Bureau of Jewish Education of San Francisco : Adults

All events are FREE, open to everyone, accessible to the handicapped, and held at the BJE Jewish Community Library at 1835 Ellis Street in San Francisco.

Did we mention that garage parking is free and no RSVP is required?

For more information, contact Allison Green at 415.567.3327 x 703. This Spring, the Library explores the metaphoric role of the mask in the Jewish experience. Writers, artists, and performers use personal and historical experiences to examine the many ways Jewish identity is concealed and revealed. Join us for talks, film, and music, as well as a community art exhibition and activities for families.

"Sundays at 2:00" Drop-in Book Club

February 21, 2010, 2 - 3 pm
What Happened to Anna K by Irina Reyn

Book Group Coordinator Jim Van Buskirk will facilitate a lively discussion one Sunday a month at 2 am at the Jewish Community Library. Pick up your individual copy of the book during the month preceding the discussion and then come to one or all of the dates-and feel free to invite your friends! There is no charge for materials or attendance.

Who's Who: The Jew and the Mask
On display: February 28 - July 31, 2010

SUNDAY MARCH 14
Artists' Reception: 1 - 3 pm
Curator's Talk: 2 pm

FAMILY PROGRAM:
Mask Making Workshop: 12 - 2 pm
Annie's Ghosts: A Journey Into a Family Secret
A talk and reading by Steve Luxenberg

Thursday, March 4, 7:30 pm

Featured on NPR's All Things Considered and in Parade magazine, and named it as one of Best Books of 2009 by The Washington Post

Part memoir, part detective story, part history, Annie's Ghosts explores the nature of self-deception and self-preservation as it untangles one family's long-protected silence.

Steve Luxenberg's mother and aunt grew up together, but from age 21 his aunt Annie lived in a mental institution, and his mother spent the rest of her life hiding her sibling's existence. Struggling to maintain his empathy as a son, Luxenberg employed his skills as a journalist to piece together the story of his aunt's unknown life, his mother's motivations, and the times in which they lived. His investigation turns into a journey through Imperial Russia and Depression-era Detroit, the Holocaust in the Ukraine and the Philippine war zone, and back to the hospitals where Annie and many others were lost to memory.

Steve Luxenberg is an associate editor at the Washington Post and has worked for more than thirty years as a newspaper editor and reporter. From 1996 to 2006 he was the editor of the Post's Sunday Outlook section. Luxenberg currently focuses on special projects and in-depth reporting, including the causes and consequences of the financial crisis.

Program made possible, in part, by Judy Baston

Co-sponsored by the Holocaust Center of Northern California, Jewish Family and Children's Services of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties, Independent Living Resource Center San Francisco, and the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society
Genealogy - One-on-One Help with your Family Tree
Sunday, March 7, 12 - 2 pm

Take advantage of the Library's extensive reference collection and Internet connection and one-on-one guidance from experienced genealogists. Bring your materials and your questions to the Library. Registration requested but not required, call 415-567-3327 ext. 704.
Wake Up with The PJ Library®
A sing-along with Octopretzel

Sunday, March 7th
11 am - 12 pm

What is an Octopretzel? Octopretzel is a fantastically folksy, magically musical, dreamily danceable, and singably sweet band that plays music for humans of all ages. Kids and grown-ups will love this interactive and engaging musical extravaganza. Kosher snacks provided.

Octopretzel is a group of professional Bay Area musicians and educators. Their music is folk and bluegrass-inspired, whimsically playful and fun, with Jewish themes and an underlying sensitivity for nature, feelings, and story. Members of the band are Melita Doostan, David Doostan, Jen Miriam Kantor, Sarita Pockell, and Dave Rosenfeld.

The PJ Library ® sends free Jewish books and music once a month to Bay Area Families with young children. To learn more about The PJ Library, or to enroll, visit www.pjlibrary.org.

