Holocaust Memorial Commemoration:

A Yom HaShoah Presentation of Yiddish Songs, Readings & Artwork by Oak Park Temple’s Mameloshn Yiddish Singing Group

Date: Sunday, April 22, 2012

Time: 10:45 AM

Location: Secular Jewish Community and School; 1125 South Cuyler; Oak Park, IL

Click here to download flyer as a pdf –>12Apr22Flyer

For the past ten years, Ellen has devoted much of her time, talent, and energy to exploring the world of the Lithuanian Holocaust.

Her articles and translations (from Yiddish into English) have appeared in Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal, Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, Forward, and Hadassah.

Ellen will be returning to Metro Chicago in April to present a joint program with Ruta Sepetys (author of Between Shades of Gray).

Where:  Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture; 6500 South Pulaski Road; Chicago, IL

When: Sunday April 29th @ 2 PM

To order We Are Here, click HERE on Ellen’s Amazon page.

Ellen (center) with Chicago YIVO Board Members Tzivi Huttner (left) & Joan Levin (right). Photo Credit: Richard Bayard Miller (3/4/12)

SPRING EVENTS:

Where: Evanston Public Library; 1703 Orrington Avenue; Evanston, IL

When: Sunday, March 25 @ 12:15 PM

COST: FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Michael Steinlauf teaches Jewish history and culture at Gratz College near Philadelphia. He holds an MA in Literature from Colombia University and a doctorate in Judaic Studies from Brandeis University. He is a contributing editor to the YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, published by Yale University Press in 2008, and the co-editor, with Antony Polonsky, of Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, v. 16 (2003), the first collection of studies focusing on Jewish popular culture in Poland and its contemporary afterlife. He is the author of Bondage to the Dead: Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust (1997), which examines how the experience of witnessing the Holocaust shaped Polish history and consciousness in the half century after the war. His writings have been translated into Hebrew, Polish, German and Italian.

Dr. Steinlauf has also been active in various kinds of Jewish memory work in Poland; he has lectured at the Krakow Jewish Culture Festival, taught in the Musicians’ Raft program organized by the Borderlands Foundation in Sejny, Poland, and served as chief historical advisor and curator of modern Jewish culture for the Museum of the History of Polish Jews. He is currently at work on a study of the Yiddish writer and activist Y. L. Peretz.

Click HERE to learn more about Dr. Steinlauf on the Gratz College website & read his complete CV.

SPRING EVENTS:

Where: Skokie Public Library; 5215 Oakton Street, Skokie, IL

When: Thursday, March 29 @ 12:15 PM

COST: FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Filmmaker Sivan Arbel follows folk singer Chava Alberstein as she returns home to perform before Israeli audiences after many years of touring around the world (including here in Metro Chicago).

NOTE: This is the film that we were unable to show last summer due to technical difficulties. Chicago YIVO is sponsoring this screening now in celebration of the 5th annual International SWAN Day (Support Women Artists Now).

Click HERE for more information about International SWAN Day.

Where: Congregation Etz Chaim; 1710 South Higland Avenue; Lombard, IL

When: Sunday, April 29 @ 10:45 AM 

COST: FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Everyone welcome but we need to provide Etz Chaim with a complete list of participants in advance. So please let us know if you want to come. Just RSVP by sending an e-mail message to our Chicago YIVO/Etz Chaim liaison: fdvorkin@comcast.net

Click HERE to see photos from our first Klezmer Concert at S.P.A.C.E. in Evanston.

Top photo: Filmmaker Mira Jedwabnik Van Doren with Lillian Gerstner (ILHMEC’s Director of Special Projects). Bottom photo: Mira Jedwabnik Van Doren with longtime Chicago YIVO Society supporters Betty & Leo Melamed.

DVD copies of The World Was Ours can be purchased (for home use) from The Vilna Project.

Here is the complete contact information:

Mira Jedwabnik Van Doren

130 West 57th Street

New York, NY 10019

212.245.7493

vilnafilm@aol.com

For more photos from this event, visit our Facebook page: Chicago YIVO Friends

Mira Jedwabnik Van Doren

The World Was Ours, a film by Vilna native Mira Jedwabnik Van Doren, will screen at the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center in Skokie on Sunday February 12 @ 1:30 PM.

Once known as the “Jerusalem of the North,” Vilna (now Lithuania) was a vibrant center of Jewish learning and culture. The World Was Ours is narrated by Mandy Patinkin, draws on interviews with survivors and scholars, and makes extensive use of archival photographs and film footage. Q&A with filmmaker Mira Jedwabnik Van Doren follows the screening.

Reservations are required! Click HERE for more information on the ILHMEC website.

NOTE: This film was originally scheduled for last September as part of the Chicago YIVO Summer Festival of Yiddish Culture, so we are very pleased to announce this new opportunity to finally see The World Was Ours in Metro Chicago.

Yiddish Songs for Children is an 8×11 full-color book with a disc of 14 lively songs with a message, such as: it is good to listen to your parents, enjoy Shabbos, appreciate nature, and give charity.

The book includes Yiddish lyrics with English translation, Yiddish transliteration and musical score. A CD with all the songs (played by  musicians from the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra) is enclosed on the front cover.

To order Yiddish Songs for Children, contact:

Mame-Loshn Productions
8914 N. Central Park
Evanston, IL 60203

(847) 675-3335

Cost: $30 (including sales tax and regular postage)

Figa

Tzivi’s Report: Chicago YIVO Summer Festival favorites Stewart Figa & Ilya Levinson brought the crowd to its feet Saturday at the “Kosher Cabaret” sponsored by West Suburban Temple Har Zion in River Forest.

Their 6 partners in the New Budapest Orpheum Society (Julia Bentley, Philip V. Bohlman, Dan Davis, Iordanka Kissiova, Mark Sonksen, & Don Stille) joined Figa & Levinson for a celebration of Figa’s 13th year as WSTHZ’s cantor extraordinaire.

Figa sang in German, Hebrew, & Yiddish, including my all-time favorite number “Ich bin ein unverbesserlicher Optimist” (“I’m an Irrepressible Optimist”) by Hermann Leopoldi & Robert Katscher. He also added a great rendition of Irving Berlin’s raucus “Cohen Owes Me Ninety-Seven Dollars” (in English).

Levinson

Mezzo-soprano Bentley provided the female touch with German torch songs, including the wonderful “Black Market” solo Marlene Dietrich sang (in English) in Billy Wilder’s 1948 film A Foreign Affair.

The New Budapest Orpheum Society has two CD collections (Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano & Jewish Cabaret in Exile) and they are BOTH highly recommended.

To Stewart: Mazel tov on your Bar Mitzvah year at WSTHZ!

SRO Crowd @ WSTHZ

Photo Credits: Jan Lisa Huttner (12/3/11)