Heart is Where My Homeland Is: August 2006

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Persia~ ConstantGarden

>>"click the pic" for slideshow

Credit: Farhod Peiravi

Donkey Racing - video clip

Hey, Farhad, wherever you are, your Donkey Race clip RULES, man!!!

DESCRIPTION: Hilarious footage of, yeah you heard right, of a Donkey Race - the idea of sport to a Persian's taste. Well, maybe only if nobody owns a soccer ball in the village. Who needs a trophy, ribbons or a garland of flowers for the winning, un, donkey, when being part of the event is intrinsically gratifying! Still, having a race course complete with stands replete with roof for fans to enjoy the event in comfort tells me donkey's are more then home-boys, they're groomed as serious competitors.

Filmmaker: Farhod Peiravi

Saturday, August 26, 2006

The Ashkenaz Festival - Toronto, Canada

Join us from August 29 to september 4, 2006 for another faulous Ashkenaz Festival at the Miles Nadal JCC and Harbourfront Centre in Toronto!

ARTISTS :: Klezmer En Buenos Aires
Les Yeux Noirs
COUNTRY :: Argentina / France
WEB :: www.lesyeuxnoirs.net

Welcome

The Ashkenaz Foundation is proud to present the sixth biannual festival of new Yiddish culture. The Ashkenaz Foundation is a community non-profit organization dedicated to fostering an increased awareness of Yiddish culture through the arts.

Festival 2006

A bountiful outpouring of music, theatre, art, dance, literature, cabaret and film will take place from August 29 through September 4 at the Harbourfront Centre, with special events at Earl Bales Park and the Miles Nadal jcc.

Colourful events like the pageant and parade created by the award-winning Shadowland Theatre, Kabbalah yoga and dramatic Havdallah rituals evoke the special nature of the festival, which melds the traditional spirit of Eastern Europe with the new, radical art being created in a contemporary resurgence of Jewish culture.

Most events are free. Click here to see the entire schedule.

Some special events will require a ticket, including Retro Ashkenaz, with festival favorites Klezmer en Buenos Aires and Les Yeux Noirs, on Thursday, August 31. Click here for information on all the ticketed events.

If you’re visiting Harbourfront Centre this summer, make sure to visit our Gallery shows at the York Quay Centre: Home/Representation and Alchemy and the Jewish Diaspora: The Power of Place to Transform

Volunteer!

To volunteer to help us stage the festival, please click here.

NTRY :: Argentina / France

Ashkenaz Festival of New Yiddish Culture Toronto Canada August 31 to September 4-6

Our Mission:
ASHKENAZ is the largest festival of Yiddish culture in the world.

Rafael Goldwaser

Ashkenaz is committed to bringing the wealth of Yiddish culture to Jews and the world of today. Bridging differences within the Jewish community and the community at large, Ashkenaz draws on the wisdom of the past, and the creativity of the present, in order to create and express a living and breathing Yiddish culture. We bring this culture to the people through a festival and other events and offer them the opportunity to learn, grow, and experience the ancestral ties to Eastern Europe and the present ties to contemporary Yiddish artistry and innovation.

ASHKENAZ is a totally unique look at Yiddish culture that presents not only music but also a wide range of artistic disciplines, including theatre, dance, visual arts, crafts, literature, poetry, storytelling and comedy. The work is of an international caliber, much of it pushing the boundaries of what people generally think of as traditionally-based culture.

A wide array of talented artists from around the world has been chosen for this year's festival. We are proud to bring these artists to Toronto for an amazing display of Yiddish art and culture. Please check the website for constant updates and profiles of artists
Festivities begin August 31, culminating in a bustling weekend of music, dance, theatre, film, visual arts, literature, lectures and storytelling at Harbourfront Centre, from sundown Saturday September 4 through Monday September 6, 2004. Many events are free

The Program:

The Klezmatics bring their soul-stirring Jewish roots music to Toronto for the first time in over five years. These renowned performers present a free stunning open-air concert at Harbourfront Centre’s CIBC Stage on Saturday, Sept. 4 at 9:30 p.m.. The Klezmatics’ rousing performance is part of Ashkenaz’ spectacular post Shabbes (Sabbath) evening, which starts with an uplifting, artistic and musical Havdallah ceremony at the Toronto Star Stage.

