A Tribute to Sholem Aleichem

New York, NY – In commemoration of Sholem Aleichem’s hundredth yortsayt, YIVO will be opening an exhibition of Sholem Aleichem materials featuring the newly acquired Sholem Aleichem Family Archive. To kick off this exhibition, YIVO will feature two Sholem Aleichem tribute events at the Center for Jewish History: John Zorn and his ensemble will be featured in the first-ever live performance of music Zorn wrote to accompany the Filmworks Sholem Aleichem documentary on Wednesday, May 18th, 7:00 pm and on Sunday, May 22nd, 3:00 pm there will be an afternoon program featuring dramatic readings by actors Shane Baker and Eleanor Reissa followed by a discussion of Sholem Aleichem’s work and legacy by scholars Jonathan Brent, David Fishman, Mikhail Krutikov, Curt Leviant, and Alisa Solomon. This event will feature a reception.

One of the founding fathers of Yiddish literature, Sholem Aleichem is often remembered for his comic characters and his folksy representations of Jewish shtetl culture. His best known character, Tevye the Milk Man, gained fame in the Broadway musical, Fiddler on the Roof. YIVO’s events and exhibition will provide a deeper and fuller picture of Sholem Aleichem’s work, exploring him in a historical context that will illuminate his influences and legacy.

YIVO’s exhibition of Sholem Aleichem materials will feature the newly acquired Sholem Aleichem Family Archive, as well as other manuscripts, photographs, unique sound recordings, and other rarely seen materials from the YIVO archives. This exhibition will be on view at the Center for Jewish through for free through Fall 2016.

Please find more details about each event below:

John Zorn’s score for Filmworks XX: Sholem Aleichem
May 18th 2016, 7:00 pm
Center for Jewish History | 15 West 16th Street • New York, NY 10011
Tickets are $20 (General Admission), $15 (Members and Students)
Advance tickets available at: http://www.yivo.org/Sholem-Aleichem

John Zorn and his ensemble will be featured in the first-ever live performance of music written to accompany the Filmworks Sholem Aleichem documentary. Drawing on and departing from Jewish musical traditions, Zorn’s score is filled with lyricism, color, and a keen sense of irony and dark humor, echoing the stylistic approach of Sholem Aleichem. The performance will feature John Zorn, accordionist Robert Burger, harpist Carol Emanuel, and the world acclaimed Masada String Trio; Mark Feldman, Greg Cohen, and Erik Friedlander.    

A Tribute to Sholem Aleichem
May 22nd 2016, 3pm-6pm
Center for Jewish History | 15 West 16th Street • New York, NY 10011
Admission is free – registration is required
Reservations available at: http://www.yivo.org/Sholem-Aleichem

This afternoon tribute to Sholem Aleichem will feature dramatic readings from Sholem Aleichem’s Menakhem-Mendl and more by Shane Baker and Eleanor Reissa, and a discussion of Sholem Aleichem’s work and legacy by scholars Jonathan Brent, David Fishman, Mikhail Krutikov, Curt Leviant, and Alisa Solomon. Topics covered will range from Sholem Aleichem in historic and contemporary Ukraine, Fiddler on the Roof and Sholem Aleichem in popular culture, and Sholem Aleichem’s continuing legacy. The event will feature a reception.

These events are supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and Ukrainian Jewish Encounter.

About YIVO

The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is dedicated to the preservation and study of the history and culture of East European Jewry worldwide. For nearly a century, YIVO has pioneered new forms of Jewish scholarship, research, education, and cultural expression. Our public programs and exhibitions, as well as online and on-site courses, extend our outreach to a global community. The YIVO Archives contains 24 million unique items and YIVO’s Library has over 400,000 volumes—the single largest resource for the study of East European Jewish life in the world. yivo.org / yivo.org/the-whole-story

About John Zorn

Drawing upon his experience in classical, jazz, rock, hardcore punk, klezmer, film, cartoon, popular, world and improvised music, John Zorn has created an influential body of work that has defied academic categories. Born and raised in New York City, he is a central figure in the Downtown Scene, incorporating a wide variety of creative musicians into various compositional formats. His work is remarkably diverse and draws inspiration from Art, Literature, Film, Theatre, Philosophy, Alchemy and Mysticism as well as Music. He founded the Tzadik label in 1995, runs the East Village performance space The Stone and has edited/published six volumes of musician's writings under the title ARCANA. Honors include the Cultural Achievement Award from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture and the William Schuman Prize for composition from Columbia University. He was inducted into the Long Island Hall of Fame by Lou Reed in 2010 and is a MacArthur Fellow. In 2012 he was honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters and given three honorary doctorates from SUNY Purchase, New England Conservatory and the University of Ghent.

About Shane Baker

Shane Baker is the best-loved Episcopalian on the Yiddish stage today.  As director of the Congress for Jewish Culture, he is helping to produce events marking Sholem Aleichem’s 100th yortsayt around the world and he comes to the YIVO directly from one such performance in Tel-Aviv, his Israeli debut.  He also recently starred as Vladimir in his own Yiddish translation of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, produced Off Broadway and internationally by the New Yiddish Rep. The New York Times pronounced Baker’s translation ‘even more depressing than Beckett’s original.’  Upcoming appearances include dates in Los Angeles and San Francisco this June with frequent stage partner Miryem-Khaye Seigel.  Mentored by the last great stars of the Interwar European Yiddish stage, Baker is renowned not only for his translations and acting, but also for his recitations of Yiddish poetry.

