Paul Weston is a seemingly successful psychotherapist and family man, but in reality both his professional and personal life are falling apart. Increasingly drawn into the dilemmas of his patients, Paul finds himself forced to confront some uncomfortable truths of his own.
The new HBO drama series IN TREATMENT kicks off MONDAY, JAN. 28 (9:30-10:00 p.m. ET/PT) on HBO, debuting new episodes Monday through Friday at the same time. Each half-hour episode shows a session between Paul and one of his patients, with the same patient returning for another session on the same weekday throughout the series’ nine-week run.
IN TREATMENT is executive produced by Rodrigo Garcia, whose HBO directing credits include “Big Love” and “Six Feet Under”; Hagai Levi, creator of the hit Israeli series on which the show is based; and Stephen Levinson and Mark Wahlberg, who are also executive producers of HBO’s hit series “Entourage.”
IN TREATMENT stars Gabriel Byrne (“The Usual Suspects,” “Vanity Fair”) as Paul, Josh Charles (“Sports Night,” “Four Brothers”) as Jake, Embeth Davidtz (“Schindler’s List,” “Junebug”) as Amy, Melissa George (“Alias,” “30 Days of Night”) as Laura, Blair Underwood (“L.A. Law,” “Dirty Sexy Money”) as Alex, Mia Wasikowska (“Suburban Mayhem”) as Sophie, Dianne Wiest (Oscar® winner for “Hannah and Her Sisters” and “Bullets over Broadway”) as Dr. Gina Toll and Michelle Forbes (“Kalifornia,” “Battlestar Galactica: Razor”) as Paul’s wife Kate.

Director, Producer, Writer Hagai Levi and Writer, Producer Nir Bergman were recipients of America-Israel Cultural Foundation scholarships www.aicf.org

YIDDISH THEATER: A LOVE STORY was one the TOP 10 Documentaries of 2007 in About.com and received great reviews in the NY Times and the LA Times. It was a huge success in NY, LA and Tel Aviv.
It tells in ENGLISH the heart warming story of one week in the life of Zypora Spaisman, the amazing woman who kept the Yiddish Theater alive in NY. With a loving eye and lots of Jewish humor Katzir follows Zypora and her fascinating troupe as they try to keep her Yiddish play afloat on the roller coaster of off-Broadway life.

Forgiveness, a psychological thriller that explores the tragedies of the Middle East, is a daring hybrid of realism and fantasy. David, a young American-Israeli, returns to Israel to join the army, only to find himself in a catatonic state. He returns to New York under his father's care, believing that his horrific past is behind him…until his love for Lila, a Palestinian woman, reopens the gates of his trauma zone.
"Forgiveness provides us with a measure of the distance between our capacity for understanding and the terrors we choose instead…trembling the underground, indeed."
-Tony Kushner, writer, Angels in America
"An Israeli film the likes of which has never been seen."
-Meir Schnitzer, Maariv, Israel

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Wednesday this week will be the last day in my position as the Director of Film and Theater at the Consulate General of Israel in NY.

It was a great opportunity to meet each and every one of you and a great pleasure to work together on so many projects. Although with some of you this is a "goodbye", with most of you this is rather "hello" and the beginning of a new journey and mutual work.

Please feel free to contact me at any time at: sh@fantasiafilmsproductions.com or at: 917-605-1305. Our website will be up and running in the next few weeks, so please visit it soon! www.fantasiafilmsproductions.com.

See you in the movies!

Shani.

Shani Hashaviah
Director of Film & Theatre
Department for Cultural Affairs
Consulate General of Israel
T. 212.499.5440
F. 212.499.5445
shanih@newyork.mfa.gov.il
____________________________________________________________

Fantasia Films Productions, LLC

"…The more wishes you make, the more magnificent Fantasia will become…."

© The Never Ending Story, 1984.

