly different. It was “charming”, entertaining and pretty dumb. It probably has all it needs to win some awards.

The Fosse films all hold up extremely well over time. This is a good time period to either be reminded about Lenny Bruce or learn about him for the first time, All That Jazz, about the life of Bob Fosse, is a great film and if you love dance you should certainly see it, and Caberet is devastating to see again. Rent them.

Several years ago a friend shared some of his personal story: his mother, a member of a fundamentalist Christian group, took him door-to-door with her as she tried to find converts while he cringed and doors slammed, a story he managed to tell without any anger.  I tried to see the young boy in the story while listening to the relaxed, self-confident Jewish man he had become.

This past week I met his mother for the first time at the Brit Milah of his son.  A varied group of over 60 friends and family gathered in the morning, the mohel explained in detail the real significance of the circumcision ceremony and how it differed from what might be done in a hospital. He carefully reminded everyone that babies cry simply if you remove their diapers.

All went well, all of the friends and relatives joined togther in the “amens” of the brief service, and in a moment the baby was back comfortably in his mother’s arms, not crying. His name was announced and our friend and his wife spoke about who the baby was named for and invited the guests to share in the waiting breakfast…bagels, lox and rugelach, of course. I tell you all of this because this was the real thing, very warm and moving, in contrast to what people hear about only as the topic of jokes or in a comedy routine.

My friend’s mother introduced me to some relatives, pointed out an adorable grand-niece and told me how glad she was that her son finally was a father, and how happy she was that he had a son.

She spoke without a trace of discomfort, at peace with her son’s choices.