Memory after the Holocaust

Ilana Abramovitch sent this one to me -- she works at the museum (one of the folks who invited me to do the educator's conference last year) and is putting this program together. I'll be in D.C. but this looks great.

Sunday, March 21
Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial to the Holocaust presents:
Memory After the Holocaust
With Douglas Greenberg, Geoffrey Hartman,
Daniel Liebeskind, Leon Wieseltier,
Yosef Yerushalmi and James Young


Sixty years after the Holocaust, memories of Nazi-occupied Europe provide the raw material for histories, memoirs, works of literature, and art. Memory After the Holocaust features three conversations, with noted thinkers from across a variety of disciplines, that explore the ways in which Holocaust memory is preserved and passed from generation to generation.



1p.m.

MEMORY, HISTORY, AND THE JEWS

Leon Wieseltier, Literary Editor, The New Republic, and Yosef Yerushalmi, Professor, Columbia University



2:30 p.m.

PRESERVING MEMORY

Douglas Greenberg, President and Chief Executive Officer, Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, and Geoffrey Hartman, Professor and Project Director, Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University



4p.m.

BUILDING & REBUILDING MEMORY

Daniel Liebeskind, Architect, and James Young, Professor, University of Massachusetts Amherst





$10 adults, $7 members/seniors, $5 students
Tickets allow access to any part of the event.

TICKETS: On-Line at http://www.mjhnyc.org or call the box office at 646.437.4202
SUBWAY: 4/5 to Bowling Green, R to Whitehall, 1/9 to South Ferry
BUS: M1, M6, M9, M15

Edmond J. Safra Hall
Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial to the Holocaust
36 Battery Place in Lower Manhattan
646.437.4200

Sing Sing

After teaching Talmud to a group of students from the New York Theological Seminary I got invited to the big house - I'll be going to Sing Sing to teach Talmud to a group of Christian inmates. They have all been involved in christian education while being incarcerated and are interested in learning from a rabbi. I think that my great uncle was a chaplain there, so this is another of those full circle experiences.

Reb Zalman

My latest project, to beam Reb Zalman into JTS via videoconferencing, is taking shape for March 8th. I recentlly stumbled across a page of Reb Zalman links which included a piece I did with him entitled Kavanah for Living. There's a copy of the address he gave at the Oberlin graduation which is a poetic and phophetic work.

A Good Read

Last night I read Nicole Krauss' short story "The Last Words on Earth" in the February 9th issue of The New Yorker. Brilliant and funny.

92nd Street Y

After Speaking today at the 92nd Street Y -- to the 60 + Senior crowd on Reconstructionism -- I met a survivor, Margot Freidlander -- who told me about hearing Leo Baeck speak in Thereisnstadt. What she said was this "People always tell shmaltzy stories of those who attempted to follow Jewish ritual in the camps but people do not realize that Baeck gave lectures on Jewish intellectual thought in the camps! On philosophy - That was what kept us going!"


A film-maker is working on a film of her life and the year and a half she was part of the Berlin Underground.

Suburban Shtick

I'm off to the Larchmont Temple Sunday morning to do a presentation entitled "What's a Nice Jewish Boy Doin' in a Place Like This?" The public is invited.

Hiding and Seeking

This Sunday Auburn is hosting a private screening of Hiding and Seeking the new film by Menachem Daum and Oren Rudavsky. I got a chance to see a rough cut of this film a few months ago. In short, the piece is brilliant - it is the journey of a devoted modern Orthodox father to teach his self-ghettoized ultra-orthodox sons to reach out beyond their enclave. The Voice gave it a fantastic review and I hope there will be more to follow.

Joel Ben Izzy

The Beggar King is a gem of a book. I met Ben Izzy when he wove a few of his tales at Auburn Theological Seminary last Fall and the acclaims his book have recieved speak to the power of this bizzare tale of cancer and coincidence. It is great to see a storyteller make a shekel or two.

March on Washington

As Bill Frist cleans his office he may also be thinking about what he'll be speaking on at Washington 14, the UJC conference coming to D.C. next month. He and "Hillary!" are the politico headliners. Rabbi Art Waskow and I are doing one of the side-shows "Speaking Truth to Pharoah" on Monday the 22nd. There is a list of all the confirmed speakers.

Little Fish in Big Pond

Last week I met Senator George Mitchell in a closed door meeting concerning Mideast Peace and I heard the Prince of Jordan speak at the Abraham Initiatives. Both events seemed hopefully optimistic in light of the bombing in Jerusalem, but optimism beats the prison building mentality any day. The highlight of the day was in between meetings - sharing a car with Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and talking about the Mideast as a big football game. It sounds like a joke - the rabbi and imam talking pigskin - but that's how it happened last week in the Big Apple - so God Bless America. On Friday I was at Columbia University's Center for Human Rights at a consult on Human Rights and Religion - another nexus to watch in the decade ahead.