Israel at 70: LABA Fellows Look Back with Longing and Sorrow

On the occasion of the Jewish state’s 70th anniversary, we’ve asked our LABA fellows with Israeli backgrounds for their perspectives. Jewish State of Mind // Tal Gur Israeli-American composer and multi-instrumentalist Tal Gur was born in Israel and grew up in an Air Force base in the valley of Jezreel, where the sounds of combat

Cultural Appropriation and the Yemenite Step

LABA Second Stage Presents Hadar Ahuvia’s “Everything you have is yours?” LABA Second Stage provides LABA alumni the opportunity to develop the ideas that came up in their residencies. Hadar Ahuvia first developed her piece, “Everything you have is yours?” as a LABA fellow. In the piece, performers mirror the dance steps of archival footage

Can Peace be ever achieved in the Middle East?

The Seventh Day: Israeli Literature Fifty Years After the Six-Day War Israelis and Palestinians have been fighting each other over a small piece of land for almost a century. Despite many attempts to resolve this blood-soaked conflict, no one can see an end to it. What elements within Israeli society make a just peace for

Romeo and Juliet face Israeli Reality

Dr. Shirli Sela-Levavi, a literary scholar, returned from our The Seventh Day Festival for Israeli Literature with illuminating insights into the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Jewish-Israeli relations to its Other. Romeo and Juliet face Israeli Reality Last week, as part of the ongoing festival for Israeli literature, The Seventh Day (curated by LABA’s

What Will Our Future Look Like?

The Seventh Day: Israeli Literature Fifty Years After the Six-Day War To answer the question of our future, we need to look to the past. And this timeless question—grown even more urgent in these days of global insecurity—runs like a common thread through The Seventh Day Festival. Curated by LABA Journal Editor Hanan Elstein and featuring,

The Forbidden Conversation and Those who Pay the Price

“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