Her talk, “The Black Book: Exile and Activism in 1940s Mexico City,” is part of Movers: Art and Conscience and Menorah’s exploration of persecuted artists in exile.

Merfish will offer a look at the site of the most extensive discussions of the Jewish Question in the history of German Communism: Mexico City circa 1943, where a group of German-speaking leftist intellectuals engaged in anti-Fascist activism in exile. There they collaborated with local artist group the “People’s Graphic Workshop” and formed “The Free Book,” the most important leftist exile press of the period.

Merfish’s work centers on the World War II activities of the Taller de Grafica Popular (People’s Graphic Workshop, or TGP), founded in Mexico City in 1937, and the interactions of its members with a group of German-speaking leftist intellectuals who fled Fascist Europe for Mexico City.  The most famous of those intellectuals are Hannes Meyer, who had been the director of the Bauhaus, and Anna Seghers, the German-Jewish novelist who published the first account of the camps in her novel “The Seventh Cross,” which was a best-seller in the US and in Mexico.

In her talk she’ll focus on the book “Libro negro del terror nazi in europa” (The Black Book of Nazi Terror in Europe) published as a collaboration between this network of leftist German intellectuals and the TGP. Within the scope of one lecture, the book can be used as a window into these communities and the questions they faced in exile. One image in the book, Leopoldo Mendez’s “Deportation to Death,” has been described as the first Holocaust image to be created outside of Europe.

An elder of the village, Vysni Apsa, ca. 1945-38 ©Mara Vishniac Kohn, courtesy of International Center of Photography

The Movers: Art and Conscience collaborative together with Congregation Har HaShem, the Mizel Museum and the Program in Jewish Studies at CU Boulder are excited to offer an evening with Maya Benton, the director of the Roman Vishniac archive and adjunct curator at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York on Thursday, December 1 at 7:30 PM at Congregation Har HaShem located at 3950 Baseline Road, Boulder.

Roman Vishniac was a Russian-American photographer and biologist who was best known for his dramatic photographs of Jewish life in Central and Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. His photographs shape our memory of that vanished world, yet only a small selection of his images – a very small fraction of his life’s work – has ever been printed or published. The recent donation of Vishniac’s entire estate to the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York includes tens of thousands of negatives, contact sheets, prints and a lifetime of personal correspondence and ephemera.

Curator Maya Benton will be discussing the process of establishing the Vishniac archive at ICP, and will present recently discovered work, including never-before-seen moving film footage, images of Zionist agrarian training camps in Holland before World War II and Displaced Persons camps in Berlin following the War, photographs made in America in the 1940s documenting the work of Jewish social service organizations, as well as a large selection of contact sheets, negatives, and never-before-seen work from Central and Eastern Europe.  She will also discuss the influence of

European modernism and avant-garde movements on his most accomplished work. Benton will also address new research focusing on the commission of Vishniac’s photographs by the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), repositioning Vishniac within the broader context of commissioned social documentary photography in the 1930s, and revealing a profoundly versatile artist who belongs firmly in the canon of the great photographers of the 20th century.

Featured in a New York Times profile, Maya Benton is director of the Roman Vishniac archive and adjunct curator at the International Center of Photography (ICP).  An A.B.D. at Courtauld Institute of Art, her research focuses on documentary photographs of Jewish life in Central and Eastern Europe, Israeli contemporary photography and video art, and more broadly, Jewish visual culture and vernacular photography.

Benton has recently curated exhibitions on the work of photojournalist Ruth Gruber, a series on contemporary Israeli video art, and is currently establishing a major public archive of Roman Vishniac’s work at ICP, in partnership with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in D.C.  This work will culminate in a traveling retrospective and catalog on Vishniac, set to open at ICP in 2013. The archive and exhibition have recently been awarded a lead National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grant.  A slide show of Vishniac’s photography is available online.

Additional images from the Vishniac archive are available for publication in association with the promotion of this event.  Please contact Jamie Polliard at Jamie.Polliard@colorado.edu or via phone at 303.492.7143 for more information.

The first film to be shot on location at Auschwitz, ”Triumph of the Spirit”  is based on the true story of Salamo Arouch, a Greek-Jewish boxer.  Arrested while attempting to help his family and friends escape the Nazi juggernaut, Arouch (played by Willem Dafoe) is imprisoned in Auschwitz and slated for death. He manages to survive–and to serve as an inspiration for his fellow inmates–by literally boxing for his life. He does this at the orders of his SS captors, who gamble on the outcome of Arouch’s bouts. With each victory, Arouch is rewarded with extra bread rations, which he passes on to his family.