About Eleanor Reissa

Eleanor Reissa is a Tony nominated director, an Israel Prize nominated musical adapter, an award-winning playwright, a choreographer, actor, and singer.  On Broadway she directed, choreographed and starred in THOSE WERE THE DAYS which received two Tony nominations including for her direction of a musical.   Most recently, she directed Robert Klein at Town Hall in a new review FROM MOSES TO MOSTEL written by Glen Berger with music by Frank London;  and a workshop with Sally Field in a one-woman show, THE SCUTLEY PAPERS by Jamie Wax. Her playwright commissions include Yiddishpiel (the national Yiddish theatre of Israel) adapting and directing YIDL MITN FIDL from the film classic into a theatre musical.  Her commission from the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene to adapt, direct and choreograph HERSHELE OSTROPOLYER with Mike Burstyn received high praise and extended its run for a second season.  It then transferred to Tel Aviv where it was nominated for an Israel Prize.  She is proud to have received an honorary chair at Colgate University, where she directed and choreographed THE THREEPENNY OPERA.  Eleanor’s directing career has included mentoring new works as well as interpreting classics; from COWGIRLS (an original country/classical musical) at Minetta Lane to THE SKIN GAME by John Galsworthy at the Mint Theater. As a playwright, her plays have been premiered in Chicago, workshopped in New York, Los Angeles and Seattle.  An anthology of her plays, “The Last Survivor and Other Modern Jewish Plays” are being published this year. For six years, she was Artistic Director of the Folksbiene Theatre in NYC.  Her productions received critical acclaim in New York City and around the U.S.A. As an accomplished actress and singer, she has performed in theaters on and off Broadway and throughout the U.S.  Her latest recording has just been released with Frank London and the Klezmer Brass All-Stars.  She has appeared in numerous films and on TV.

About Alisa Solomon

Alisa Solomon is a professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, where she directs the MA concentration in Arts & Culture. A longtime theater critic, reporter, and dramturg, her work has appeared in The Nation, New York Times, NewYorker.com, The Forward, TheDailyBeast.com, Tablet, The Drama Review, and other publications, and the Village Voice, where she was on staff as a critic and reporter from 1983 to 2004. Alisa is the author of Re-Dressing the Canon: Essays on Theater and Gender (winner of the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism). Her latest book, Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof, was named an “editor’s choice” in the New York Times Book Review and won the Jewish Journal Book Prize, the George Freedley Memorial Award presented annually by the Theatre Library Association, and the Kurt Weill Prize. As dramaturg, her latest project is Anna Deavere Smith's Pipeline to Prison Project.

About Curt Leviant

Besides teaching and writing about Yiddish and Hebrew literature, Curt Leviant is also an award-winning writer of fiction.  His novels have been published in eight European languages, in Israel, and in South America. His most recent novels are the critically acclaimed King of Yiddish and Kafka’s Son. The latter has already appeared in French translation where critics have called him “a worthy heir to Kafka.” Among Curt Leviant’s books are translations from the Yiddish of five volumes of Sholom Aleichem’s works and four by Chaim Grade, including The Agunah and The Yeshiva, which won a National Jewish Book Award.  Mr. Leviant has also translated works by other major Yiddish writers, including Isaac Bashevis Singer and Avraham Reisen. In addition to his work at Rutgers University, Curt Leviant has been a Visiting Professor at Columbia University and has guest lectured at Dartmouth, the University of Virginia, the College of Charleston and other universities, and at synagogues and Jewish community centers. He has won writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rockefeller Foundation and several times from the New Jersey Council on the Arts.

About David Fishman

David E. Fishman is Professor of History at the Jewish Theological Seminary and Senior Research Scholar at YIVO. He is the author of several books including "The Rise of Modern Yiddish Culture", and was for many years the editor in chief of YIVO's Yiddish language journal "YIVO Bletter".  Fishman is director of JTS's academic and research program in the former Soviet Union, Project Judaica, which collaborates with universities in Moscow and Kiev. He recently finished writing "The Book Smugglers", which tells the story a group of Vilna ghetto inmates who rescued Jewish cultural treasures from the Nazis and Soviets.

About Jonathan Brent

Jonathan Brent is a historian, publisher, translator, writer and teacher. For eighteen years (1991-2009) he was editorial director at Yale University Press where he established the Annals of Communism series. His books include Stalin’s Last Crime (2003), and Inside the Stalin Archives (2008). Brent has translated poems of Joseph Brodsky and Vladimir Mayakovsky and teaches history and literature at Bard College. He is currently writing a biographical study of the Russian writer, Isaac Babel, and finishing a novel. In 2009, Brent became Executive Director and CEO of The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, where he initiated the YIVO Vilna Collections project to conserve and digitize YIVO pre-WW II collections. Brent lectures widely on Jewish, Soviet, and East European history. He has made three documentaries about his work: Stalin’s Last Plot (2009); Stalin: Man of Steel (2003); and Declassified: Stalin (2006).  His books have been translated into French, Swedish, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, and Polish.

About Mikhail Krutikov

Mikhail Krutikov is a professor at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and The Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He holds a Ph. D. in Jewish Literature from the Jewish Theological Seminary (1998) and is the author of Yiddish Fiction and the Crisis of Modernity, 1905-1914 (Stanford UP, 2001) and From Kabbalah to Class Struggle: Expressionism, Marxism and Yiddish Literature in the Life and Work of Meir Wiener (Stanford UP, 2011); he also co-edited nine collections on Yiddish literature and culture, including Translating Sholem Aleichem: History, Politics and Art, co-edited with Gennady Estraikh, Jordan Finkin and Kerstin Hoge. (Oxford: Legenda, 2012). He has been a cultural columnist for the Yiddish Forward since 1999.