Richard Wagner’s Music Is Effectively Banned in Israel
Tablet Magazineby David P. Goldman
The composer Richard Wagner was an anti-Semite, a German nationalist, and a genius. Performance of his music—masterworks like the “Ring” cycle and “Tristan und Isolde”—is effectively banned in Israel. Should it be?
Richard Wagner, the most repugnant of musical nationalists, has become an unlikely poster child for culturally progressive Israelis. The recurring controversy over the public performance of work by the Nazi Party’s favorite composer erupted again in late July when the Israeli Chamber Orchestra, led by the Austrian conductor Roberto Paternostro, performed a much-publicized Wagner program at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany, Wagner’s self-erected shrine and a pillar of the Nazi movement well before Hitler took power. (Paternostro received a standing ovation from the largely German audience, which understandably liked the idea of Jews playing Wagner.) Morbid ethnocentrism with overtones of nationalist extremism is acceptable to the Israeli left, it seems, as long as it isn’t Jewish.
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| Daniel Barenboim |
Concert at Sultan's Pool a great treat | CANOE Travel
ISRAEL - A smartly-dressed middle-aged man sits in front of me, arm draped snugly around an attractive and be-jewelled lady, clearly half his age. He and his jet-set friends have purportedly paid 2200 Shekels per seat. ($640 US).
I sit alone but free, courtesy of Israeli tourism, and what a seat it is! I'm ensconced at the base of Mount Masada, a UNESCO World Heritage Site where the Israeli Opera company is dramatically producing Giuseppe Verdi's famous Aida, the Italian maestro's masterpiece amongst his 28 written operas.
In 2010, their 25th anniversary, the Israeli Opera inaugurated this spectacular outdoor festival, and it has secured Israel a place on the map of world opera festivals alongside the likes of Italy, France, Switzerland and Finland. Read more »
'Policeman' Is Not Your Typical Israeli Movie | indieWIRE
LOCARNO REVIEW Everyone seems lost in Nadav Lapid “Policeman” (“Ha-shoter”), an unsettling story of brawny Israeli anti-terrorist officers and the equally clueless activists they’re eventually tasked with hunting down. While blatantly topical, this is not a political film of the moment, but rather a calculated meditation on purpose.
Developed by first-time director Lapid at a Cannes Film Festival residency, the script for “Policeman” contains a persistently muted, disquieting tone that the director could expand upon in subsequent efforts. While somewhat problematically fragmented, “Policeman” is loaded with insight into the nuances of Israeli society. Read more »
Israeli film undergoes a renaissance
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| The innovative animated film Walt with Bashir was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign film. |
Joseph Cedar's Footnote won the best screenplay award at this year's Cannes Film Festival.
The Cannes Film Festival 2011 award to Joseph Cedar's Hearat Shulayim (Footnote) for best screenplay was the latest indication that Israeli cinema has become a world force, with Israel enjoying "a remarkable film renaissance," according to the Los Angeles Times.
Cedar's personal achievements are impressive. His first two movies, Time of Favor and Campfire, were domestic box-office hits. His third, Beaufort, a gut-wrenching war film about the last days of Israel's military presence in southern Lebanon, was an international phenomenon. Beaufort won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and became the first Israeli film in a generation to be nominated for a best foreign-language film Oscar.
Footnote, which is distributed in the United States by Sony, tells the story of a father and son, both scholars of the Talmud, locked in academic rivalry.
Cedar, who immigrated to Israel from New York with his parents when he was six, has often drawn on his personal religious observance to imbue his movies with authentic Jewish storylines. He told reporters in Cannes that he was struck by the human dramas bubbling behind the rarefied research of Talmudic scholars at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Argentina's Jewish Villages Keep Traditions Alive | NPR
Now, only a dwindling number of their descendants remain, but they're intent on saving the Jewish culture that flourished for decades. In Entre Rios province, the center of Argentina's rural Jewish communities, there are still gauchos, Hebrew lessons and sacred scrolls to be found.
Jaime Jruz is among those who consider keeping the old traditions alive a debt owed to those who first settled the region. He roams his ranch on horseback, rounding up cattle and keeping track of his goats. His farm, on the outskirts of Carmel, goes back more than a century.
It was bought on a payment plan by his grandfather, who had arrived in Argentina aboard the Bismarck, a ship carrying Jews seeking a new life in the New World. Now 65, Jruz says he has lost a step or two and is one of the last Jewish gauchos around.
Many of his friends have given up the backbreaking work, and his three daughters, like most young Argentine Jews, live in the cities. But Jruz says the past and the work his ancestors put into the farms of Entre Rios weigh heavily on him. Read more »
Philip Levine named U.S. poet laureate | Jewish Journal
The appointment of Levine, who at 83 is one of the oldest poet laureates, was announced Wednesday by Librarian of Congress James Billington.
Levine, of Fresno, Calif., is the author of 20 collections of poems, including “The Simple Truth,” for which he won the Pulitzer Prize.
“Philip Levine is one of America’s great narrative poets,” Billington said. “His plainspoken lyricism has, for half a century, championed the art of telling ‘The Simple Truth’—about working in a Detroit auto factory, as he has, and about the hard work we do to make sense of our lives.” Read more »
Yiddish's Enduring Influence on Literature | Tablet Magazine
Yiddish is far from dead. It’s undead, and it haunts everything from Harvey Pekar’s comics to the vampire literature of the early 20th century.