Co-sponsored by The PJ Library and Gan Noe Preschool

The PJ Library in the San Francisco Bay Area is generously funded by the Jim Joseph Foundation, the Harold Grinspoon Foundation, and the Jewish Community Endowment Fund of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties.
Breadline USA: The Hidden Scandal of American Hunger and How to Fix It
A talk by Sasha Abramsky

Tuesday, March 9, 7:30 pm

Within the Jewish tradition we are instructed to feed the hungry and to take care of the weak and vulnerable. Sasha Abramsky grew up in London in the 1970s and 1980s with an upbringing that made him sensitive to social injustices. The strong association of food with love and connectedness in Jewish households made him acutely aware of those who do not have enough to eat. Abramsky set out to meet the working poor and to experience and learn about the problems of hunger today. Breadline USA chronicles his seven-week experiment living on a poverty budget and documents the personal stories of people who are now suffering from food insecurity.

Sasha Abramsky is a freelance journalist and senior fellow at Demos, a New York City-based think tank. Born in England, he studied politics, philosophy, and economics at Oxford University and journalism at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Abramsky moved to California in 2003 and teaches writing at the UC Davis writing program. His newest book is Inside Obama's Brain.

Co-sponsored by Congregation Emanu-El, Hazon Bay Area, Progressive Jewish Alliance, the Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice at the University of San Francisco, and the Jewish Community Relations Council
Trailers Schmailers
A presentation by Jenni Olson

Thursday, March 11, 7:30 pm

Trailers Schmailers, curated by Jenni Olson, is a feature-length compilation of Jewish movie trailers from the Marx Brothers to Schindler's List. A mixture of humor, social commentary, and powerful drama, these previews offer a unique insight into the relationship between Hollywood's studio marketing departments, the growing visibility of Jews in American life, and how Jews have been portrayed on screen. Through her talk and screening of trailer highlights, Olson will present a crash-course in Jewish film history from 1937 to 1997.

Jenni Olson is an authority on LGBT cinema history. Author of The Queer Movie Poster Book, a 2005 Lambda Literary Award nominee, Olson was a founder of PlanetOut.com, where she established the massive queer film industry resource PopcornQ. She continues to write about queer films, as well as curating, collecting, and creating them. Her feature debut, The Joy of Life, premiered at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival.

Co-sponsored by the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival and Zeek: A Journal of Jewish Thought and Culture
SUNDAY March 14

Who's Who: The Jew and the Mask
Community exhibition

Artist's Reception: 1 - 3 pm
Curator's Talk: 2 pm
Be a Superhero and Make Your Own Mask
A workshop with Barbara Cymrot

Sunday, March 14, 12 - 2 pm

What do Superman, Batman, Batgirl, Spiderman, and the Fantastic Four have in common? Like most of the great legends of the comic book world they were created by Jewish artists. Learn about your own special powers and make a super mask. Zoom! Zap! Splat!

Barbara Cymrot is a bead artist and an enthusiastic teacher. Texture, patterns, and the interplay of beautiful colors are her focus in beading, and she loves to share her knowledge to help students of all ages develop their own excitement for Jewish art.
The Jewish Film Class
The Jazz Singer

Thursday, March 18, 7 pm

The masking of Jewish identity is a theme deeply entwined with the development of film, echoing the real-life ambivalence of the Jewish moguls who developed the American movie industry. This installment of the Library's film class will explore this idea through three very different films depicting protagonists at odds with themselves. Come for a group viewing, incisive analyses, and spirited discussion. Taught by Library Director Howard Freedman. Films are shown in video projection.

In the film that marked the transition from silents to talkies (although it is largely a silent film), Al Jolson stars as Jakie Rabinowitz, a gifted singer whose desire to perform popular music conflicts with his father's expectation that he become a cantor. Following Rabinowitz as he anglicizes his name, adopts blackface for his performances, and struggles with his family and tradition, this film would be the most explicit cinematic representation of a Jewish identity crisis for decades. USA, 1927. 89 minutes.

