Jerusalemite event

A Question of Outlook, Session 4: The Status of Jewish Law

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 16:46:29 +0300

Dr. Micha Goodman is leading a series of English-language discussion groups at Beit Avi Chai using Biblical, Talmudic, medieval and modern Jewish sources to pose and grapple with the most significant questions of Jewish faith and of philosophy in general: what is man's place in the universe? what is his role? is there value to human life? is there even a God? Each discussion is framed by a philosophical disagreement between two significant Jewish historical figures, from Isaiah the prophet on down to...

A Question of Outlook, Session 3: The Status of the People Israel

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 16:45:10 +0300

A Question of Outlook, Session 2: The Status of Man

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 16:43:56 +0300

A Question of Outlook, Session 1: The End of Days

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 16:42:57 +0300

Art & Pasta Italian Festa

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 15:51:20 +0300

The Italian Jewish community in Jerusalem is small but vibrant, orbiting around the community synagogue and museum at the foot of Hillel Street downtown - and like most Italians, they know how to throw a party. Over three days in mid-August, the square outside the museum will become the epicenter of a public celebration of Italian Jewish culture, including a culinary festival, Italian opera and music, commedia dell'arte, a pasta eating contest, children's plays, pasta-related crafts for kids and exhibits...

Shabbat at Ein Hemed

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 15:47:55 +0300

It's good for the soul - or at least the sanity - to escape the mad rush of a Jerusalem Friday every once in awhile. So do yourself a favor and get yourself and your offspring to Ein Hemed National Park, an oasis of greenery 20 minutes outside of the city, on Fridays throughout July and August for special children's activities set against the backdrop of the Judean Hills. The normal price of admission gets you in, and activities (from 11:00 to 15:00) include mud building workshops, live music...

Acoustic Festival at Ein Hemed

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 15:44:30 +0300

Somehow it was decided - probably by hippies - that natural surroundings demanded sensitive acoustic music. So the Society for the Protection of Nature, buying into that philosophy, has organized an all-acoustic music fest set among the verdant hills of Ein Hemed National Park, with a solid lineup of big-name Israeli artists eschewing electricity and going unplugged every Friday throughout the months of July and August. Bring a picnic basket and your tolerance for dreadlocked, tie-dyed Goa space cadets...

Operation Soda

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 15:40:03 +0300

Inspired by the stories of Nachum Gutman, Operation Soda recounts, in puppet form of course, the story of a boy and a donkey who team up and square off against a band of robbers seeking to make off with Tel Aviv's "Lost Treasure." Can they defeat the robbers? Can they bring some peace and quiet to the tumult of Tel Aviv? What exactly is the "Lost Treasure"? And why a donkey? Find out at the Train Theater. Suitable for children from 5 to 10. In Hebrew...

Peter and the Wolf

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 15:38:16 +0300

The Train Theater brings you Prokofiev gone puppet with this production of the famed Peter and the Wolf. Accompanied of course by the composer's renowned score, puppet-Peter comes face-to-face with the titular wolf and, like most fairytale heroes, manage to turn the tables on the beast. Suitable for children age 4 and up. In Hebrew...

The Black Bean Story

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 15:36:32 +0300

The Train Theater and its menagerie of puppet grotesques head to Morocco for this folk tale of a sleepy djinn in a well who grants the hero a magical pot. The hero distributes the pot's bounty to his neighbors, but some of them are not remain uncontented and conspire to seize the pot for themselves - but the hero and the djinn have other plans. Suitable for children from 5 to 8. In Hebrew...

Ketev Meriri at Uganda

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 14:48:23 +0300

It's a live minimalist ambient music show at Uganda. Steel yourself for the inevitable dash of pretension. The boys of Ketev Mariri recorded their recent debut album in one take, which is impressive given its heady subject matter: an instrumental musical tribute to radical Jewish thinkers excluded from the Zionist narrative, "music as an axe to dig at the roots of Jewish thought." Could you express all that on wax in just one take? Now you can catch the band's mixture of trendy politics and ambient...