Klezmer en Buenos Aires helps kick off the Ashkenaz Festival week, with the extraordinary clarinet and accordion talents of César Lerner and Marcelo Moguilevsky, Thursday, September 2 at 8 p.m. at the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre, 750 Spadina Ave,Toronto. The group returns with special musical guests on Sunday, September 5 at 7 p.m. at Harbourfront Centre’s Brigantine Room. Tickets for each concert are $36.

Prolific, multi-talented, Montreal-born pianist Marilyn Lerner presents the world premiere of her original score to the silent Yiddish film East and West, which stars Molly Picon (Fiddler on the Roof) in her first film, on Wednesday, September 1 at 8 p.m. at the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre and Sunday September 5 at 2 p.m. at Harboufront Center’s Studio Theatre. On Monday, September 6 at 5 p.m., Klezmer en Buenos Aires presents their musical version of the comedy classic film. Tickets are $18 for each performance.

Several important Toronto premieres, including many free performances light up Labour Day weekend, September 4-6 at Harbourfront Centre.

The Yiddish Radio Hour resurrects the classics of Yiddish radio from the 1930s to ‘50s. With a new radio program and theatre performance, Ashkenaz celebrates the forgotten geniuses and important recordings of this often overlooked chapter of the Canadian experience. The Yiddish Radio Hour can be seen and heard at 4:30 p.m. on Sunday September 5 and at 2:30 p.m. on Monday, September 6. Tickets are $15.

Yossi Vassa, “the Eddie Murphy of Israel,” opens a window on the experiences of immigrants to Israel with his moving and often hilarious personal account of his 700-kilometer journey on foot from Ethiopia to the Holy Land, It Sounds Better in Amharic, 8:00 p.m., Saturday September 4, and Sunday, September 5, at Harbourfront Centre’s Studio Theatre. Tickets are $15.

From Holland, Festival Mundial favourites Ot Azoj break onto the North American stage with their artful blend of old-time Klezmer, contemporary Eastern European folk music and the Klezmer revival sound for a heartwarming experience that is at once energetic, melancholic and joyous. Concert takes place at 8:00 p.m., Saturday, September 4 on the CIBC Stage at Harbourfront Centre.

From the vanguard of klezmer to their Canadian premiere at Ashkenaz, Berlin duo Khupe’s (Christian Dawid and Sanne Möricke) intense musical dialogue defies paradoxes with improvisation and innovation that remains true to Klezmer’s roots. Concert takes place at 9:30 p.m., Sunday, September 5, and 2:15 p.m., Monday, September 6 at on the CIBC Stage at Harbourfront Centre.

French-Canadian 8-member band Manouche pushes the envelope with sexy, energetic, contemporary renditions of old Yiddish standards at 5:30 p.m., Sunday, September 5, at Harbourfront Centre’s Toronto Star Stage. They are part of a contingent of Quebec performers at the festival, which also includes the harmonica styling of Shtreiml and the unique cabaret performer Jeszce Raz. Concluding a quintet of French oriented musicians at Ashkenaz are the brilliant players in France’s premiere klezmer group Les Yeux Noirs.

Buenos Aries

Ashkenaz: A Festival of New Yiddish Culture will feature a jam-packed weekend of film, theatre, literature, lectures and storytelling as well as music. Film buffs will be entertained by the Toronto premiere of Yiddishist and documentarian Yale Strom’s latest feature Klezmer on Fish Street. 1935’s French-Czech cult film, The Golem, the hilarious Catskill Honeymoon, and the Edgar Ulmer and Moishe Oysher melodrama The Singing Blacksmith (Yankel Dem Schmidt) anchor the film program with classics. Rafael Goldwaser presents his one man theatrical show, S’brent, It Burns while David Buchbinder’s Feast of the East dance party gets Harbourfront Centre’s Brigantine Room hopping. Kids and Yiddish returns with Farmisht and Far-fetched!, a spectacular multi-media initiation into a world of Yiddish language and culture. And not to be missed, the Ashkenaz Festival Parade will transport families around a Harbourfront Centre magically transformed by hundreds of artists and musicians.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Judy Wolfe, President
Heather Hoffman, Immediate Past President
Ellen Wexler, Secretary/Treasurer
Barbara Bank
Howard Bergman
David Ehrlich
Steve Glassman
Dorothy Ross
Rosalie Sharp
Herb Singer
Paul Stern
David Wintre, Fundraising Chair
Eda Zimler-Schiff
Libby Znaimer

