Organized by UWM Libraries ... ARTISTLS TALK: Friday, May 2, 2 pm â¡ E281, Golda Meir Library .... David Shneer (Univer
s s ss Fall 2013
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Joel Berkowitz (UWM) n The “Mendel Beilis Epidemic”: A Blood-Libel Trial on the Yiddish Stage Exactly 100 years ago, the trial of a Russian Jewish brickyard foreman named Mendel Beilis for ritual murder made headlines around the world. Long before the trial ended, Yiddish theatres began advertising dramatizations of it in a number of North American cities as well as London. Those plays, and the heated response to them, illustrate the serious—and sometimes hilarious—fallout when Yiddish theatres dramatized current events.
Wednesday, October 23
Thursday, January 30, 7 pm
Thursday, March 6, 7:30 pm
Saturday, March 29, 8 pm
The Jew and the Book: Latin American Jewish Writing
Golda Meir Library, 4th floor Conference Center
Congregation Sinai, 8223 N. Port Washington Road, Fox Point
UWM Arts Lecture Hall, located behind Mitchell Hall
Ron Leshem n TV: An Israeli Success Story
2:00 - 3:30pm: La Mano y el Judío: A Bilingual Reading of Jewish Latin American Writing
In spite of its small market and modest resources, Israel has become a major exporter of TV formats, thereby shaping public opinion at home and across the globe. Ron Leshem has played a major role in this story. An acclaimed writer and former Israeli TV executive, he oversaw the development of Homeland and many other hits. He is now developing adaptations for his own shows for NBC Universal. In this talk, Leshem explores what the Israeli TV industry reveals about its culture and what its broad success says about the world.
Jonathan Freedman n Transformations of a Jewish Princess: Salomé and the Remaking of the Jewish Female Body
Hankus Netsky & Hebrew National Salvage n A Musical Journey Through the Yiddish Theatre
Wisconsin Room Lounge, UWM Student Union
4:30 - 6:00pm: Open Master Class with Marjorie Agosín, José Kozer, and Stephen Sadow Room TBA, UWM Student Union
7:00 - 8:30pm: Jewish Thought, Latin Flavor: Jewish Literature in Latin America, a roundtable panel discussion. 4th Floor Conference Center, Golda Meir Library
Organized by UWM Libraries and Special Collections
Sunday, November 10, 5 pm
Golda Meir Library, 4th floor Conference Center
Sponsored by the Israel Center of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation
Mirta Kupferminc, En la palma de Saul Para
In.January 1942, in the city of Kerch in southern Russia, three Jewish photographers working for the Soviet press became the first liberators to photograph the Holocaust. Who were these photographers? What photographs did they take as journalists for the “other ally” liberating sites of Nazi atrocities three years before Western allies? And why do we know so little about them and the story of how the Soviet Union confronted the earliest evidence of Nazi atrocities on the eastern front? David Shneer (University of Colorado) answers these questions, and will force you to rethink cherished truths about the Holocaust and World War II.
Thursday, March 27, 7:30 pm
Golda Meir Library, 4th floor Conference Center
Yiddish Theatre in the Digital Age: An Interactive Round Table
UWM Union Theater
Three films:
Saturday, February 8 7pm – The Other Son 9pm – Aliyah
This event marks the first public appearance of the Digital Yiddish Theatre Project, an international group of scholars devoted to the study and preservation of Yiddish theatre, drama, and performance around the world. In conjunction with a three-day workshop hosted by the Stahl Center, each member of the group will present a five-minute lecture; the TED-style talks will be followed by a lively round-table discussion and Q&A session with the audience.
Sunday, February 9 1pm – The Rabbi’s Cat 5pm – The Other Son 7pm – Aliyah Sunday, February 16 1pm – The Rabbi’s Cat Dmitri Baltermants, Residents of Kerch Search for Their Loved Ones Monday, December 9, 7 pm
Alisa Solomon n Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof
UWM Union Theater
Photo: Daniel Sieradski
In the half-century since its “Occupy Judaism,” premiere, Fiddler on the Roof Zuccotti Park, NYC has had an astonishing global impact. In this book, drama critic Alisa Solomon (Columbia University) traces how and why the story of Tevye the dairyman, created by the great Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem, was reborn as blockbuster entertainment and a cultural touchstone, not only for Jews and not only in America. The show spoke to the deepest conflicts and desires of its time: the fraying of tradition, generational tension, the loss of roots. Wonder of Wonders reveals the surprising legacy of a show about tradition that itself became a tradition.
My Perestroika: film and talkback with director Robin Hessman My Perestroika follows five ordinary Russians living in extraordinary times—from their sheltered Soviet childhood, to the collapse of the Soviet Union during their teenage years, to the constantly shifting political landscape of post-Soviet Russia. Together, these childhood classmates paint a complex picture of the dreams and disillusionment of those raised behind the Iron Curtain.
UWM Music Recital Hall, located behind Mitchell Hall
Sayed Kashua n Arab Labor
estival ofFilms
in F French
Boswell Book Company, 2559 N. Downer Avenue, Milwaukee
Wednesday, April 9, 7:30 pm
Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923)
February 8 – February 16
2014 UWM
Thursday, November 21, 7 pm
The scion of a klezmer dynasty from the Old World by way of Philadelphia, Hankus Netsky is one of the original klezmer revivalists. As the founder of the Klezmer Conservatory Band and a longtime instructor at the New England Conservatory, Netsky has trained, taught, and sent out into the world several generations of contemporary klezmer musicians. Netsky and his band will perform and discuss the rich musical legacy of the Yiddish stage.
