Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

On Rosh Hashana, Jews do cheshbon nefesh, a spiritual accounting of their deeds during the previous year. The purpose of course is to do t’shuva and “return” from our misdeeds and set out on a new path. Gideon Levy has done his own literal accounting of the Palestinian child dead for the past year in his most recent Haaretz article, Twilight Zone–the Children of 5767. This is the kind of reckoning we all wish to avoid. But I hope you will not avoid Levy’s searing article. Those who do, are like the Israeli fretting in his breakfast nook over the bloodied Burmese monks while soldiers representing him enforce a festering Occupation on their Palestinian neighbors:

It was a pretty quiet year, relatively speaking. Only 457 Palestinians and 10 Israelis were killed, according to the B’Tselem human rights organization, including the victims of Qassam rockets. Fewer casualties than in many previous years. However, it was still a terrible year: 92 Palestinian children were killed (fortunately, not a single Israeli child was killed by Palestinians, despite the Qassams). One-fifth of the Palestinians killed were children and teens - a disproportionate, almost unprecedented number. The Jewish year of 5767. Almost 100 children, who were alive and playing last New Year, didn’t survive to see this one.

…We set out each week in the footsteps of the fighters, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, trying to document the deeds of Israel Defense Forces soldiers, Border Police officers, Shin Bet security service investigators and Civil Administration personnel - the mighty occupation army that leaves behind in its wake horrific killing and destruction, this year as every year, for four decades.

And this was the year of the children that were killed. We didn’t get to all of their homes, only to some; homes of bereavement where parents weep bitterly over their children, who were climbing a fig tree in the yard, or sitting on a bench in the street, or preparing for an exam, or on their way home from school, or sleeping peacefully in the false security of their homes.

A few of them also threw a rock at an armored vehicle or touched a forbidden fence. All came under live fire, some of which was deliberately aimed at them, cutting them down in their youth. From Mohammed (al-Zakh) to Mahmoud (al-Qarinawi), from the boy who was buried twice in Gaza to the boy who was buried in Israel. These are the stories of the children of 5767.

The first of them was buried twice. Abdullah al-Zakh identified half of the body of his son Mahmoud, in the morgue refrigerator of Shifa Hospital in Gaza, by the boy’s belt and the socks on his feet. This was shortly before last Rosh Hashanah. The next day, when the Israel Defense Forces “successfully” completed Operation Locked Kindergarten, as it was called, leaving behind 22 dead and a razed neighborhood, and left Sajiyeh in Gaza, the bereaved father found the remaining parts of the body and brought them for a belated burial.

…The day after Rosh Hashanah we traveled to Rafah. Dam Hamad, 14, had been killed in her sleep, in her mother’s arms, by an Israeli rocket strike that sent a concrete pillar crashing down on her head. She was the only daughter of her paralyzed mother, her whole world. In the family’s impoverished home in the Brazil neighborhood, at the edge of Rafah, we met the mother who lay in a heap in bed; everything she had in the world was gone. Outside, I remarked to the reporter from French television who accompanied me that this was one of those moments when I felt ashamed to be an Israeli. The next day he called and said: “They didn’t broadcast what you said, for fear of the Jewish viewers in France.”

Soon afterward we went back to Jerusalem to visit Maria Aman, the amazing little girl from Gaza, who lost nearly everyone in her life to a missile strike gone awry that wiped out her innocent family, including her mother, while riding in their car. Her devoted father Hamdi remains by her side. For a year and a half, she has been cared for at the wonderful Alyn Hospital, where she has learned to feed a parrot with her mouth and to operate her wheelchair using her chin. All the rest of her limbs are paralyzed. She is connected day and night to a respirator. Still, she is a cheerful and neatly groomed child whose father fears the day they might be sent back to Gaza.

For now, they remain in Israel. Many Israelis have devoted themselves to Maria and come to visit her regularly. A few weeks ago, broadcast journalist Leah Lior took her in her car to see the sea in Tel Aviv. It was a Saturday night, and the area was crowded with people out for a good time, but the girl in the wheelchair attracted attention. Some people recognized her and stopped to say hello and wish her well. Who knows? Maybe the pilot who fired the missile at her car happened to be passing by, too.