Two Short Plays: My Sweet Husband and My Dear Wife

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 14:44:51 +0300

Cynicism towards that great and flawed human institution, marriage, is always welcome in the arts, and few did it better than Belle Epoque French playwright Georges Feydeau. After a difficult divorce from his longtime wife in 1916 - but before being felled by syphilis in 1921 - Feydeau wrote a collection of short comedic plays about the misery of wedded life, among them the two plays constituting this Khan Theater production. They've subtitled the production "Two Short Comedies About the Nightmare of...

Leonid Ptashka: Chazanut, Gospel and Jazz

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 14:40:21 +0300

The beauty of jazz as an art form is that it is essentially limitless in its ability to absorb and reframe disparate stylistic elements. Azerbaijani-Israeli pianist Leonid Ptashka provides the living proof with this concert at archaeological site Beit Guvrin, part of the Bible Festival, which joins his jazz quartet (including respected Russo-Israeli saxophonist Robert Anchipolovski) with six opera singers/synagogue cantors for a heady brew of chazanut (traditional Jewish liturgical music), American...

Special Screening: Two States of Mind

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 14:37:08 +0300

As part of its "Documentary Cinema: Israeli Women/Palestinian Women" film series, the Hebrew University will be screening director Shira Rechter's film Two States of Mind. After the screening, the public is invited to participate in an open conversation with the director herself...

Lecture: Migration and Human Rights

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 14:35:33 +0300

Professor Ruth Gavison of the Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem will be delivering a lecture to interested eggheads on the subject of human migration and the human rights issues that invariably arise in its wake, a topic more than a little relevant to the region. In Hebrew...

At Your Gates, Oh Jerusalem

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 14:32:43 +0300

The Tower of David museum is ensconced within one of the defining monuments of Jerusalem, so it only seems fitting it would serve as host to a concert that seeks to represent the city in song. Aeterna Music, the Jerusalem Cameri Choir, eighteen professional singers under the direction of Ilya Plotkin, will be performing a concert encompassing everything from traditional Jewish liturgical music to modern Israeli classical and choral pieces - as well as selections from the European classical repertoire...

Peter Pan

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 14:29:55 +0300

Peter Pan. Wendy Darling. Captain Hook. Neverland. The Lost Boys. The characters and settings of J.M. Barrie's stories transcend national and linguistic boundaries, known to children in every corner of the world - including Israel. The boy who refuses to grow up gets the full Israeli musical theater treatment in this Jerusalem Theatre production, full of deeds of derring-do and the Hebrew songs of Irit Tamir. Approximately one hour and thirty minutes; includes intermission. Suitable for children 3 and up...

Tipa Popa

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 14:28:32 +0300

Always promising to whisk your children away to a magical land of imagination, these Jerusalem Theatre children's productions are. This one, starring the Yossi Yungman Dance Troupe, bills itself as an exciting and colorful combination dance/theater performance that will lead kids to the encouraging, if not always strictly true, conclusion that anything is possible if one just believes. Approximately one hour; no intermission. In Hebrew...

Apples from the Desert

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 14:26:55 +0300

This version of Savyon Liebrecht's short story, adapted for the stage by the author herself, won both Playwright and Actress of the Year at the 2007 Israeli Theatre Awards. The story follows two firmly religious Jerusalem sisters who set out on a mission to retrieve the elder sister's daughter, an independent-minded young lady who has fled Jerusalem to live - unmarried, God forbid - with her lover, a secular kibbutznik. Does love, in the end, find a way to mend all wounds? Hey, what do you think?...

100 First Songs

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 14:25:04 +0300

Generations of Israelis grew up with the book 100 First Songs, a collection of short songs and poems in simple Hebrew often composed by some of Israel's finest poets and lyricists. Now the Jerusalem Theatre is offering both a nostalgia trip for parents and a new way to interface with childhood classics for children, framing live performances of the songs within a play about children whose parents embark on a trip and leave them with an ever-shifting assortment of aunts and uncles. Approximately one hour...