ARTISTIC PRODUCER
Marc Glassman producer@ashkenazfestival.com

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Mitch Smolkin mitch@ashkenazfestival.com

CONSULTANT
Gordon Wolfe gordon.wolfe@sympatico.ca

ADMINISTRATOR
Shira Leuchter shira@ashkenazfestival.com

Contact :

Office
455 Spadina Avenue
Suite 303
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M5S 2G5
Tel: 416-979-9901
Fax: 416-979-4059
ashkenaz@ashkenazfestival.com

www.ashkenazfestival.com

Festival Location
Harbourfront Centre
235 Queens Quay West
Toronto, Ontario
Tel: 416-973-4000
www.harbourfrontcentre.com

Ashkenaz celebrates resurgence of Jewish culture

By CAROLYN BLACKMAN
Staff Reporter

TORONTO - Ashkenaz, the biennial festival of new Yiddish culture, set to take place Aug. 29 through Sept. 4 at Harbourfront Centre, Toronto, is incredibly contemporary, yet grounded in the past, says its producer and artistic director.
“The music, theatre, art, dance, literature, cabaret and film being offered, melds the traditional spirit of eastern Europe with the new, radical art being created in a contemporary resurgence of Jewish culture. It’s connected, but it features a break from tradition,” says Mitchell Smolkin, 28.
An actor, singer, and “Yiddishist” who is producing his third Ashkenaz, Smolkin says he first got involved with the festival because of his grandmother, a native of Poland.
“She is elderly now, and it is very hard to reconcile that for all intents and purposes, we are about to lose her culture.
“Ashkenaz is an opportunity to show ourselves on the rich, cultural landscape of Toronto, and [give] Yiddish a home. ”
Smolkin, who studied Yiddish at the University of Vilnius in Lithuania, and met his wife while studying the language at Columbia University, says he buried a program of a past Ashkenaz festival at his grandfather’s grave because, “I knew he would have loved to see it. He would have enjoyed the intensity, the sadness and the levity.”
Yiddishists are part of a very intense subculture, says Smolkin. “They connect around the idea that although it is not a living language, we have to make sure we do everything we can to make sure we preserve it. There are thousands of artists around the world devoted to [promoting] Yiddish.”
Ashkenaz events – a few take place at Earl Bales Park and Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre – are mostly free, although some special events require a ticket.
Musical programs include East Travels West: All Stars of the Former Soviet Union; Retro Ashkenaz: Klezmer en Buenos Aires; Yiddish Barbershop and Beyond the Pale; the Klezmer Cuban Connection; Chicago Klezmer Ensemble; and the Chassidic Jazz Project.
The two cabarets are Cabaret Russe hosted by Michael Alpert, and Cabaret, hosted by David Gale.
Among the films are A Geshseft (The Deal), made in New York 50 years ago; Ashke-Animation; and Yiddish Theatre: A Love Story.
Live theatre includes Echoes and Shavings of Yiddishland, and the Wandering Jew with Boris Sichon.
There are also a number of readings, workshops, panels, lectures and talks on such topics as Yiddish dance, Kabbalistic yoga, Soviet Yiddish poets, and music of the Jewish wedding celebration.