…And what did 16-year-old Taha al-Jawi do to get himself killed? The IDF claimed that he tried to sabotage the barbed-wire fence surrounding the abandoned Atarot airport; his friends said he was just playing soccer and had gone to chase after the ball. Whatever the circumstances, the response from the soldiers was quick and decisive: a bullet in the leg that caused him to bleed to death, lying in a muddy ditch by the side of the road. Not a word of regret, not a word of condemnation from the IDF spokesman, when we asked for a comment. Live fire directed at unarmed children who weren’t endangering anyone, with no prior warning.

…In Nablus, we documented the use of children as human shields - the use of the so-called “neighbor procedure” - involving an 11-year-old girl, a 12-year-old boy and a 15-year-old boy. So what if the High Court of Justice has outlawed it? We also recorded the story of the death of baby Khaled, whose parents, Sana and Daoud Fakih, tried to rush him to the hospital in the middle of the night, a time when Palestinian babies apparently mustn’t get sick: The baby died at the checkpoint.

…Bushra Bargis hadn’t even left her home. In late April she was studying for a big test, notebooks in hand, pacing around her room in the Jenin refugee camp in the early evening, when a sniper shot her in the forehead from quite far away. Her bloodstained notebooks bore witness to her final moments.

And what about the unborn babies? They weren’t safe either. A bullet in the back of Maha Qatuni, a woman who was seven months pregnant and got up during the night to protect her children in their home, struck her fetus in the womb, shattering its head. The wounded mother lay in the Rafidiya Hospital in Nablus, hooked up to numerous tubes. She was going to name the baby Daoud. Does killing a fetus count as murder? And how “old” was the deceased? He was certainly the youngest of the many children Israel killed in the past year.

Happy New Year.

Indeed. Thanks to Sol Salbe for sharing the cartoon.

tags children-of-5767, gideon-levy, palestinian-children-killed-by-israeli-army

UPDATED: My reader, Amir, just provided new background and information about the song and I’ve updated this post.

One of my readers, Shamai Leibowitz, e-mailed me about a great song which he’s uploaded to YouTube called Heveinu Shalom Aleinu-Ma Ana Ajmal Min Salam. This is in no way to be confused with Heveinu Shalom Aleichem, a rather tired old Jewish song that has long outlived any musical usefulness it ever had. The song Shamai sent me was written by Shlomo Gronich and Ehud Manor as Peace Child Israel, Israel’s answer to We Are the World. In 2000, during the Intifada and a very low moment for Israeli-Palestinian relations, the composer and lyricist decided to broaden the song. And so Heveinu Shalom Aleinu was born, with the collaboration of Peace Child Israel Millenium Year workshops in which Israeli and Palestinian children wrote about their feelings and dreams regarding the conflict. Magid Abu Rokun joined Manor in writing Arabic lyrics for the song and Mikhail Marun (oud) turned the arrangement into one that incorporated Arab as well as Israeli Jewish styles.

The Jewish and Arab musicians are obviously having a grand old time and rejoicing in their ability to share their joy with their brethren. The music really cooks and the instrumentation sounds like a traditional Arabic orchestra–or at least an Israeli crossover version of one. If you’re interested in Israeli-Palestinian peace this will be a cure for what ails you. The musicians tell us: peace is possible.

We Brought Peace Ourselves

There are connections between us
Of which our parents never dreamed
We talk in ways never heard before
We are here for all
We are a bridge and a ladder
For all those who dream
For all those who dreamed
While we live and in our days
We will sing with our voices
We brought peace ourselves.

If your feast becomes mine
Your faith and dreams too
Then we can build a new world of love and peace
When the intention becomes clear all people become human
A family drinks from the same cup
The cup of peace
We have nothing more beautiful than peace.

Yes, our parents ate the sour grapes of yesterday
But our teeth, you’ll be surprised, have not decayed
Together we will open our hearts
Together we will open our minds
With the children of peace
With the children of dreams

These are the wonderful musicians who made this recording possible:

Zehava Ben, Shlomo Gronich, Nivine Jaabri, Elias Julianos, Eli Luzon, Lubna Salame, Lea Shabat and Sahmir Shukri and participants from the Peace Child Israel workshops in Ramle and Lod and elementary schools students from Ibn Rudg (Qalansua) and Elentary School for the Arts (Tel Aviv).

