The Program in Jewish Studies and CU’s Hillel are excited to be able to host award winning poet, author and activist Almog Behar to the Boulder Campus on Monday April 2 at 7:30 pm at Old Main Theater.  This is his first visit to the United States, coming to Boulder after serving as an artist in residence with the Judaic Studies Program at Syracuse University in New York.

Almog Behar is an Israeli Mizrahi (Jew of Arab descent), award winning writer, poet and activist involved in the solidarity movement against the eviction of Palestinian families from East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. Behar is also actively engaged in a small but vibrant community of Jewish and Palestinian Israeli writers—who write in both Hebrew and Arabic—and has participated in the organization of bilingual poetry readings and the compilation of Israeli and Palestinian bilingual poetry collections. Behar’s own fiction and poetry explore the connections between Hebrew and Arabic, insist on the importance of Arabic culture in contemporary Israel and highlight the historic and tradition-based connections between Judaism and Islam and Jewish and Muslim communities in the Middle East.

Join us for an evening with Almog Behar that will include a conversation with Zilla Goodman, Senior Instructor and Head of the Hebrew language and literature program, about his work as a poet, author and activist as well as readings from his recent work.  Additional information about his poetry and activism can be found in an interview with the online magazine Words Without Borders. The following is an excerpt from his poem  “My Arabic is Mute.”

My Arabic is Mute
Strangled in the throat
Cursing itself
Without uttering a word
Sleeping in the suffocating air
Of the shelters of my soul
Hiding
From family members
Behind the shutters of the Hebrew.

Free and open to the public – please RSVP via email to Nicholas.Underwood@colorado.edu or call 303.492.7143.  Almog Behar’s visit has been made possible by generous donors to CU’s Hillel, the Program in Jewish Studies and the Legacy Heritage Jewish Studies Project, directed by the Association for Jewish Studies (AJS).  Support for the Legacy Heritage Jewish Studies Project is generously provided by Legacy Heritage Fund Limited.

Srugim has been described as "an Israeli pop-culture phenomenon"

Wednesday, March 21 at 7 PM  is a screening of the popular Israeli television series Srugim in ATLAS Center Auditorium with a talk back by Dr. Caryn Aviv, Senior Instructor in Secular Jewish Society & Civilization.

Described as a modern Orthodox Friends, this contemporary Israeli TV drama deals with the lives of five 30-something modern religious singles in the Katamon neighborhood of Jerusalem as they attempt to navigate the frequently contradictory worlds of contemporary Israel and traditional Jewish observance. Srugim – the title refers to the knitted kippot worn by modern Orthodox men – has garnered praise from all corners of Israeli society as well as American viewers who follow the series on-line.

Stories focus on the young group of friends who are trying to establish themselves in the workplace while searching for love. This group of friends includes a graphic designer who photoshops more modest attire onto models in religious product advertisements, a high-powered female accountant who rides a motorcycle, a biblical studies major that struggles with her own faith, a recently divorced grammar teacher, and a doctor with commitment issues. What makes the show unique is the fact that all of these friends are observant modern Orthodox Jews. Many episodes feature Shabbat meals, men and women davening, and men wearing kippot. The show explores the struggles that some of the characters have being religious while trying to date or make a living in contemporary Israeli society.

Srugim’s co-creator and director, Eliezer Shapira and many of its writers and production staff are graduates of Ma’ale, a film school in Israel founded to encourage the production of entertainment sensitive to the nuances of Orthodox religious life. These students and teachers believe that for there to be a vibrant Orthodoxy in Israel, there must be a vibrant Orthodox artistic culture.

Poet, writer and author Almog Behar at CU April 2 @ 7:30 PM

Monday, April 2 at 7:30 PM welcomes Jewish Israeli Poet, Author and Activist, Almog Behar to CU’s Old Main Theater on the Boulder campus for an evening discussing his work, his activism, and readings of his latest poetry including “My Arabic is Mute.”