Menorah presents “Triumph of the Spirit” on Saturday, November 19 at 7:00 pm at the Boulder JCC as part of “Movers: Art and Conscience.”  The film examines a crisis of conscience for Arouch, a man who faces a moral dilemma when forced to use the art of boxing as a means of survival. He knows that if he refuses to fight his fellow prisoners, his family will be punished; if he wins, he will be given extra rations which he can share with them; if he loses, he will be sent to the gas chamber.

The film was also chosen in anticipation of OPA: Celebrating the Jews of Greece on December 3 at the Boulder JCC, an evening that includes a concert, a Greek feast and a short film.

The Greek Jewish middleweight boxing champ of the Balkans , Arouch survived his two-year internment in the camp by winning more than 200 bouts arranged by his Nazi captors. Arouch, who went on to run a shipping firm in Israel, served as a consultant  on the film.

In its review, The New York Times praised the performances of Dafoe (“harrowingly good”) and Robert Loggia (“a memorably physical performance”). Director Robert Young, who is Jewish, manages to take a grim story and make it compelling rather than repellent.

Join us as we discuss the film and its provacative title – a reference to and repudiation of the notorious Nazi propaganda film by Leni Riefensthal, “Triumph of the Will.”

Jewish American literature has chronicled and paralleled the Jewish American experience. It depicts the struggles of immigrant life, the stable yet alienated middle-class existence that followed, and finally the unique challenges of cultural acceptance: assimilation and the reawakening of tradition.

Jewish writers whose work holds a prominent and influential place in 20^th century American literature include Abraham Cahan, Henry Roth, Bernard Malamud, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, Norman Mailer, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Chaim Potok, Herman Wouk, and J.D. Salinger.

DU Professor Adam Rovner will deliver a keynote overview that focuses on the idea that Jewish American literature is an immigrant literature and is now inevitably in decline (the Howe position) or constantly renewing itself (current cheerleading position).

Retired CU Professor Joel Salzberg will provide a counterpoint position on Professor Rovner’s thesis. There will be two break-out sessions following that will look more closely at Philip Roth and more contemporary writers.

The symposium is Sunday, February 13, 2:00 – 6:00 pm at the Boulder JCC.  Admission is $18 in advance; $22 at the door. Refreshments will be served.

Rabbi Selwyn Franklin and Prof. Xu Xin

Professor Xu Xin captivated a full house at the Boulder JCC Thursday night, explaining just why the Chinese have been fascinated by the Jews for at least 150 years, and why he himself has been interested since 1977.

Explaining his personal journey, Xu began teaching American Literature at Nanjing University in late 1976.  China was emerging then from a 25-year closure to world cultures by Mao and the Chinese Communist Party.  Xu, deciding what part of American Literature to focus on, heard the news that Saul Bellow had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1976.  Xu read Bellow’s works, and thus began a ten-year love affair with the likes of Bellow, Philip Roth, I.B. Singer, Clifford Odetts and Joseph Heller.

Xu had been teaching Jewish-American Literature of the 20th Century for almost ten years before he met his first Jew: Jim Friend, an American professor who arrived at Nanjing University in 1985 to teach English.  They struck up a friendship, and when Xu took up a post at Chicago State University, he lived with the Friends for a year.  His first weekend in America, the Friends brought him to Milwaukee for their nephew’s Bar Mitzvah — and Xu, a former Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution, attended his very first religious service of any kind.

We had been told that religion was the opiate of the masses.  If this was the opium, I wanted more!”

After being immersed in Jewish culture during his two years in Chicago with the Friends, Xu decided to expand his studies beyond American Jewish Literature to the whole of Jewish culture and history.  On his way back to China, he visited Israel.  The only things he learned about Israel while in China had been that “Israel was the running dog of the American Imperialists” and that Hebrew was a dead language.  He learned quite differently while there.  He has since studied Talmud at Hebrew University, spent time on kibbutzim, and spent three months in Hebrew Ulpan, learning the “dead” language.  He has added modern Hebrew literature to his courses, even translating a sampling of Hebrew short stories into Chinese.

Most importantly, Xu has practically single-handedly raised the profile, interest and desirability of Judaic Studies in a country that has had a fascination with Jews off and on since before the Kaifeng Jewish community was established in the 11th century.  (For a brief history of Jewish presence in China, see our earlier article on Prof. Xu.)  There are now Judaic Studies departments at many Chinese universities, many of their faculty members former students of Xu.