Instrumentalists:

Drums: Doron Rafaeli
Bass: Alon Nadel
Percussion: Gadi Seri
Guitar: Shmulik Budagov
Oud: Mikhail Marun
Piano: Shlomo Gronich
Darbuka: Bishara Nadaf
Flute: Amir Milstein
Nai Alfred Hadjar
Violin: Bashir Assad
Clarinet: Chanan Bar-Sela

Another of my readers tells me that Shamai Leibowitz was one of the first Israeli military refusers who showed the courage to refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories. I salute him for his vision and bravery.

tags heveinu-shalom-aleinu, jewish-arab-peace-music, peace-child-israel, we-brought-peace-upon-us

It’s a might strange world, that’s for sure. A hat tip to Joachim Martillo for pointing me to this post from Ethan Stanislawski’s blog about Peretz. Stanislawski is the son of Columbia Jewish historian Michael Stanislawski, who once had a close relationship with Marty Peretz. What is delicious is that the younger Stanislawski chronicles the gradual alienation that developed between Peretz and his father, a good deal of which revolved around the issue of Ahmadinejad’s canceleed speech at Columbia last year and his rescheduled speech of last week.

He begins with a Peretz rant against Columbia in The Spine. To read Marty Peretz is to watch a grown man make an utter fool of himself. And Peretz does it virtually every time he opens his mouth, especially if he’s talking about Israel. Here are some of the non sequiturs, howlers, distortions, lies, myths and just plain errors which both Stanislawski and I note in his post:

Columbia is “reeling,” reads the headline in Wednesday’s New York Times. Columbia is the Sulzbergers’s university, and they had traditionally put a wordy buffer between what really happened at the institution and their paper’s readers. Of course, that’s virtually impossible to do these days.

Note the notion that the Sulzberger family has an ownership stake in Columbia, making it of course responsible for all the university’s sins in Peretz’s eyes.

…It is not the Times that has excelled in reportage on Columbia during the past few tempestuous years. It is the Sun which has taken on that burden — and, with some pleasure, I would think, since the university is a model of what the upstart daily thinks of as paradigmatic of the cowardice of liberal institutions in general. Or worse, the pusillanimity of liberal institutions when their very liberalism is being undermined from within.

This is Peretz hailing the journalistic courage of one of the scummiest neocon rags in the nation, the New York Sun. What Peretz admires is the Sun’s yellow journalistic pursuit of the Arab studies professors at Columbia; and the Sun’s obssession with, and distortion of the the anti-Semitism meme. You’ll note that Marty Peretz, proud possessor of one of the finest liberal arts educations money could buy from Harvard and later a professor at that august institution derides Columbia, and by extension all liberal arts institutions with the phrase “the cowardice of liberal institutions in general.” Methinks he bites the hand that fed him so well for so long.

Rashid Khalidi has not been heard from on the A’jad matter. He has bigger fish to fry: making sure that…the Barnard tenure aspirant, Nadia Abu El-Haj, who believes that archeology proves there were never any Hebrews in the Holy Land, also is tenured. My guess is that, this time, the gang loses.

I’ve read many distortions of Abu El-Haj’s scholarly oeuvre but I don’t think any quite match Peretz’s for sheer outrageous audacity. She doesn’t even come close to believing “there were never any Hebrews in the Holy Land.” But this is certainly characteristic of the academic character assassination launched by Campus Watch, Shulamit Reinharz, Alexander Joffe (formerly of Campus Watch and currently with the David Project), Paula Stern and others. Their motto seems to be there is no lie too great for the purpose of stopping Abu El Haj from getting tenure.

The notion that Abu El Haj is Khalidi’s academic pawn in an Arab campus power grab is noxious and insulting. Also ludicrous is the notion that Peretz predicts that Massad and Abu El Haj will not get tenure when Lee Bollinger, who he spends the entire post insulting, is the one who will make the final decision in the matter.

…It is not only Columbia that is reeling. It is Bollinger himself. The faculty see this; the students certainly see this; and the trustees who typically will give a president enough rope to hang himself see that he has. My conclusion is that Bollinger is on his way out. The mandate of heaven has deserted him. He has no authority, least of all moral authority.

Note Peretz’s prediction of Bollinger’s imminent demise. Of course, he presents no facts to support his claim. In his grandiosity, Peretz need only want the event to happen for that to make it the truth. Also, note how the Spined One alludes to Bollinger as an academic emporer (”the mandate of heaven…”), more scenery-chewing overstatement on the writer’s part.