Almog Behar is an Israeli Mizrahi (Jew of Arab descent), award winning writer and poet. He is also an activist involved in the solidarity movement against the eviction of Palestinian families from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. Behar is also actively engaged in a vibrant community of Jewish and Palestinian Israeli writers—who write in both Hebrew and Arabic—and has participated in the organization of bilingual poetry readings and publications. His own fiction and poetry explore the connections between Hebrew and Arabic, insist on the importance of Arabic culture in contemporary Israel and highlight the historic and tradition-based connections between Judaism and Islam and Jewish and Muslim communities throughout the Middle East.

Arabic is an official language of the State of Israel, a country usually known for having resurrected Hebrew, and has been since the days of the British Mandate in pre-state Palestine. While Israel maintained Arabic’s official status with the intention of protecting minority rights in a Hebrew-dominated culture, it also marked Arabic as the language of the Palestinian minority, artificially dividing the citizens of Israel linguistically and culturally. As an Arabic speaking Jew, Behar forces us to ask: what about Jews who speak Arabic and embrace Arab culture as their own?

Behar works to break down those cultural divisions through his writing and his activism. From a recent interview with the online magazine for international literature, Words Without Borders, Behar said “…historically and in the day to day, the music and symbols of Judaism, especially Mizrahi Judaism, have a relationship with the music and symbols of Islam, and part of my own search is about exploring this connection.”

Join us for an evening with Almog Behar that will include a conversation with Dr. Zilla Goodman, Senior Instructor and head of the Hebrew language and literature program, about his work as a poet, author and activist as well as readings from his recent work. Complete details can be found at jewishstudies.colorado.edu, hillelcolorado.org/cu or by calling 303.492.7143.

These events and Almog Behar’s visit has been made possible by generous donors to CU’s Hillel, the Program in Jewish Studies and the Legacy Heritage Jewish Studies Project, directed by the Association for Jewish Studies (AJS). Support for the Legacy Heritage Jewish Studies Project is generously provided by Legacy Heritage Fund Limited.

A bookplate from the Fingesten Collection at CU Boulder

On Wednesday March 7 at 7:00 pm Davide Stimilli, associate professor of German and Comparative Literature and Jewish Studies, will present a lecture on the life and work of Jewish-Italian bookplate artist Michel Fingesten (1884-1943).

In March 2011, Stimilli recommended the purchase of a large collection of Fingesten’s works, including 154 items, that had been assembled by an unknown collector, possibly bibliophile Fridolf Johnson, editor of the American Artist Magazine. The CU Art Museum purchased this collection with funds generously provided by donors to the Program in Jewish Studies, and the Fingesten Collection is now part of the CU Art Museum’s Permanent Collection.

Michel Fingesten (originally Michl Finkelstein) was born in 1884 in the village of Buckovice (Buczkowitz), Silesia, in the Habsburg Empire, now part of the Czech Republic, from a Czech-Jewish father and an Italian-Jewish mother, and died in 1943 in Cerisano, Southern Italy, after the liberation by the allies of the camp in which he had been interned since 1941. He was one of the most original and productive graphic artists and bookplate designers of the twentieth century, especially noted for his Surrealist and Cubist influenced prints and paintings that capture the darkening mood of Europe associated with Fascism, Nazism, and World War II.

This lecture will introduce the work of this extraordinary artist and the collection at the CU Art Museum. Selections from the Fingesten Collection are on view at the CU Art Museum Lobby through March 9. The CU Art Museum will be open until 7:00 pm on Wednesday, March 7 to allow for viewing prior to the lecture.

Charming Hostess Performs at CU March 8 at 7:30 PM

On Thursday, March 8 at 7:30 pm in the ATLAS Center Black Box Theater we are excited to present a rockin’ performance with the “nerdy-sexy-commie-girly” band, Charming Hostess. Their music has been described as both physical and intellectual, using voices, vocal percussion, handclaps, heartbeats, sex-breath and silence to explore such topics as the Bosnian genocide in their album Sarajevo Blues and the political/erotic nexus of Walter Benjamin and his Marxist muse in Trilectic. Both of these works were released on John Zorn’s Radical Jewish series on Tzadik. L.A. Weekly described Charming Hostess “as the finest anarchist-feminist-polyphonic-polyrhythmic-polymorphously perverse-balkan-blue-ish-Jewish-freak-funk-punk band working in America today. Their live shows are as fabulous and eccentric as their music.”