(See Ari Y. Kelman's lecture on April 22 for an exploration of the phenomenon of blackface)
Hebrew Storytelling for Young Children
with Dina Bedak

Sunday, March 21, 11 - 11:45 am

Storytelling has always been a vital part of the Hebrew tradition and children love stories! Dina Bedak will bring Hebrew stories to life using props and toy instruments. Children ages five and younger will enjoy singing, playing, and listening to stories that will awaken their imagination and a love for books. Grown-ups are welcome to join in and share the fun. Kosher snacks provided.

This program will be in the Hebrew language without translation.

Dina Bedak grew up on a kibbutz in Israel and has been teaching young children in the Peninsula for many years. She currently teaches at Peninsula Temple Beth El and Congregation Beth Jacob.

Book Group Coordinator Jim Van Buskirk will facilitate a lively discussion one Sunday a month at 2 pm at the Jewish Community Library. Pick up your copy of the book at the Library or at the JCCSF this spring, anytime during regular hours, and then come join the conversation - and feel free to invite your friends! There is no charge for materials or attendance. For more information contact Jim Van Buskirk at (415) 567-3327 x 712 or jvanbuskirk@bjesf.org or visit www.bjesf.org/library_bookgroups.htm

March 21, 2 pm
Meir Shalev: A Pigeon and a Boy (2006)

During Israel's 1948 War of Independence a young homing pigeon handler, in his final moments, sends off an unusual gift to his girlfriend. Years later a middle-aged tour guide falls in love with his childhood sweetheart and uncovers a secret connection to the bird handler.
Quartets #3: Music of Erich Korngold and Viktor Ullmann
A performance by the Bridge Players

Thursday, March 25, 7:30 pm

Erich Korngold (1897-1957) and Viktor Ullmann (1898-1944) were Jewish composers from Bohemia. Korngold immigrated to Hollywood in 1934 and became a celebrated composer of film music, winning an Academy Award for his score to The Adventures of Robin Hood. Viktor Ullmann remained in Europe, writing and teaching, and in 1942 was sent to Theresienstadt. He died in Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Interestingly, each composer wrote his third and final string quartet in the early 1940s. How do these quartets serve as a passionate summation of their musical output? Does the music itself express the different circumstances under which they were written? The Bridge Players, led by violinist Randall Weiss, will perform both string quartets and answer these questions.

Randall Weiss, violinist, made his solo violin debut as winner of the Victoria, B.C. Concerto Competition. Currently assistant concertmaster of Symphony Silicon Valley, he previously served for 17 years as assistant concertmaster of the San Jose Symphony. Mr. Weiss is the founder and music director of Music in the Mishkan, a chamber music series in San Francisco.

Leslie Ludena, violinist, attended the Eastman School of Music and joined the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra in Washington, D.C. in 1995 and played operas, ballets, and Broadway musicals. She moved to San Francisco in 1998 to join the San Francisco Opera Orchestra.

Natalia Vershilova, violist, was born in Leningrad and graduated from the Leningrad Conservatory. She is a member of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, has performed with the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, and has served as principal violist with the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra and the Russian Chamber Orchestra.

Victoria Ehrlich, cellist, performed with the Santa Fe Opera and Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival prior to joining the San Francisco Opera Orchestra in 1984. Ms. Ehrlich has performed with the San Francisco Ballet and the San Francisco, Berkeley, and California Symphonies.

The Bridge Players began performing together in 2000; their debut CD, Tales from Terezin, includes music by Viktor Ullmann.

Program made possible, in part, by Mike Zimmerman
Co-sponsored by Congregation Sha'ar Zahav and the Holocaust Center of Northern California

Genealogy - One-on-One Help with your Family Tree
Sunday, April 4, 12 - 2 pm

Take advantage of the Library's extensive reference collection and Internet connection and one-on-one guidance from experienced genealogists. Bring your materials and your questions to the Library. Registration requested but not required, call 415-567-3327 ext. 704.
Heather Klein's Inextinguishable Trio:
Hungry for Yiddish

Thursday, April 8, 7:30 pm

Led by Heather Klein, the Inextinguishable Trio have distinguished themselves as dynamic interpreters of lesser-known Yiddish art songs. For their appearance at the Library, the Trio will present a program of songs addressing hunger, homelessness, and hope for a better world. Photographer Su-Yin Mah's contemporary images from the streets of San Francisco will be on display, reminding us that the themes of these songs remain with us.