I also have a speculation about why the earnest protestations of Jewish students and others who were pro-Israel never could touch Bollinger about their terrible experiences in classes in the Middle East: he himself is Jewish, maybe an ambivalent Jew, maybe a frightened Jew, but a Jew nonetheless.

Stanislawski points out Peretz’s gaffe in that Bollinger is NOT Jewish. Too bad Ethan had to spoil the party. Marty was having such a good time spinning his fantasy about Bollinger not being able to feel the pain of those poor pro-Israel students because he himself was allegedly Jewish.

John Coatsworth, whom Bollinger lured from Harvard…What can one say about Coatsworth without having oneself strung up as a McCarthyite? Let’s leave it at this: at least since graduate school at the University of Wisconsin he has been extremely radical.

I don’t know much about John Coatsworth’s acaemic background. He is currently the dean of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs and issued the Ahmadinejad invitation. But to think that any dean of any major school at any major national university could achieve such a position by being “extremely radical” strains credulity. And knowing it is Peretz making such a claim automatically dismisses the charge.

Richard Bulliet is the Columbia historian who negotiated with the Iranians for their president’s visit…Bulliet was a supporter of the 1979 Iranian revolution.

Again, I don’t know much about Bulliet as a historian. But to claim he “was a supporter of the 1979 Iranian revolution” without supplying any evidence in support of the charge also strains credulity.

In the following passage Peretz gratuitously insults Michael Stanislawski, calling him Bollinger’s “court Jew,” and wonders what the Jewish historian thinks of his alleged patron, Bollinger inviting Ahmadinejad to campus:

I wondered what Stanislavski made of Bollinger’s canceling A’jad last year, giving permission for his speaking this year…There is in Jewish history the figure of the court-Jew. This Jew did financial and commercial business for the prince. Sometimes he was a medical doctor and cared for the prince and his family. He also tried to intercede for the Jews when trouble was coming their way. Sometimes he succeeded, sometimes he failed. I guess Michael failed. But Jews no longer need court-Jews, and they haven’t for at least a century. It must be sad trying to fill a function that has been obsolete for so long.

Ethan Stanislawski notes in his blog post that Peretz spells his father’s name wrong. Gee, you’d think that the least you could do for an old friend when you’re insulting him is spell his name right.

What surprises me is that Stanislawski and Peretz could ever have been friends–though I suppose that people can change radically over the course of time & someone you loved or respected when you were young can turn into something else entirely when you’re older. That’s certainly true of Peretz though I liked him neither when he was younger nor older.

What Marty Peretz doesn’t realize is that the less he says or writes the better off he is. The more drivel flows from his mouth or pen the more lies, distortions and outrageous myths flow along with them. But Marty likes the sound of his own voice too much and so makes a fool of himself serially.

tags columbia-university-ahmadinejad-speech, ethan-stanislawski, maroon-voices, marty-peretz, michael-stanislawski, nadia-abu-el-haj, new-york-sun, rashid-khalidi, the-spine

I’ve been writing for a few days about the cancellation of the Marcel Khalife concert at the Joan Kroc Theater in San Diego. Right about now I feel like the Jack in the Box’s wagging head after it jumps out of the box. At first, I was outraged on behalf of the concert organizers by the way the Salvation Army treated them. Then, after talking to the Salvation Army, I felt their explanation sounded plausible and largely reasonable. But now, after talking to Dr. Manal Swairjo of Al Awda, the concert hosting group, I’ve come back mostly to where I was originally.

According to Manal and contrary to what Capt. John Van Cleef of the Army told me, she met with Kroc Theater representatives in February and put down a deposit for the hall at that time. There never was an individual, as Van Cleef claimed to me, who was originally to host the concert. The presenter was always going to be Al Awda and the Army knew this from the beginning. Kroc staff never told Swairjo that Al Awda had to complete an application before the rental would be approved. She was told the group had to get an insurance certificate and then the contract would be finalized. They did get that certificate and scheduled a meeting to sign the contract in August.

