By Adam Langer, Published in the “Jewish Daily Forward”, August 07, 2013 Two of the strongest novels published so far this year, Joanna Hershon’s “A Dual Inheritance” and Adelle Waldman’s “The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.,” happen to be written by young, Brooklyn-based Jewish women writing smartly and wittily from the perspectives of men. This might not be a remarkable fact in and of itself: Look for a smart, witty novelist these… Read More »Joanna Hershon and Adelle Waldman Grow in Brooklyn
Boerum Hill artist Elke Reva Sudin, 26, recently exhibited an oil painting in Miami through Con Artist, a Lower East Side artists’ space. ‘Showing this painting was personal for me,’ she tells The News.
Boerum Hill artist Elke Reva Sudin is fresh from her first exhibition during Art Basel in Miami
Blending a complex religious identity in modern painting? Brooklyn resident Elke Reva Sudin has it down to an art.
The 26-year-old Boerum Hill artist, a Modern Orthodox Jew, is fresh off of exhibiting her work in Miami as part of the SELECT Fair, an exhibition for emerging artists that ran alongside Art Basel.
The painter said she doesn’t identify herself as an adherent of any one sect of Judaism. “I’m watchful of the commandments,” Sudin told The News. “But culturally, I’m an artist.”
Sudin, perhaps best known for her tongue-in-cheek “Hipsters & Hassids” series in which she compares and contrasts the seemingly contradictory Brooklyn cultures, showed her work, “Yael Approaches the General,” as a part of a Lower East Side-based artists’ space, Con Artist.
Despite his success as a Hollywood film and TV director, Brooklyn native Allen Baron came from humble beginnings. In his recent memoir “Blast of Silence,” published this past July by Parker Publishing, Baron tells all, chronicling his convoluted path to launching a decades-long career in the film industry and revealing his passionate and opinionated take on 20th century Hollywood. “If it was hard to make a connection between the East New York section of Brooklyn where I had been born and this place,” he writes, recalling his experience at the 1965 Academy Awards Governors Ball, “it was almost impossible to see a link between my poverty-stricken years wearing hand-me-down clothes, living among smelly trash cans, nickel and dime stealing, and this glamorous setting.” Replete with a range of photographs depicting his toddler years through his years a director, “Blast of Silence” is a deeply confessional account of Baron’s fascinating life, which began right here in Brooklyn.
Born in East New York, Baron grew up in poverty during the Great Depression. His parents were Polish and Russian immigrants who spoke English with a thick accent and interspersed with Yiddish words. Baron recalls that most of his friends also had foreign-born parents, and that “The kids at Public School 202 would only associate with their ethnic groups.” He lived on Logan Street and then on Sutter Avenue.
Though she now calls Brooklyn Heights home, author Ellie Levinson is no stranger to the world abroad. In fact, she’s spent much of her life across the world in South Africa, as she poignantly relates in her recent memoir “Let’s Play Hopscotch, Growing Up Under Apartheid in South Africa” (Tate Publishing & Enterprises). On Tuesday, Dec. 17, Levinson will appear at the Brooklyn Heights Branch Library in conversation with Elizabeth Scholtz, director emeritus of the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, who also hails from South Africa. Levinson will read passages from her memoir, which she will discuss with Scholtz, after which there will be a book signing.
In “Let’s Play Hopscotch,” Levinson enlivens her hometown of Welkom, the small region in which she grew up with five siblings. She recalls her experience being raised with a Catholic, Lebanese mother and an English father under apartheid rule and goes on to describe her extensive travels to 42 different countries.
Likening her life to a game of hopscotch, Levinson reflects on hopping from country to country and the endless array of characters she’s met along the way. Most notably, Levinson met Ivan, a Jewish medical student whom she married 36 years ago and with whom she has raised four children.
Israeli cinema is receiving international acclaim!
How are the Jewish challenges of identity, diversity, and responsibility reflected in Israeli films?
These films, all entertaining and challenging, create a springboard for our learning and conversation.