Heather Lauren Klein received her Masters degree at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Ms. Klein was in the national tour of Meshuga Nutcracker! with the National Jewish Theatre Festival and often performs with The Three Yiddish Divas in Vancouver and Winnipeg.

Alla Gladysheva, received her Masters degree from the Leningrad Conservatory and moved to the US in 1995. She is a pianist for the San Francisco Ballet School and is a professor of music theory at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Jonathan Russell, clarinetist, has a Masters degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. In 2009 he served as music director, composer, and arranger for The Illuminated Book of Invisible Stories. Mr. Russell is a member of the bass clarinet quartet Edmund Welles and the Balkan/klezmer/experimental band Zoyres.

The Inextinguishable Trio recently made their debut tour in New York City and their CD is Mayn Yiddishe Vel.

Su-Yin Anne Mah is a published photographer and poet. She has a Masters in Fine Arts in Cinema from San Francisco State University.

Co-sponsored by KlezCalifornia
Behind the scenes with Josh Kornbluth
Andy Warhol: Good for the Jews?

Tuesday, April 13, 7:30 pm

Josh Kornbluth developed his new one-man show Andy Warhol: Good for the Jews? in response to Warhol's 1980 series of paintings of such figures as Albert Einstein, George Gershwin, Golda Meir, and Gertrude Stein. Kornbluth will discuss the process of creating the show, and how researching Warhol's motives helped him wrestle with his own religious identity and upbringing.

Josh Kornbluth is the author and performer of the celebrated monologues Love & Taxes, Ben Franklin: Unplugged and Citizen Josh, among others. In 2001, Kornbluth and his brother, Jacob, produced the movie Haiku Tunnel. Kornbluth hosted the weekly KQED-TV program The Josh Kornbluth Show from 2006 to 2008, interviewing such figures as Annie Leibovitz, Alan Alda, Helen Mirren, and Michael Tilson Thomas.

Program made possible, in part, by David and Julie Levine
Co-sponsored by the Contemporary Jewish Museum and The Jewish Theatre of San Francisco (TJT)

Andy Warhol: Good for the Jews? Original workshop commissioned by the Contemporary Jewish Museum, 2009.

Andy Warhol: Good for the Jews? plays April 8 through May 16, 2010 at TJT
The Jewish Film Class
Zelig

Thursday, April 15, 7 pm

In Woody Allen's most unusual film, "human chameleon" Leonard Zelig attracts worldwide attention for taking on the physical and cultural characteristics of the people in his environment. Brilliantly incorporating real and fabricated newsreel footage, this fictional documentary is set against the background of American popular culture of the 1920s and 1930s and the emergence of psychoanalysis into the mainstream.

USA, 1983. 79 minutes.
Sundays @ 2.00 Drop-in Book Club

April 18, 2 pm
Anya Ulinich: Petropolis (2007)

Sasha Goldberg escapes the confines of her Siberian town, first landing as a mail-order bride in Phoenix, before making her way to suburban Chicago, to Brooklyn, and back to Russia in this smart, darkly humorous, satire about coming of age in the 20th century.
The Jews and Blackface:
A Troubling Legacy
A talk and presentation by
Ari Y. Kelman

Thursday, April 22, 7:30 pm

As songwriters, nightclub owners, record producers, and performers, Jews have had a strange and intimate relationship with African American popular culture. This relationship became most visible and most troubling in the blackface acts of Jewish performers like Al Jolson, Sophie Tucker, and Eddie Cantor. Although they were trading in the popular forms of the day and occasionally even paying tribute to African American performers, these luminaries leave a peculiar body of blackface song, dance, and comedy received by most modern audiences with pain, confusion, or embarrassment.