Then a Kroc representative asked Al Awda to fill out an application saying this was a formality needed before signing the contract. Two days before the contract signing meeting, a Kroc staffer sent Al Awda a terse e mail notifying the group the concert was cancelled. They were given no explanation for the decision. This is especially outrageous considering the “hundreds of hours” of volunteer efforts Dr. Swairjo told me she exerted to arrange and publicize the concert at the Kroc Theater. After the cancellation, she basically had to start all over again.

Afterward, Al Awda spoke several times with Capt. Van Cleef who explained that renting to the group would’ve contravened the guidelines and mission of the Kroc Center. According to Swairjo, he specifically mentioned that he could not rent the theater unless there would be an Israeli musician on stage with Khalife. Keep in mind, that I quizzed Van Cleef about this and he claimed to me that he had not said this and that Al Awda was “misrepresenting the facts,” which I thought was a pretty strong statement considering he couldn’t prove they were lying but was claiming so. His claim was that he was talking in generalities about the type of concert that WOULD fit the venues guidelines, but not specifically saying Khalife would need to perform with an Israeli in order to play on their stage.

Swairjo also added a most illuminating aspect of her conversation with Van Cleef. He said that he could not rent the hall to Al Awda because it would offend the Jewish community. Now, neither Drs. Damuni nor Swairjo know for certain that Van Cleef spoke with anyone in the Jewish community before making his decision. We can be generous if we wish and presume that no one urged the Army to cancel. Nevertheless, this would mean that the group was doing the equivalent of self-censoring by anticipating the firestorm that might erupt IF they rented to Al Awda. It pre-empted controversy it feared without even knowing whether there might be any.

This is precisely what happened in the case of the New York Theater Workshop’s decision to delay its production of My Name is Rachel Corrie. No one in the Jewish community was up in arms about the play and screamed that they shouldn’t produce it. The Workshop’s director feared what might happen and decided that withdrawing from controversy before it arrived was a better idea than embracing it and moving forward.

This is the pernicious influence of the Israeli-Arab conflict and 9/11 on our society. We have become so afraid of “the other” and so traumatized by acts of terror that we can no longer behave like rational human beings. We can no longer look at a subject and say: “this may be controversial, but let’s think creatively how we can present this to our community in a way that will advance tolerance and political debate, rather than raise the level of rancor.” Instead, we try to cut our losses and retreat into our shell.

My sharpest criticism of the Salvation Army’s behavior is its peremptory decision to cancel a concert for which it had taken a deposit without so much as a word of explanation. Why couldn’t the Army have tried to think creatively how this concert could’ve satisfied their guidelines by negotiation with Al Awda and the Arab community? Why couldn’t the Kroc people have asked that Al Awda not engage in political speeches or leafleting and focus solely on the music? Or why couldn’t they have asked Al Awda to bring in CAIR or a different local Arab group that had a more moderate agenda as the main sponsor? Van Cleef admitted to me that he hadn’t done this because, so he claimed, “by then it was too late.” In my experience, when someone tells you they decided not to do something because it was too late to change an outcome, it usually means they didn’t want to do so, not that it really was too late. And that’s what I believe happened here. Van Cleef simply wanted no part of Al Awda or the concert and so he never attempted to negotiate.

The Captain also claimed that his staff had helped Al Awda find a new venue to host the concert. Dr. Swairjo told me the only help that the Kroc personnel provided was to offer a website link which listed other San Diego venues. That’s all. Van Cleef’s claim of help seems pathetic in this context.

Finally, I want to reiterate something I wrote in my last post about Al Awda. Personally, I do find Al Awda a sectarian organization because it does not recognize a Jewish right of national self-determination. In other words, it is anti-Zionist. Such a view is not one I share though it is a valid response by Arab and Palestinian Americans to the suffering their people has endured. But I can sympathize with the bind the Army found itself in. Al Awda tried to argue that it was purely a human rights organization and what could be wrong with that? In my view, this is either politically naive or disingenuous. Anti-Zionism may not be a fringe position within the Palestinian community but it is within greater American society. Al Awda’s affiliation with this concert might very well have caused bad feeling with some elements of the Jewish community to host this concert (though it might also have caused none and gone unnoticed). But that doesn’t mean the Army should’ve cut and run as they did. They should’ve tried to work with Al Awda to come up with a compromise that would satisfy both sides instead of cutting them loose.

