Michael Gac Levin was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. He received his BA in classics from the University of Chicago, where he wrote his undergraduate thesis on the construction of the “barbarian” in ancient Roman literature. He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, a national academic honors society, in his junior year. After graduating in 2006,
Michael Leibenluft‘s directing credits include I’ll Never Love Again (a chamber piece) by Clare Barron at the Bushwick Starr (NYT and Time Out critics’ picks), How I Learned to Drive by Paula Vogel with Drum Tower West Theater in Beijing, Lost Tribe by Alex Borinsky as part of Target Margin’s Yiddish Theater Lab, the Subtle Body
Judith Shulevitz is an essayist and editor who has helped found or relaunch several magazines, including Lingua Franca, New York Magazine, and Slate. Currently a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, she has served as editor of Lingua Franca (a National Magazine Award winning magazine about academia and ideas); founding cultural editor and columnist
Laura Beatrix Newmark is the Jewish Life & Culture Fellow at The 14th Street Y. She builds community amongst the young families of the 14th Street Y through interactive and creative programming. Her intersection with the arts spans multiple decades (starting with playing the cello from age six) and includes quoting a young stand-up named
Hanan Elstein is an Israeli literary editor, translator and essayist, living in Brooklyn since 2013. He studied philosophy, history, literature, cultural studies and law at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg, Germany. He has been working as an editor of Hebrew and translated American and world literature, both fiction and non-fiction,
“I can no longer talk to ____ about Israel.” BY GILI GETZ A year ago, on Tikkun Leil Shavuot at the 14th Street Y, I performed The Forbidden Conversation for the first time. The play, which is about the difficulty of talking openly about Israel in the American Jewish community, was developed while I was
On Thursday, June 2, LABAlive will present “Boundaries,” an evening of multi-disciplinary works-in-process exploring our relationship with beauty. The evening will feature teachings by Ruby Namdar and work by fellows Lital Dotan, Shanti Grumbine, and Lainie Fefferman, who will present scenes from her string quartet, Market Day. Here, Fefferman talks about her project and the inspiration she found in our house of
On Thursday, June 2, LABAlive will present “Boundaries,” an evening of multi-disciplinary works-in-process exploring our relationship with beauty. The evening will feature teachings by Ruby Namdar and work by fellows Lainie Fefferman, Lital Dotan, and Shanti Grumbine, who will present her project The Last Color: A Reliquary. Here, Grumbine talks about her project and the inspiration she found in our house of study. Tell us about your
A modest offering for a woman who had just lost everything. BY LITAL DOTAN A profoundly disturbing LABA session discussing the behavioral rules in a state of war and battle, specifically behavior with captive women, instigated my interrogation into the route of the captive towards her new identity. A WOMAN OF A GOODLY FORM is she who is
On Thursday, June 2, LABAlive will present “Boundaries,” an evening of multi-disciplinary works-in-process exploring our relationship with beauty. The evening will feature teachings by Ruby Namdar and work by fellows Shanti Grumbine, Lainie Fefferman, and Lital Dotan, who will present an excerpt from her play, Second Floor. Here, Dotan talks about her project and the inspiration she found in our house of study. Tell us about