Yiddish isn’t dead; if anything, it’s undead. Think about it: Is there anything more unkillable, vaguely erotic, ridiculous, and toothy than the language of the Ashkenazim? In fact, a book published this spring—Sara Libby Robinson’s Blood Will Tell: Vampires as Political Metaphors Before World War I (Academic Studies, March)—argues that Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the single most recognizable undead gentleman in history, was, as Allan Nadler phrases it, a reflection of “widespread anxieties about the dangers posed by the flood (and the blood) of Yiddish-speaking immigrants to Great Britain.” Read more »
Yiddish isn’t dead; if anything, it’s undead. Think about it: Is there anything more unkillable, vaguely erotic, ridiculous, and toothy than the language of the Ashkenazim? In fact, a book published this spring—Sara Libby Robinson’s Blood Will Tell: Vampires as Political Metaphors Before World War I (Academic Studies, March)—argues that Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the single most recognizable undead gentleman in history, was, as Allan Nadler phrases it, a reflection of “widespread anxieties about the dangers posed by the flood (and the blood) of Yiddish-speaking immigrants to Great Britain.” Read more »
The new Jewess: A rising generation of actresses overturns old tropes | Jewish Journal
The year is 1950. The setting is a dimly lit movie studio backlot. It’s the middle of the night, and an attractive young woman named Betty Schaefer is explaining to her screenwriting partner why she became a writer instead of what she really wanted to be — an actress. The movie is “Sunset Boulevard.”
“I come from a picture family,” Schaefer (Nancy Olson) tells Joe Gillis (William Holden). “Naturally, they took it for granted I was to become a great star. So I had 10 years of dramatic lessons, diction, dancing. Then the studio made a test. Well, they didn’t like my nose — it slanted this way a little. I went to a doctor and had it fixed. They made more tests, and they were crazy about my nose — only they didn’t like my acting.”
Though it’s never overtly stated, the obvious implication is that Betty Schaefer is Jewish. If you’ve ever wanted to understand the ambivalence Hollywood has felt toward Jewish women, there it is in glorious black and white. Read more »
The Russian-American Jews of ‘Russian Dolls’ Tablet Magazine
BY ALLISON HOFFMAN
In the first episode of Russian Dolls, a new Lifetime reality show set in Brooklyn and billed as a cross between Jersey Shore and the Real Housewives franchise, a 23-year-old bleached-blonde named Diana Kosov spends a lot of time fretting about her new boyfriend, Paul, who drives a Maserati and lavishes her with flowers and teddy bears but who is unfit to bring home to her parents. The problem? “He’s Spanish, and I’m Russian,” Kosov explains. “In this community, if I date someone who’s not Russian, it’s a big deal.” Later, her mother, Anna, shows up to prove the point. “I would like you marrying Russian guy,” she tells her daughter, as they practice making borscht. “We have same kultur. It’s very important, you understand?
The astute viewer will notice that, in both of these interludes, Kosov is wearing a large Star of David pendant that dangles above her dramatically pushed-up cleavage. In a phone interview this week, she said the message she heard was clear: “I’m looking for a Russian Jewish guy.” But, on the show, the word Jewish never enters the dialogue—not in an aside to the camera, not with Kosov’s mother, and not, eventually, with Paul, who gets the heave-ho over a plate of tuna tartare. “My parents, they came to America for a reason,” Kosov says, earnestly. “To look for Russians?” Paul retorts. “Yeah,” Kosov replies, without elaboration. Read more »
Israel's Nascent Film Empire
Tablet Magazine
BY DAPHNE MERKIN
What can you say about a country that has 15 film schools and only four medical schools? Does it suggest Israel’s abiding love for cinematic distraction over the concerns of life and limb—or does it suggest something simpler and more reflexive, a preference for proliferation for its own sake, not all that different from the overwhelming variety of yogurts that are available in Israeli supermarkets? Perhaps the smaller the land, the more important the illusion of choice.
And what can you say about a country that has steadfastly refused to learn the rudiments of PR, both for political and cultural purposes? That invites journalists over, expenses paid, for a much-touted cultural event and then pretty much leaves them to their own devices once they arrive? That insists, say, on misspelling my last name as Mirkin rather than Merkin despite many emails over many months attesting to the correct spelling? Is it a form of arrogance or a kind of autism? Read more »
Touching Israel through film
The Korea Herald
Country’s new talent connects at PiFan showcase
Israel and Korea may not share a common tongue, but it was the international language of film that shone through at the Israeli Film Reception on Wednesday, held in cooperation with the 15th Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival.
Two Israeli films showcased at PiFan were celebrated at the event: “Rabies,” a horror written and directed by Navot Papushado and Aharon Keshales, and “Guest,” a dark restaurant-set satire by Roy Krispel. Read more »
Israeli museum showing Muslim-world artists - 3 News
A museum on the road separating Jewish west Jerusalem from the Arab neighbourhoods in the city's east is attracting a daring group of artists from Middle Eastern nations that shun contact with Israel, trying to erode political barriers through art.
It's been a years-long process for the Museum on the Seam, which is one of the few art museums in Israel that aggressively tries to convince Arab and Muslim artists to show in its galleries. Read more »
See Gallery »
Museum on the Seam
Beach Gallery in Bat Yam
Their works for this exhibition provided the students and graduates of art academies Shenkar and Bezalel, Haifa's Technion and Mihlelet Minhal.
See Gallery >>
Originally reported by http://newsru.co.il
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