Performer sees herself as an ambassador for Jewish culture

By JESSICA FREIMAN
CJN Intern

TORONTO - Performer, vocal soloist, dancer, lyricist, composer, cantorial singer – Aviva Chernick does it all, and often with a Jewish twist.
Chernick, 35, thinks the most important aspect of her work is the responsibility that comes along with being an artist.
“As artist, we have a great responsibility to speak our own truths so others can see themselves expressed in our art,” she said.
She grapples with the question of “what’s my responsibility” even today. “There’s a dichotomy: I’m an artist, a Jewish woman. How do I balance Jewish life and my desire to remain active and accessible to mainstream culture?
“We all are ambassadors for our own culture,” she continued. “I want to show others what’s so beautiful about what we do [as Jews].”
Born in London, Ont., Chernick, who is now based in Toronto, grew up in a traditional Conservative Jewish home, participated in USY and attended Camp Ramah. At 18, she decided she wanted to study theatre and went to York University, which was the only place offering an undergraduate program in directing at the time.
“I studied playwriting and design, and I did a lot of acting,” said Chernick, 35, describing her four years at York as “good, great, crazy.”
As an undergraduate, Chernick also participated in Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation project, interviewing Canadian Holocaust survivors about their lives, something she describes as a “massive experience.”
The Holocaust quickly became the focus of Chernick’s theatre projects at university, and she staged an adaptation of Euripides’ The Trojan Women that was set in the Warsaw ghetto.
Chernick said that as a Jew growing up in a traditional, warm Jewish home that was very pro-Israel and placed an emphasis on Jewish scholarship, she always felt a tension with the outside world.
“I have to be very truthful with my relationship to Judaism. Real Jewish practice is about grappling,” she said.
“What Judaism needs from me is the willingness to engage in a process which is not black and white, to work with tradition and halachah and my own desires and dreams.”
Incorporating those desires with tradition has resulted in many fruitful creative endeavours for Chernick, one of them being Shabbat Fusion, a service held at Holy Blossom Temple on the last Friday of every month. Shabbat Fusion, which starts up again in October, combines dance and music from around the Jewish world with a traditional Kabbalat Shabbat service.
Chernick is currently training as a cantorial soloist with Cantor Benjamin Maissner at Holy Blossom, where she will be leading auxiliary services on Yom Kippur, but she also makes time for solo gigs and to perform as part of a larger band.
Audiences will be able to check out that band, Shakshuka, for free at Ashkenaz 2006: A Festival of New Jewish Culture on Sunday, Sept. 3. The group plays traditional Jewish tunes taken from eclectic sources and gives them a contemporary sound. Chernick sings in Hebrew and Ladino while the band plays arrangements that incorporate jazz, rock and Latin influences, yet are respectful of the original traditions. For instance, one song has a Latin groove, but its lyrics contain the first line of the Song of Songs.
Another new project that allows Chernick to integrate performance and service is the Huppah Project, in which she sings the traditional wedding repertoire set to original, contemporary musical arrangements after the bedecken. Then, she and her bandmates perform a wedding ceremony under a chupah to their own acoustic world music arrangements.
“We want a textured, rich atmosphere woven together by the music that is not invasive,” Chernick said.
Chernick, who took part in her first wedding ceremony last week, is always searching for something that allows her to serve the Jewish community.
“I want to be of service and be satisfied and be giving,” she said.
Chernick will be performing with Shakshuka Sept. 3 at 4:30 p.m. on the Toronto Star Stage at Harbourfront Centre, and with the Huppah Project later the same day at 8:30 p.m. at Harbourfront Centre’s Marilyn Brewer Community Space. Both performances are free. For more information about Chernick, Shakshuka or the Huppah Project, www.avivachernick.com.

Laughter through tears

Les Yeux Noir

Traditional Klezmer music of Eastern European Jewry is thriving despite its suppression by Nazi and Soviet regimes

Aug. 26, 2006. 01:00 AM
RICK WHELAN
SPECIAL TO THE STAR

When the cultural traditions of a threatened people are represented in a single art form, this art form provides a durable vessel for the hopes and dreams of this struggling culture, no matter how fierce the forces trying to destroy it.

Once comprising the very heart of traditional Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jewish life, klezmer music was a much- silenced art form during the latter part of the 20th century, since, under the Nazis and later the Communists, it was strictly forbidden to participate in any Jewish cultural activities whatsoever.

But just like those old Russian women who kept faith with the ancient traditions of the Orthodox Church during Soviet atheism, a group of stubborn old klezmorim (klezmer musicians) risked life and limb to keep the spirit of klezmer music alive and well during the dark Nazi and Soviet eras.

They secretly nurtured their "roots" music by playing it in the privacy of their own homes or at small village celebrations.

Klezmer music has always been an extremely vital part of Jewish culture. The name "klezmer" comes from the Yiddish word kley, meaning vessel or instrument, and zemer, meaning song. The tradition traces its origins to the shtetls of eastern Europe in the 16th century.

The klezmer musicians were travelling troubadours often more fond of wine, women and song than the strict observance of religious traditions. They often found themselves at the centre of joyous occasions and holidays prior to World War II.