This special Purim performance with Charming Hostess is inspired by the life and work of the Italian anti-facists Natalia and Leone Ginzburg.  Exploring their journeys of love, resistance, exile and liberation, this concert will feature new music composed and developed from the writings of the Ginzburgs as well as from the Italian regional traditions of Turin, Abruzzo and Rome, places central to their lives. This performance will also feature music from Italian Jewish liturgy, the oldest and most remote in Europe, as well as anti-fascist songs, and work chants to resistance anthems. Tickets are $5 for students, $10 for general public in advance or $15 at the door.  Tickets can be purchased on-line at www.brownpapertickets.com/event/226563. This concert will be held in the ATLAS Center Black Box Theater.  Seating is limited.  We are also excited to announce this concert has been selected to be taped for a joint production between the ATLAS Center and Colorado’s Public Broadcast System.

For questions or additional information, contact the Program in Jewish Studies at 303.492.7143 or via email at Jamie.Polliard@colorado.edu. Complete details about CU’s Week of Jewish Culture can also be found at jewishstudies.colorado.edu

You’re the wandering soul in my heart.
I see you in the woods,
In the chattering channels of water,
I see your reflection, your ruffled eyebrow’s eyes,
In my long days of daydreams.
Where you wander so do I
With your robes of shades of white,
Running through the streets,
Making sacred the plain, everyday
Life into the vowels of God’s
Universal Ahs and Ohs.
I long to be with you, in spirit,
Strongly driving the mundane into the ground
So like a jackhammer, cleaving
A rail of humanity, from one side
Of those mountains so hard to cross, past
Plains so vast, horizons never end there.
You silenced the silence of New Yorkers,
Making them smile and laugh,
Living without a roof amidst the
Brick and mortar sided sidewalks with
‘No Vacancy’ signs posted on the walls.
Living your God to the folks
Trodden, hidden under the canopy of towers,
Within the subways hidden hum you sang
A song of subway’s Ummm.
The music of Woodstock waft in your hair when
You crossed the waters,
Found the lands beyond the ocean’s part.
Never torn down by walls,
You walked with all the varieties of
Olive skinned, dark carob and
Indian Summer people in the sun.
I walk with you to the Wailing Wall where
You wrote your prayers.
I cried with you at Rachel’s Tomb
For everyone’s children lost.
Your tears ran like rivulets
From your eyes so deep.

Waking, all have things we have
To do, to make, to remember, to do
Filled the air with a kind of warmth
That lifts us up, sending us off
To pick up the chaos
And make something of it
How do we do this with so much in
The way? Our love, our fears, our
Stigmas, our pain, our trying to forget.
Those who succeed, those who do not
All on, upon, in our way.

In this dream there are so many laughing,
Happy people, waving to each other,
Chatting as they fly to G-d
These people have always laughed,
Always had friends, always bonded
To each other.

The quiet ones have always been
Mysterious, out-of-tune with the chatter
Of the Radio of life,
With the crowd, but when met
Alone, one-on-one, one finds
They are also with G-d,
Also happy souls who sing quietly
Still with G-d, All the same.

We know not the Tzaddik who live
Within our cities, our villages, our Shtetls.
We know not the Tzaddiks who hold
Up the world with the slightest strings in flight,
It would be vain to say we do

Tzaddiks doing things
That appear to do so little
Speaking to animals,
Listening to trees,
Fabricating new existences with G-d
We hardly notice
That they contribute.

In my dream, G-d embraces All.
He knows what we have all done
And he cries sometimes as he holds us
For he loves all his children.

Love for all mankind, Lisa Tremback