Grapple with the issues brought to the surface by these films through a dynamic discussion following each screening, facilitated by Isaac Zablocki, Executive Director of the Other Israel Film Festival.
published on Apr 29, 2014 at 12:00 AM By:Mitch Stern on www.vosizneias.com Creative Soul, founded by Yitzchok Moully, is a group of Orthodox Jewish artists who offer exhibitions, dance groups and open mic nights. Moully, 35, is a Hasidic rabbi and artist who works with photo silkscreen works that portray important symbols of Jewish life. Monthly art exhibitions are shown at the Mayan Center, a newly renovated community space rented by Creative… Read More »Brooklyn, NY – New Art Gallery Aimed At Jewish Artists Opens In Crown Heights
By Francesca Norsen-Tate, Religion Editor –Brooklyn Daily Eagle The Institute of Living Judaism in Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Jewish Historical Initiative and the Kane Street Synagogue present “Strangers in a Strange Land: How We Ended Up in Brooklyn” next weekend. A panel of leading Jewish History scholars will be featured, including Drs. Ilana Abramovitch, Annie Polland, Gerald Sorin and Daniel Soyer. Dr. Ilana Abramovitch, co-editor of Jews of Brooklyn (Brandeis University… Read More »Program Explores Odyssey of Jews to Brooklyn
This 1965 file photo shows actress Lauren Bacall at her home in New York. Bacall, a Brooklyn native, the sultry-voiced actress and Humphrey Bogart’s partner off and on the screen, died Tuesday. She was 89. AP Photo, File
Lauren Bacall had one of those incredible lives.
The wife and co-star of Humphrey Bogart. A Tony Award-winning actress. A National Book Award-winning author. A giant of fashion. A friend of the Kennedys. One of the last survivors of Hollywood’s studio age.
A star almost from the moment she appeared on screen to the day she died, Tuesday, at age 89, at a New York City hospital.
According to her memoir, “Lauren Bacall By Myself,” Bacall was born in the Bronx in 1924 and raised in Brooklyn by her mother and two uncles after being deserted by her father. She is on the celebrity walk at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden as a famous native Brooklynite.
“Stardom isn’t a career,” Bacall once observed, “it’s an accident.”
What a lucky accident it turned out to be.
Her career was one of great achievement and some frustration. The actress received a Golden Globe and an honorary Oscar and appeared in scores of film and TV productions. But not until 1996 did she receive an Academy Award nomination — as supporting actress for her role as Barbra Streisand’s mother in “The Mirror Has Two Faces.” Although a sentimental favorite, she was beaten by Juliette Binoche for her performance in “The English Patient.”
Sara Erenthal grew up in a Neturei Karta community in Borough Park but split with her family after her parents returned to Israel. Her latest works draw on the life she left behind.
SHE HAS moved on, but she has not forgotten.
Sara Erenthal, who split from her ultra-Orthodox Jewish family as a teen, draws on the painful life she left behind in a series of intimate artworks on display in a Prospect Heights gallery.
“This is nice way to tell my story in a very minimal way,” the 33-year-old artist said.
Erenthal was born in Israel and spent much of her childhood in a small Neturei Karta community in Borough Park.
Her family returned to Israel when she was a teen, but she ran away to escape an arranged marriage, she said.
Erenthal had never really believed in the community’s strict teachings, which called for unwavering modesty for women and an end to the state of Israel.
“It’s not really about being good people,” Erenthal said. “It’s more about being afraid of God.”
Now estranged from her father, Erenthal reimagines her childhood in her show at the SoapBox Gallery on Dean St.
This image shows Barbra Streisand during the of filming of “Funny Girl”. AP Photo/Steve Schapiro via Taschen
Brooklyn native Barbra Streisand’s new album of duets only includes male singers, but it wasn’t a conscious effort to exclude females.
“Everyone we asked was … busy,” Streisand said. The performer almost scored one major diva: Beyonce.
“She had her people try to do a track of one of the songs from my movie, ‘A Star is Born,’ and it just, we didn’t have the time to finish it, to get it right,” she said. “We had to release the album. Maybe someday we’ll do a duet because she’s so great.”
“Partners,” released Tuesday, features Billy Joel, Stevie Wonder, John Mayer, John Legend and Babyface, who produced the album.
In a recent interview with The Associated Press, Streisand talked about music, directing, women’s right and politics.
AP: Would you do an album full of female duets next?
Streisand: (Pauses) Possibly. I loved singing with Celine (Dion) and Donna Summer.
AP: What was the energy like in the studio for you and your guests?