Oscar Wilde’s play Salomé was written about a Jewish woman, and for the Jewish actress Sarah Bernhardt, though the play was banned before she could appear in it. A number of Jewish women later took on the role in theatre or dance, including silent film star Alla Nazimova, Yiddish actress Bessie Thomashefsky, and comedienne Fanny Brice. Jonathan Freedman (University of Michigan) uses these representations in order to examine the emergence of a new type of Jewish female beauty, in the context of the modern world these Jews were entering by means of their spectacular public performances.
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David Shneer n T hrough Soviet Jewish Eyes: Photography, War, and the Holocaust
Book talk
Winter /Spring 2014
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Exhibition
February 17 – May 30
reception: Wednesday, February 19, 5 pm
4th floor Gallery, Golda Meir Library artist’s talk: Friday, May 2, 2 pm n
E281, Golda Meir Library
Helene Fischman n Art From the Ashes: Finding Light in the Shadow of the Shoah In 2003 and 2004, visual artist Helene Fischman set up studios in former Nazi concentration camps—in a Nazi barrack at Terezín/Theresienstadt, Czech Republic; and in the only surviving synagogue at O´swi¸ecim/Auschwitz, Poland. During these residencies, Fischman (now an MFA candidate in Art & Design at UWM) created Art from the Ashes, a series of photographs and paintings that explore the link between art and cultural survival. A selection from this series will be exhibited along with primary sources from the library’s Special Collections relating to the camps, antisemitism, and “The Jewish Question.” In partnership with UWM Libraries and Special Collections Down Cellar: Shimshon Klieger’s Family Home
UWM Special Collections
Congregation Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun, 2020 W. Brown Deer Rd., River Hills
Homeland photo courtesy of Showtime
Wednesday, October 2, 7 pm
Art & Conflict : Ashkenaz and Beyond
A screening of two episodes of Kashua’s acclaimed television series, followed by a talkback moderated by UWM’s Tasha Oren. Arab Labor, created by one of the most notable writers working in Hebrew today, focuses on a Palestinian journalist (and Israeli citizen) in search of his identity. Poking fun at the cultural divide, Kashua and his characters play on religious, cultural, and political differences to daringly depict the mixed society that is Israel. Kashua, the author of three novels and a satirical columnist for the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, was awarded the Prime Minister’s Prize in Literature in 2004.
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Faye Sigman “Woman of Valor” Lecture sssssssssssss Golda Meir Library, 4th floor Conference Center Thursday, May 8, 7:30 pm
Darcy Buerkle n Nothing Happened: Charlotte Salomon and the Archive of Suicide Charlotte Salomon’s fantastical autobiography, Life? or Theater?, consists of 769 sequenced gouache paintings, through which the artist imagined the circumstances of the eight suicides of her family, all but one of them women. But Salomon’s focus on suicide was not merely a familial idiosyncrasy. Historian Darcy Buerkle (Smith College) argues that the social history of early 20th-century German suicide overlooks an important cultural and social phenomenon by not including the larger story of German-Jewish women and suicide. This absence mirrors an even larger gap in the intellectual history of suicide studies that reproduces the notion of women’s suicide as a rarity in history. Above Average
Art & Conflict: Ashkenaz and Beyond
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All events are free and open to the public.
UWM’s Center for 21st Century Studies, Center for International Education, College of Letters & Science, History Department, Peck School of the Arts,and the UWM Libraries, as well as the Coalition for Jewish Learning, the Harry and Rose Samson Jewish Community Center, Hillel Milwaukee, Jewish Museum Milwaukee, and the Milwaukee Jewish Federation.
College of Letters & Science
Helene Fischman, Something Broken, from the series Art From the Ashes
College of Letters & Science
“Art & Conflict” is co-sponsored by:
Sam & Helen Stahl Center for Jewish Studies P.O. Box 413 Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413
‘In Heaven everything is much more beautiful than here on earth—and when your Mommy has turned into a little angel she’ll come down and bring her little lambkin, she’ll bring a letter, telling her what it’s like in Heaven, what it’s up there in Heaven.’ Franziska was of a somewhat sentimental disposition. She would often take the child to bed with her and tell her about a life after death in celestial spheres, a life that was said to be simply glorious and for which she seemed to have a terrible yearning, and she often asked Charlotte whether it wouldn’t be wonderful if her mother were to turn into an angel with wings. Charlotte agreed that it would, only she asked her mother not to forget to tell her in a letter—which she was to deliver personally as an angel and deposit on Charlotte’s windowsill— what it was up there in Heaven. Charlotte Salomon,
Fall 2013 Winter /Spring 2014
Franziska
The series “Art & Conflict: Ashkenaz and Beyond,” running throughout the 2013-14 academic year, explores how art has grappled with the turbulent history of modern European Jewry, with important forays into Israel and North America. Renowned scholars, writers, visual artists, and performers explore how this theme emerges in various art forms: painting, photography, music, theatre and drama, film, television, and new media.
Art
& ConflicT:
text accompanying cover painting
Ashkenaz and Beyond Fall 2013 Winter/Spring 2014
the cover features details from:
(upper) Charlotte Salomon, Franziska, from the series Life? or Theater? (lower) Helene Fischman, Children’s Target, from the series Art From the Ashes salomon images courtesy of:
Collection Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam n © Charlotte Salomon Foundation, Charlotte Salomon ®
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Nonprofit Organization U.S. Postage
www.uwm.edu/cjs
PAID
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For further details and updates, visit the Stahl Center website,
Milwaukee, WI Permit No. 864
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