So, in the end, why are the Chinese fascinated by the Jews?  Xu gave these insights:  Like the Chinese, the Jews are an ancient people and culture that has survived many attempts at destruction and assimilation.  At the same time, Jews have struggled with the transition from ancient tradition to modernity, as the Chinese have.  Further, there are cultural similarities:  a central respect for the values of tradition, families, ancestors and education; plus a fundamental tolerance for other religions and cultures (a reason that anti-semitism is virtually unknown in China).  Finally, the Chinese are attracted by Jews’ economic success, which they witnessed first hand through the Kaifeng community, and then in Shanghai and the other concession cities in the 19th and early 20th centuries; and the Jews’ never ending work toward re-constituting their homeland and gaining political independence.

For more information on Xu Xin and Judaic Studies in China, check out the China Judaic Studies Association.

Here are more pictures from the evening:

Yael Kanarek (b. United States 1967) Untitled (L'Origine), 2008 nails and 1,155 rubber text units in English, Arabic, Hebrew, Yiddish Courtesy bitforms gallery, nyc Photo: Jeff Wells © Yael Kanarek On view in the CU Art Museum exhibition, archiTECHtonica through December 18, 2010.

Inspired by her own upbringing in Israel, Kanarek draws from the multilingual landscape of her childhood working with Hebrew, Arabic, English and Yiddish in her large-scale installation currently on display at the CU Art Museum as part of the museum’s inaugural show, archiTECHtonica.
This piece titled, Untitled (L’Origine) uses the word “eye” in these four languages to create an eye-shaped portal. The piece references both the human eye and the “evil eye,” a symbol that runs through numerous cultural and religious traditions of the Middle East, including Jewish, Arabic, Muslim and Christian cultures emanating from that region.

Kanarek’s work explores how languages shape space and how their presence signifies cultural territory and sovereignty. Her multidisciplinary performance on November 9 at 7:00 pm in the new CU Art Museum’s Visual Arts Complex Auditorium room 1B20, will demonstrate how one crosses from one world to another; what it means to root oneself in the difference between cultures. Through her internet artworks, sculptures, wall works and computational video projects, she will articulate the experience of living in more than one language. Her presentation will examine how we are interconnected despite feeling separate.

Yael Kanarek holds an MFA from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. Her creative practice centers on the fundamental hypothesis that language and numerals produce a type of reality. Also known for her performances and the creation of artwork on the internet,  Kanarek explores how numeric and alphabetic characters operate an emotional landscape. Employing different modes of authorship, such as storytelling, computer code, and incorporating multiple languages, her most recent projects highlight connection and rejection.

Kanarek is the recipient of the Netizens Webprize, the CNRS/UNESCO Lewis Carroll Prix Argos in France, and the Rockefeller New Media Fellowship. She is the founder of Upgrade! International, a network of gatherings concerning art, technology and culture (www.theupgrade.net). Her work has been shown around the world including exhibitions at the 2002 Whitney Biennial; Beral Madra Contemporary Art, Istanbul; The Drawing Center, New York; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens; The Jewish Museum, New York; American Museum of the Moving Image, New York; and Ronald Feldman Fine
Arts Gallery, New York. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art commissioned Destruction & Mending, the second chapter of World of Awe.
She is currently an honorary senior fellow at Eyebeam Atelier and represented
by Bitforms Gallery.

Guests are encouraged to view her piece currently on display in the CU Art Museum prior to her performance. The CU Art Museum is open Monday – Friday from 10 – 5, Tuesday from 10 – 7 and Saturday from 12 – 4.  Attendees of the Yael Kanarek performance can visit the museum immediately preceding the event. Please visit the CU Art Museum website at www.colorado.edu/cuartmuseum for more information about the location of the Visual Arts Complex and the CU Art Museum.
This event is free and open to the public but RSVP’s are appreciated and can be made at www.jewishmovers.org or by calling the Program in Jewish Studies at 303.492.7143.

This year, the Boulder JCC’s annual Festival of Books and Culture covers capitalism and klezmer, bargain hunters and terrorists, biblical mistranslations and prayers without God, and a vicarious visit to Jewish Italy.

The 2010 Festival of Books and Culture starts October 24th and runs through November 15th and features ten programs, including six author talks, and a book fair featuring hundreds of titles, including the latest children’s books, classic works of fiction, cook books, bestsellers and hot-topic discussion books.