During the war, the music was carried into the ghettos or worse, was lost in the horror of the concentration camps.

But this besieged music was too vibrant to die. And its happy resurgence today is due in no small part to those persevering klezmorim who kept the spark alive during Europe's dark years.

From Tuesday through Sept. 4, Toronto will once again play host to the wildly popular Ashkenaz — A Festival of Yiddish Culture, a bountiful outpouring of music, theatre, art, dance, literature, cabaret and film.

And klezmer music will be an integral part of the festival. On Tuesday at Earl Bales Park in North York, fans will be treated to a free concert as musicians from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Estonia collaborate for "East Travels West: All-Stars of the Former Soviet Union." It is a gathering which some aficionados are dubbing a true summit of klezmer.

The Kharkov Klezmer Band, from Kharkov, Ukraine, will be one of the featured bands at this summit. The band is composed of a group of conservatory- trained musicians. Led by violinist Stanislav Rayko, Kharkov has performed across Europe, bringing Eastern Jewish music back to the consciousness of those who had long been forced to do without it.

Rayko, who was born in Kharkov but now lives in Germany, is recognized internationally as a leading performer and educator in the revival of Jewish music. Prior to his Toronto appearance, he appeared in Montreal at KlezKanada, a Quebec-based Yiddish cultural festival.

"Both my parents are pianists," Rayko says in a telephone interview from Montreal. "I wanted to play an instrument but the piano was out because my parents were practising all the time. So when I was 5, I started to play the violin."

Rayko attended music college and then graduated from the Music Institute of Arts in Kharkov.

"I was always interested in playing more than just the classical repertoire," he says, "but when I joined a folk group, my teacher became very frustrated, telling me, `This music isn't serious.' So I quit."

But his interest persisted. While in college, Rayko took part in a Ukrainian folk ensemble.

"That was an amazing project because we played original ancient Ukrainian music that our leader discovered in his travels. There are a couple of pieces from that period that I still have in my repertoire today."

Rayko played his first klezmer concert in 1991 in what he believes was the first post-Soviet-era concert of Jewish music in Kharkov.

"I started to play with a klezmer group led by Ada Krichevskaya. We were really just amateurs then and we played mostly popular Yiddish songs like `Bay mir bistu shejn' and `Bublichki.'"

Rayko remembers seeing a music video of an American klezmer band. Itzhak Perelman appeared on the video.

"That was when I discovered I wanted to play klezmer more than anything else," Rayko says.

Asked to define klezmer, the violinist simply says, "It's Jewish music! It's the music to listen to when you cry, when you have fun ... when you drink vodka and when you dance!"

He confesses he has never heard the term "Jewish jazz" but he thinks some people perhaps call it that because improvisation plays a big role in klezmer.

"I think probably `Jewish jazz' pertains mostly to American klezmer music. Many jazz musicians in the 1920s and '30s were Jews who grew up listening to klezmer from childhood. I think klezmer had a great influence on the way they played jazz."

Although traditional klezmer tunes are deeply rooted in Jewish prayer chants, Rayko emphasizes that the music is now almost totally secular.

For many klezmer fans, the music is based on a concept best described as "laughter through tears." At weddings, for instance, the music captures the bittersweet moment ... the joy of starting a new family but also the sadness of the young ones leaving the childhood home.

Rayko feels that klezmer music is particularly appropriate today for Jews as they look back on a history of heartache and extreme peril.

"For the past 2,000 years, the Jews have lost much and have had many of their temples destroyed. We must not forget this. For example, during a Jewish wedding a glass is broken. This signifies the reality that things are here one moment and smashed the next. Life has always been tough for Jews ... especially in Eastern Europe, where klezmer originated."

Rayko also underscores the importance of those heroic klezmorim who preserved Jewish music when it was risky to do so.

"For Jews who lived in the former Soviet Union, because they were denied this music for so many years, now it seems almost exotic to them. We had two generations who never heard klezmer at all. But now we have people attending klezmer concerts ... klezmer fans are growing in Moscow and Petersburg. They now hear the music in nightclubs and music festivals. And it's like fresh air!"

For a full schedule of events see http://www.ashkenazfestival.com

Rick Whelan is a freelance writer who lives in Stratford, Ont.