So what do we make of this practice? What did it mean to audiences of the time, and what might its legacy mean to us? Professor Kelman will explore this vexing relationship through songs, film clips, and archival photos

Ari Y. Kelman is an assistant professor of American Studies at UC Davis. He is the author of two books, Station Identification: A Cultural History of Yiddish Radio and Is Diss a System: A Milt Gross Comic Reader. Most of his research and writing focuses on the intersection of American religion and popular culture. Kelman is currently working on a book about Evangelical Christian worship music in the United States.

Co-sponsored by Lehrhaus Judaica
Hebrew Storytelling for Young Children
with Dina Bedak
Sunday, April 25
11 - 11:45 am

This program will be in the Hebrew language without translation.

Dina Bedak grew up on a kibbutz in Israel and has been teaching young children in the Peninsula for many years. She currently teaches at Peninsula Temple Beth El and Congregation Beth Jacob.

Co-sponsored by Israeli House of the Consulate General of Israel and the Israel Center of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties
Sudden Jews: When Adults Discover Their Hidden Jewish Heritage
A conversation with Marny Hall, Irene Reti, Jim Van Buskirk, and Cecilia Wambach

Monday, April 26, 7:30 pm

What if you found out that an important family secret had been kept from you? Four people from very different backgrounds discuss the discovery of their Jewish heritage, the circumstances surrounding the revelation, and how it affected their lives, their relationships, and their identities.

Marny Hall discovered she was Jewish at age 30. She is a sex therapist and author whose books include The Lavender Couch, Sexualities, and The Lesbian Love Companion. Hall is also the co-author of Queer Blues.

Irene Reti is the daughter of two Holocaust refugees who hid their Jewish identities. She is the author of Keeper of Memory: A Memoir and Kabbalah of Stone, a novel about hidden Jews (conversos) in 15th century Spain. Reti is the director of the oral history research office at UC Santa Cruz.

Jim Van Buskirk, book group coordinator at the Jewish Community Library, is the co-editor of Identity Envy: Wanting to Be Who We're Not. He is currently working on an intergenerational family memoir about discovering his Jewish heritage at the age of 54, entitled My Grandmother's Suitcase.

Cecelia Wambach is professor emeritus of mathematics education at San Francisco State University. For almost eight years she has been involved in a project to research her father's ancestry, which has taken her to the Czech Republic, Israel, and Uruguay and is the subject of her forthcoming book, Hide and Go Seek: The Search for My Father's Family.

Co-sponsored by Building Jewish Bridges, Congregation Sha'ar Zahav, and the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society
The Sephardic Legacy in New Mexico: A History of the Crypto-Jews
A talk and presentation by
Dr. Stanley M. Hordes

Thursday, April 29, 7:30 pm

During his tenure as New Mexico State Historian in the 1980s, Stanley Hordes began to hear stories of Hispanos who lit candles on Friday night and abstained from eating pork. Puzzling over this phenomenon, Hordes realized that these practices might well have been passed down through the centuries from early crypto-Jewish settlers in New Spain. His theory was corroborated after hundreds of interviews and extensive research and led to his award-winning book on the history of the crypto-Jews in New Mexico.

Dr. Hordes will talk about the conversos from their Jewish roots and forced conversions in Spain and Portugal to their migration to central Mexico in the 16th and 17th centuries and their part in the colonization of New Mexico. Using slides, Dr. Hordes will describe customs and consciousness that have survived to this day, the recent reclamation of Jewish ancestry within the Hispano community, and the challenges of reconstructing the history of a people who tried to leave no traces.

Dr. Stanley M. Hordes is adjunct research professor at the Latin American and Iberian Institute of the University of New Mexico and a board member of the Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies. His book To the End of the Earth: A History of the Crypto-Jews of New Mexico was awarded the Gaspar Perez de Villagra Prize in 2006 by the Historical Society of New Mexico for outstanding historical publication of the year.