The festivities begin this Sunday, October 24th, with mother-daughter authors appearing at a mother-daughter tea. Meredith and Sofie Jacobs co-wrote “Just Between Us:  A No-Stress, No-Rules Journal for Girls and Their Moms,” and will share their experience at a Shalom Family event at the BJCC on Sunday, October 24 at 2 pm. Tickets are $18 for mother-daughter pairs and advance registration is required.

On Monday, November 1, at 7 pm, self-proclaimed “bargainista” Annie Korzen, a thrifty woman with expensive tastes, comes to Rags Consignment Store, 3129 28^th St, to share secrets from her new book, “Bargain Junkie: Living the Good Life on the Cheap.”  Tickets are $12.

Author Thanassis Cambanis, one of the most talented foreign correspondents of his generation, has traveled far into the heart of Hezbollah to provide a vibrant image and unprecedented understanding of this powerful and secretive Islamist force. Cambanis will be at the BJCC on Thursday, November 4 at 7 pm to discuss “A Privilege to Die: Inside Hezbollah’s Legions and Their Endless War Against Israel.” Tickets are $10.

Every year, Menorah: Arts, Culture and Education at the Boulder JCC celebrates a particular culture through music, food, film and discussion. (Last year, we vicariously visted Morocco.) This year, the Jews of Italy Celebration will feature a concert of Italian Jewish music with Faye Nepon, and a film, feast and discussion with Carlos Zarur. The exploration of the complex and rich history of the Jews of Italy begins at 5 pm on Sunday, November 7 at the BJCC. Tickets are $25 in advance; $30 at the door.

Author Jerry Muller has written a fascinating look at how Jews have shaped capitalism and how capitalism has shaped the Jewish experience from medieval times to today. Muller will speak at CU Hillel, 2795 Colorado Ave., on Wednesday, November. 10 at 7 pm about his new book, “Capitalism and the Jews.” Tickets are $10; free for students.

At age 94, Herman Wouk embarked on an autobiographical journey through his monumental writings (“The Caine Mutiny,” “The Winds of War,” “War and Remembrance,” “Marjorie Morningstar”). Menorah’s Older Adults – Not Just for Seniors series presents a conversation about Herman Wouk and his new book, “The Language that God Talks,” in which the author addresses the eternal questions of why we are here, what purpose faith serves, and how scientific fact fits into the picture. The contemplation of Herman Wouk’s life, writing and Jewish faith takes place Thursday. November 11, at noon at the BJCC; $8 for lunch and discussion

Menorah is “Crazy About Klezmer” and will celebrate this quintessentially Jewish musical idiom with a concert and author talk. Yale Strom is the world’s leading ethnographer-artist of klezmer music and history, and he comes to the BJCC on Saturday, November 13, 7 pm to shed light on the art form and to discuss his new book, “Dave Tarras: King of Klezmer.” Before and after the talk there will be a concert with Sheldon Sands and the Boulder Klezmer Consort, featuring soloist Faye Nepon. There will be an “old world” buffet and libations at Menorah’s fundraiser. Tickets are $36, reservations recommended.

As part of “Movers: Do You Speak Jewish?,” author Joel M. Hoffman shares the truth behind many of our most common quotes from the Bible, detailing new insight into the Ten Commandments, Psalm 23, Song of Songs, the “virgin birth” of Isaiah 7:14, and much more. Hoffman will discuss “And God Said: How Translations Conceal the Bible’s Original Meaning” on Sunday, November 14, 7 pm at the BJCC. Tickets are $10.

Chidush holds its annual program on Sunday, November 14, from 4:30-6:30 pm. This community-wide reception features a talk by nationally recognized expert in Jewish education Nacahma Skolnik Moskowitz, the presentation of the Grinspoon-Steinhardt Award to Leah Boonin, and the release of “Taste of Chidush,” featuring 36 lesson plans.

The final festival program features Rabbi Miriam Jerris, Prayer without God: The Language of Humanistic Judaism, on Monday, November 15, at 7 pm at the BJCC. Rabbi of the Society for Humanistic Judaism, Rabbi Jerris will discuss how new liturgy allows the authentic voice of her movement to emerge. The program is also part of Movers: Do You Speak Jewish?, a year-long examination of language and literature.

For information and reservations, visit www.boulderjcc.org or call Kathryn Bernheimer at 303-998-1021, kathryn@boulderjcc.org.