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Gigi Yellen-Kohn: The Kaddish in Music and Literature
November 16 2003, 2:00 PM
Soundbridge: Seattle Symphony Music Discovery Center
Corner of 2nd Avenue & Union Street, Seattle
In conjunction with the Seattle Symphony's November 20-23 performances of Leonard Bernstein's Symphony No. 3, Kaddish, Nextbook presents a talk by music critic Gigi Yellen-Kohn on the Kaddish and the uses to which it has been put by musicians, artists, and writers. Although its recitation is a time-honored ritual of Jewish mourning, the Kaddish is not a requiem; in fact, the Kaddish does not speak of death at all. In Jewish liturgy, the Kaddish appears in a variety of forms, associated with learning as much as it is with death. Leonard Bernstein is hardly the first artist to have used the Kaddish as creative material: from Maurice Ravel to Allen Ginsberg to Imre Kertész, musicians and poets, essayists and novelists, dancers and painters, and even TV writers have found inspiration in this classic Jewish prayer of praise and peace.
Sarah Abrevaya Stein: Making Jews Modern
January 22 2004, 7:00 PM
Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington
15th Avenue NE and NE 41st Street
On the eve of the twentieth century, European Jews found themselves in a state of flux. Nearly every aspect of their lives—from the food they ate to where they lived to the degree and nature of their religious practice—became, increasingly, a matter of choice. In no place was this change better reflected than in the Yiddish and Ladino popular press. How did advertisements for corsets and cigars help Jews understand the modern world? What new trends did gossip and culinary columns introduce them to? Sarah Abrevaya Stein, author of Making Jews Modern: Yiddish and Ladino Press in the Russian and Ottoman Empires, talks about the divergent ways in which the Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern and Southeastern Europe experienced cultural change and the role of the popular press in shaping modern notions of Jewish identity.
Susan A. Glenn: "Oh, Sarah Bernhardt!"
March 11 2004, 7:00 PM
Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington
15th Avenue NE and NE 41st Street
Was "Sarah Bernhardt" the Madonna of her day? When generations of Jewish mothers in the United States admonished their daughters not to be "a Sarah Bernhardt," they were drawing upon an important form of cultural shorthand. For half a century after her death in 1923, the name "Sarah Bernhardt" stood for more than volatile displays of female emotion; it summoned the image of a brazen and self-promoting woman who refused to abide by the conventions of her time. As a consequence, the actress became an important touchstone and exemplar for American womenÑfrom female comics on the vaudeville stage to activists in the modern suffrage movement. Professor Susan A. Glenn, author of Female Spectacle: The Theatrical Roots of Modern Feminism (2000), examines Sarah Bernhardt's influence on a rising generation of New Women and her impact on American culture, in a Nextbook presentation co-sponsored by the Henry Art Gallery.
Sherwin Nuland: Lost in America
March 23 2004, 7:30 PM
Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington
15th Avenue NE & NE 41st St.
March 24 2004, 7:00 PM
Bellevue Regional Library (KCLS)
1111 110th Avenue NE, Bellevue
America may be a the land of opportunity for some, but for Sherwin Nuland's father, who immigrated from Russia at the turn of the 20th century, life here brought little but heartbreak and sorrow. In his recent book, Lost in America, the National Book Award-winning author sets aside the gracious equanimity of his earlier work (How We Die) for a raw, powerful memoir about the artist as a young doctor—and his turbulent relationship to a man beset not only by economic and personal losses, but also by the ravages of a terrible disease.
Passing: Assumed Identities in Black and Jewish Culture
Co-sponsored by the Central District Forum for Arts & Ideas and Seattle Art Museum
April 8 2004, 7:30 PM
Seattle Art Museum
100 University Street, Seattle
In Philip Roth's award-winning novel, The Human Stain, a Jewish classics professor harbors a tragic secret: he is a light-skinned black man who decades ago disowned his identity. Both the award-winning novel and the recent film adaptation helped to spark renewed interest in the theme of "passing"-in which members of a minority culture present themselves as members of a dominant group to avoid detection and discrimination. In this panel discussion, University of Washington professors Paul C. Taylor, Susan Glenn and Nikhil Singh join journalist Silja J.A. Talvi, staff writer for Colors NW magazine, to explore the history of passing in African-American and Jewish-American culture in film, music and literature.
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