Marcel Khalife will perform in San Diego on Sunday evening, October 14th at the Birch North Park Theater. Click here for ticket information. The Seattle concert will be on Sunday, October 7th at 8PM at Town Hall. For tickets click here.

tags al-awda, anti-zionism, joan-kroc-theater, salvation-army-cancels-marcel-khalife-san-diego-concert

First, a confession. When my wife and I married in 1998 in New York we had a musical problem. We’ve both been musicians and music, including Jewish music, were important to us. I especially love Jewish music. So we couldn’t have just any music at our wedding. We actually watched videos of big bands given to us by the caterer. They reminded me of Frank Sinatra, Jr. I despaired that we could find just what I was looking for. I don’t remember precisely how this happened, but I called my friend Nan Rubin and she told me of her friend, Yale Strom, who led a klezmer band. I’d heard of his work preserving Jewish music in Eastern Europe. I don’t remember if I even actually heard his music before we booked him. But when I asked him if he could do more popular non-Jewish music Janis and I grew up on like the Beatles I liked his answer: “Sure, no problem, that’s what we grew up on too.”

Yale and his wife and the rest of their band did an extraordinary job. We danced and danced–doinas and horas and everything in between. I even think they enjoyed our wedding and I know everyone enjoyed their music.

All this by way of introducing the subject of this post: Yale just sent me an e mail about a massive klezmer spectacular he’s organizing as part of the project to restore the landmark Eldridge Street shul, a bastion of Jewish life on New York’s Lower East Side. It’s called A Great Day on Eldridge Street and modeled on a classic photograph Yale loves of the greats of 1950s jazz called A Great Day in Harlem:

The Eldridge Street Project will assemble more than 75 of the world’s most influential klezmer musicians for A Great Day on Eldridge Street, an unprecedented, ten-day series of concerts, lectures and educational events that will kick-off on October 12 with a march through the streets of the Lower East Side and an historic photo shoot on the steps of the National Historic Landmark Eldridge Street Synagogue. The photo is inspired by “A Great Day in Harlem,” the iconic 1958 photograph of renowned jazz musicians, including Thelonius Monk, Dizzie Gillespie and Count Basie.

This unique gathering of international musicians is conceived and led by Yale Strom, a klezmer virtuoso and the world’s leading ethnographer of klezmer culture and history. “I was influenced by the film A Great Day in Harlem and wanted to do something similar for klezmer culture,” says Strom. “The Lower East Side is the birthplace of Eastern European Jewish culture in America. And Eldridge Street is the oldest East European Orthodox synagogue, and an important site of traditional Jewish culture. I can’t think of a more appropriate place to take this photograph.”

The ten-day celebration will highlight klezmer, the wedding and folk music predominantly played by Eastern European Jews. Derived from Near Eastern and East European music sources, and influenced by the regions’ classical and folk traditions, klezmer is a decidedly multi-cultural musical form. Brought to the United States by Eastern European Jewish immigrants, its popularity waned by the 1950s as Jews looked to American musical sources. But klezmer experienced a revival beginning in the 1970s when young musicians interested in their East European Jewish roots reclaimed this musical tradition, incorporating American jazz and rock influences.

As is evident from this event, Yale is not only a great musician and visionary regarding Jewish music, he’s also an organizer who likes to get things done. This is an extraordinary project and any New Yorkers among my readers really must take advantage.

The MacArthur Foundation just announced their “genius” award winners this week. I’ve got a hot tip for them: Yale Strom should be on their short list. Just look at this list of his books and films. He’s more than productive, he’s prolific; and on a subject that is of immense cultural significance to the Jewish people: the preservation of our great Eastern European musical tradition.

Here’s what the website says about the participating performers:

Musicians participating in A Great Day on Eldridge Street will travel to the Lower East Side from across the United States and around the world, including Canada, Israel, Europe and the former Soviet Union. They include pioneers of the klezmer renaissance, such as David Krakauer, Frank London and Andy Statman, guiding figures including folk singer and actor Theodore Bikel and

MacArthur Award winner John Zorn, and more recent practitioners of the genre. Other featured participants are Don Byron, the world-famous African American jazz clarinetist who is an original member of the Klezmer Conservatory Band, as well as leading female klezmorim Adrienne Cooper and Alicia Svigals. International figures include Moshe Berlin, the famed Israeli clarinetist who will be performing for the first time in America, and members of the aptly named Amsterdam klezmer revival band Di Gojim — none of whom is Jewish.