Co-sponsored by Be'chol Lashon (In Every Tongue), Lehrhaus Judaica, and the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society
Genealogy - One-on-One Help with your Family Tree

Sunday, May 2, 12 - 2 pm

The Jewish Film Class
Fictitious Marriage (Nisuin Fiktivim)

Thursday, May 6, 7 pm

A Jewish high school teacher experiencing an apparent mid-life crisis takes a vacation from his Jerusalem family and checks into a Tel Aviv hotel with a new name and life story. Mistaken on the street for an Arab laborer and offered a construction job, he assumes yet another identity, distancing him even further from the life he has left behind. Israel, 1988. 90 minutes, in Hebrew and Arabic with English subtitles.
Solo Theater, Spiritual Circus, and the Art of Making Art
A performance with commentary by Sara Felder

Tuesday, May 11, 7:30 pm

"There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others." Martha Graham to Agnes de Mille

Sara Felder, comic actor, juggler, and playwright, will perform excerpts from her new work, A Queer Divine. Using circus technique, monologues, soundscape, and movement, she contemplates the creation of art, the choreography of war, the complexity of faith�and a possible trip to the ballet. Felder will talk discuss her work and hold a talkback about her creative process.

Sara Felder is a recent winner of the Leeway Transformation Award, which honors performers committed to art and social change. She has performed with San Francisco's Pickle Family Circus, Joel Grey's Borscht Capades, and Jugglers for Peace tours of Nicaragua and Cuba, and recently opened for Joan Rivers. Felder is presently touring her solo plays June Bride, Out of Sight, Melancholy: A Comedy, and A Queer Divine.

"Sara Felder's slice of queer Talmudic vaudeville is a rare, original, and unforgettable celebration of love, faith, and the often hilarious art of juggling all that we are." San Francisco Bay Guardian

Co-sponsored by Congregation Sha'ar Zahav

Jewish Stories from Your Street and Around the World
Tales and tunes for children with Karen Golden and The PJ Library ®

Sunday, May 16th
10:30-11:30 am

Come with us on a journey from San Francisco to Eastern Europe and back again. Los Angeles-based entertainer Karen Golden delights audiences of all ages with her unique blend of stories and music. She brings the ocean to life, plays the saxophone, ocarina, and nose flute, and spins tales of Jewish wisdom. Children will move, groove, and be swept away by stories and songs of the Jewish people from all over the world. Kosher snacks provided.

Karen Golden is a performer, recording artist, writer, and teacher whose stories have been featured on television, radio and in newspapers. Her CD, Tales and Scales: Stories of Jewish Wisdom, received a National Parent Publications Gold Award in 2005.

The PJ Library sends free Jewish books and music once a month to Bay Area Families with young children. To learn more about The PJ Library, or to enroll, visit www.pjlibrary.org.

Co-sponsored by The PJ Library and Gan Noe Preschool

May 16, 2 pm
Achy Obejas: Days of Awe (2001)

When the protagonist's job takes her back to Cuba, she discovers that her ostensibly Catholic ancestors are actually conversos who converted to Christianity during the Spanish Inquisition. Enlightened by a revised understanding of her past and her culture, she uncovers new truths about relatives who struggled with their own identities so long ago.
Hebrew Storytelling for Young Children
with Dina Bedak

Sunday, May 23
11 - 11:45 am

Dina Bedak grew up on a kibbutz in Israel and has been teaching young children in the Peninsula for many years. She currently teaches at Peninsula Temple Beth El and Congregation Beth Jacob.

Co-sponsored by Israeli House of the Consulate General of Israel and the Israel Center of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties

A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs
A talk by David Lehman with songs performed by Sharon Bernstein

Tuesday, June 1, 7:30 pm

David Lehman looks at the formation of the American songbook�the timeless numbers that became jazz standards, iconic love songs, and sound tracks to famous movies�and explores the extraordinary fact that they were written almost exclusively by Jews. The stories behind these songs, the shows from which many of them came, and the composers and lyricists who wrote them, give voice to a specifically American saga of love, longing, assimilation, and transformation. Soprano Sharon Bernstein will perform some of the classic favorites from such songwriters as the Gershwins, Rodgers and Hart, Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen, and Irving Berlin.

