LABA 
By Amy Handelsman Who honors the spaces left by the dead? This question is the guiding principle and raison d’être for Maya Ciarocchi, who brings honor to the lost spaces and the dead of Ożarów, Poland in her stirring multi-media art installation Site: Yizkor, recently shown in the lobby of the 14 Street Y as
Thursday, April 18, 2019 // 7.30pm The Theater at the 14th Street Y This LABA season, teacher Liel Leibovitz and fellows have been delving into Jewish texts about the very nature of existence. Our LABAlive series is you opportunity to experience the fellows’ groundbreaking, genre-breaking, and heartbreaking new work inspired by these studies. LABAlive 2
“I walk around New York City with my guitar,” says Yonatan Gutfeld. “That’s how I spend my days. I teach in pre-schools, music in Hebrew, and I perform at events for the Hebrew-speaking community.” Raised in Jerusalem, he studied the cello and served as pianist and singer in the Israeli Air Force band. He then
Created by Gili Getz Actor and Photographer Gili Getz presents a deeply personal one-man performance that explores the difficulty with the Israel conversation in the American Jewish community. While visiting Israel during the last Gaza war in 2014, Gili experienced difficulty talking about the path Israel is on with his father for the first time
Yehuda Hyman is a dancer, choreographer, actor, writer and LABA fellow (2013-14). He talked to Amy Handelsman, writer and LABA Fellow (2017-18) about his immigrant parents, growing up gay and Jewish, his career as an artist, and his new play, The Mar Vista: In Search of My Mother’s Love Life. Hyman wrote, directed, choreographed, and
When I started the LABA fellowship in September, I had no idea how intensely personal the topic of “Life and Death” would become: on November 7th, Juris Jurjevics, my husband of almost 20 years, died without warning. (Read his New York Times obituary here.) I’d like to thank the LABA cohort and staff for their warmth and concern over the past
The first LABAlive of 2019 was a resounding success. The house was packed, the performances outstanding — an evening demonstrating why LABA is the premier incubator of Jewish culture in New York City. Check out some photos from: Ari Brand’s Missing (play)Maya Ciarrocchi’s Site: Yizkor (text and visual art) Yochai Greenfield’s It Gets Bitter (play)Alex
Wrestling with Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony No. 3: Kaddish By Amy Handelsman Is Leonard Bernstein the most “Jewish” composer? It’s not an easy question to answer, but his third symphony is certainly packed with Jewish themes. In January, I was privileged to sit in on LABA Fellow Alex Weiser’s three-part lecture series on seminal Jewish composers
Ari Brand is an actor, musician, and lifelong New Yorker. He has performed on Broadway, off Broadway, and across the country. Brand spoke to us about his current LABA project, a play based on his own experience of discovering that his father, the renowned pianist Natan Brand, lived much of his life as a gay man. Natan Brand died of AIDS in 1990. I had
By Amy Handelsman The New Yiddish Rep’s Waiting for Godot—in Yiddish with English supertitles—runs through January 27th at the the Theater at the 14th Street Y. Tickets available here. Current LABA fellow Richard Saudek appears as Lucky. Saudek’s brilliant clown show boop beep appears Februrary 6th through 17th, also at the Theater of the 14th Street Y. Tickets for beep boop available here. In Samuel Beckett’s revolutionary play, Waiting for Godot, we see two sad sacks in bowler hats and suspendered pants: Estragon (nicknamed Gogo) and