The participants range in age from 20-something Annette Ezekiel, the leader of the Golem, to octogenarians Mina Bern and Shifra Lehrer, grand dames of Yiddish theatre. A number of the A Great Day on Eldridge Street participants come from a long, esteemed line of klezmorim, including Sy Tarras, son of the late great klezmer clarinetist David Tarras.

These are some of the key workshops and events that will take place during the festival:

The events of this multi-faceted cultural, performance and documentation project will include:

* Thursday, October 11: Educational workshop with select group of musicians and second grade students at local Chinatown public school P.S. 42
* Friday, October 12: Procession of the featured musicians down the streets of the Lower East Side ending at the landmark Eldridge Street Synagogue. Photographer Leo Sorel will then take a portrait of the group.
* Sunday, October 14: Major evening concert at Symphony Space in Manhattan.
* October 15-21: Statewide Great Day Tour with performances and educational workshops at the Bardavon 1869 Opera House in Poughkeeepsie (October 16), The 1891 Fredonia Opera House (October 18), Buffalo State Performance Arts Center (October 20) and the 1890 Performance Hall at Hochstein in Rochester (October 22)

tags eastern-european-jewry, eldridge-street-shul, great-day-on-eldridge-street, klezmer-music, lower-east-side-jewish-life, yale-strom

From the NY Times: Microsoft, Google and several funds are considering investments in the fast-growing site, according to people with knowledge of the talks, that could give the start-up a value of more than $10 billion... Facebook is seeking a minimum valuation of $10 billion but interested bidders have expressed a willingness to value it as high as $13 billion. ...Earlier this year, a Pali Research analyst, Richard Greenfield, estimated that the company brought in $60 million to $96 million in annual revenue, with no real profit. Do I hear 'irrantional exuberance,' anyone??

I was originally outraged to hear that Marcel Khalife's concert at the Joan Kroc Theater was cancelled by the Salvation Army, which owns the facility. But I decided to call the venue administrators to hear their side of what happened. I'm glad I did because hearing the other side was instructive regarding the deep mistrust that has developed between Arab-Americans and the rest of American society. I spoke with Capt. John VanCleef who told me that when first approached, an individual was to rent their hall for the Khalife concert. But in the course of time this changed and a group named Al Awda took the place of the individual as sponsor. The Salvation ...

Someone really has to give the Salvation Army a few basic lessons in artisitic expression and freedom of speech. I'm sorry to use such a term to describe Christian believers, but the people who made this decision deserve it: these jackasses committed to a performance by Marcel Khalife at the Joan Kroc Theater, built with a $27-million gift from Mrs. Kroc herself, then turned around and cancelled when they realized that--shock of all shocks--Marcel Khalife sings songs on behalf of the suffering Lebanese and Palestinian peoples! Here's what Khalife's publicist wrote about the imbroglio: Just a few weeks ago, a venue in San Diego, CA denied on political grounds the use of their theater to renowned Lebanese musician Marcel Khalife, ...

If you love world music and live in or near Seattle, you simply must hear Marcel Khalife perform at Town Hall on Sunday, October 7th. He is one of the world's great oud players and one of Lebanon's greatest contributions to international music. Khalife is perhaps best known for his long, fruitful musical collaboration with Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish, himself one of the great living poets writing in Arabic. During the Lebanon war last summer, Richard Isaac and I produced a show on Israeli and Lebanese music about peace which included The Returnee (hear it) by Khalife. Town Hall's press release about the concert includes interesting background information about the performer, his concert plans and ...

Condi Rice was so enthusiastic about the idea of inviting Syria to the upcoming Mideast peace conference that she couldn't even say the country's name: “It’s only natural that we would hope that the participants would include the members of the Arab League Follow Up Committee." It got me to thinking of a few other ways in which they could show Syria that they really, really appreciated their participation in the conference: 1. Throwing a ticker tape parade for the Syrian delegation down Pennsylvania Avenue hosted by the Muslim Brotherhood 2. Local delegation host: Larry Craig 3. All name tags for Syrian conference participants will be in Hebrew 4. Goodie bags to include shrapnel from Israeli cluster bombs dropped on Lebanon 5. Conference proceedings interrupted three ...