David Lehman is editor of The Best American Poetry series, author of seven books of poems, including When a Woman Loves a Man, and six books of nonfiction, including A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs. He has received fellowships and awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and has taught at Columbia, NYU, Bennington College, and The New School.

Sharon Bernstein is a singer, pianist, composer, and cantor. Her repertoire draws from Yiddish songs, Italian Jewish musical traditions, American musical theatre, and rhythms, melodies, and harmonies from across the Jewish spectrum. Cantor Bernstein has performed in Europe, Israel, and the United States.

Program made possible, in part, by Marc and Marci Dollinger
Co-sponsored by Congregation Sha'ar Zahav
The Bowls Project
A performance and talk with Jewlia Eisenberg and Charming Hostess

Thursday, June 10, 7:30 pm

The Bowls Project was inspired by texts found on Babylonian incantation bowls from1,500 years ago. Simple clay bowls were inscribed with a householder's secrets and desires, then buried under the house. The bowls speak of mysticism and sex, angels and demons, and the trials and joys of daily life. These spiraled Aramaic inscriptions from the Talmudic period open up a larger discussion of the connections between material and literary culture; between canonized and marginalized voices; between ritual power and popular practice; and how music serves as the medium connecting these relationships.

Musical context for The Bowls Project is drawn from the female body, the rich traditions of the Babylonian Jews, and other sources, both Jewish and African, and makes a visceral connection to daily life past and present in the region known today as Iraq. Jewlia Eisenberg composed the music for the project.

Jewlia Eisenberg is a composer, extended-technique vocalist, and lay cantor. She is the founder of the group Charming Hostess, whose most recent CDs include Sarajevo Blues and Punch.
Genealogy - One-on-One Help with your Family Tree
Sunday, June 13, 12 - 2 pm

June 13, 2 pm
Dalia Sofer: The Septembers of Shiraz (2007)

Just after the Iranian Revolution, a Jewish gem trader is falsely imprisoned for being a spy. His wife struggles to keep from slipping into despair, his young daughter tries to take matters into her own hands, and far away in Brooklyn, his son falls for the pious daughter of his Hasidic landlord.
Siddur Sha'ar Zahav and Queering the Text
A conversation with Rabbi Camille Shira Angel, Michael Tyler, and Andrew Ramer

Tuesday, June 15, 7:30 pm

At 668 pages, Siddur Sha'ar Zahav is an LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning) prayerbook of unprecedented breadth. Grounded in Reform theology, it draws on prayers and readings from every major Jewish movement and tradition to form an inclusive liturgy that recognizes and includes people of all genders and sexualities.

Andrew Ramer's new book, Queering the Text: Biblical, Medieval, and Modern Jewish Stories, plays and grapples with traditional midrashim, drawing inspiration from the homoerotic love poems of medieval Spain, and envisioning alternate versions of the present.

Rabbi Angel, Michael Tyler, and Andrew Ramer will read selections, discuss the process of creation, and address the challenge of both recasting traditional texts and creating new texts to address the needs of diverse communities today.

Rabbi Camille Shira Angel has been the spiritual leader at Congregation Sha'ar Zahav in San Francisco since 2000. She is the author of Intimate Connections: Integrating Human Love with God's Love, a curriculum that sensitizes students to the lesbian/gay experience using Jewish values.

Andrew Ramer is the author of Two Flutes Playing: A Spiritual Journeybook for Gay Men, and co-author of Ask Your Angels. He was a contributor and writing coach for Siddur Sha'ar Zahav.

Michael Tyler is the co-editor of Siddur Sha'ar Zahav. As chair of the congregation's siddur committee, he is now beginning work on the companion volume, Machzor Sha'ar Zahav.

Program made possible, in part, by Richard Krieg

Co-sponsored by Jewish Mosaic: The National Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity, Congregation Sha'ar Zahav, Keshet Chavurah of Congregation Beth Sholom, and the LGBT Alliance of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties

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