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
By Alex Weiser When Julie Naschauer, the wife of Theodor Herzl—father of modern political Zionism—died in 1907 at the young age of 39, she was mourned as a beloved figure of the Zionist movement. It was only four years after Theodor died at the age of 44. The headline of her obituary in the Yiddish
LABA fellow Yochai Greenfeld will be performing at LABAlive, Saturday, 2/2, 7.30pm at the Theater at the 14th Street Y. (Buy your ticket now!) Below, Greenfeld writes about his life as a performer and creating his Jewish mother character, Abbi Gezunt. About Me I was born and raised in Jerusalem. All through high school, I
Maya Ciarrocchi is a Bronx-based interdisciplinary artist whose work addresses identity and the body as a site of history. Her LABA project is Site: Yizkor, is an installation comprised of architectural renderings, shtetl maps, and Yizkor, or memorial, books. The work traces the lost and forgotten spaces left by the dead and questions how and why people,
LABA is a cultural incubator, helping our fellows develop new art inspired by Jewish texts. LABA Second Stage provides an opportunity for artists to further develop their work. In 2018, three LABA alumni brought their projects back to the 14th Street Y. Keren Moscovitch’s One More Way: Revolt! Multi-disciplinary artist Keren Moscovitch’s fascinating installation One More
The theme for LABA 2017-18 was WAR + PEACE. Our talented fellows had the opportunity to work on their projects while studying Jewish texts on the theme, and the work that they produced was absorbing and provocative. Here is a brief summary of their work, with links if you want to know more. Artist and