Shani Hashaviah, Founder, Managing Director and Producer

Shani Hashaviah is the Founder, Managing Director and Producer of New York City based Fantasia Films Productions. Hashaviah is recognized for her expertise and extraordinary ability to promote foreign films in the USA and Canada.
Due to her broad experience in managing commercial responsibilities as well as her expertise of Israeli arts and artists, Hashaviah joined the Office of Cultural Affairs at the Consulate General of Israel in NY in 2006 as the Director of Film and Theatre. She was in charge of promoting Israeli Culture and Art in the United States and Canada, responsible for submitting films to International Film Festivals as well as Jewish Film Festivals and established contacts between Israeli distributors and U.S.A. clients.
Each year, during the Fall and Spring semester Shani produce and coordinated screening tours for Israeli filmmakers across the U.S.A. and Canada, master classes and workshops. Screenings events took place in Jewish Community Centers, Cultural Centers, Museums, International Film Festival, Jewish Film Festivals, Universities, High Schools, Jewish Federations and Movie Theatres.
Referred to as a "The Face of Israeli Cinema in NY", Hashaviah is regularly contacted by the American and Israeli film industry in regards to consulting and help with their productions. She coordinated "Running-to-Oscar" campaigns and is well known as a lecturer about the development of the Israel cinema from the 1950's to our days, about the contemporary Israeli cinema, Israeli productions, provides information on major documentary and feature films and the film industry and market in Israel.
Hashaviah's work was featured in "Film Festival Today", "Indiewire", "Fest21", Pnai Plus" (Israeli magazine), "silive", www.normanfinkelstein.com, "NY Blue Print" to name a few.
She is a member of The Israeli Union of Performing Artists (IUPA), New York Women in Film and Television (NYWIFT), The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in NY (NATAS) as well as trainee member of the Producers Guild of America (PGA).

Kim Fishman, Treasurer, Manager and Producer

Kim Fishman is a Producer and the Founder of Hear No Evil Films. Over the past several years Fishman became very active in the film community and established relationships with film festival directors and commissions while volunteering her time to support the independent film community.
In addition to her writing and directing short films and other media projects Fishman successfully produced award-winning feature film "Fat Girls" and documentaries such as "Through Thick and Thin" and "39 Pounds of Love". Her Strong business background enables her to combine business sense and creative talents to ensure a successful motion picture.
Fishman started working in the film business as a producer in 2002 and founded Hear No Evil a year later. She was the Director of the Dallas/FT. Worth chapter of IndieClub.com, growing the group from 20 to 750 members during that time, and programmer for the Texas Filmmakers Series. Fishman later became the LA IndieClub Chapter Director with over 1,500 members and wrote articles for their website.
Fishman is a former board member of Women in Film of Dallas.

Assaf Tamir, Creative Director

Assaf Tamir is the Creative Director of Fantasia Films Production. He is an acclaimed artist and designer; and over the past 8 years had the chance to work in NYC on many art projects, shows, films, theater and fashion sets.
Tamir was the head designer for 'FFF' The Traveling Circus Party, and the set designer for "The Lady in Gray", "A New Beginning" mini series and "Noa Guy - Drops Of Consciousness II". He has had solo and group exhibitions in Israel and New York (The Tel Aviv Museum in Israel and Lalia in NY to name few).
With background in architecture and engineering as well as fine art, he is a valuable addition to our establishment.

Cumbancha is pleased to announce the worldwide, digital-only release of "Minee Koleh Mibehi (Refrain Thy Voice From Weeping)," a new single from The Idan Raichel Project, one of the most successful and acclaimed world music ensembles. Available exclusively through iTunes, the new track is the first new single to be released internationally since the end of 2006 when The Idan Raichel Project's self-titled debut album was first presented to the world by the Cumbancha record label.

Voice of Love concert features David D’Or, the Israeli singer & composer, and John Yin, the award-winning singer from Taiwan. This concert and Gala dinner are brought to you by Tzu Chi Foundation USA.
David D'Or, gifted with a unique voice and musicality, is a winner of nine Gold and Platinum records. He has been greatly influenced by the teachings of Master Cheng Yen (www.tzuchi.org), and deeply touched by Tzu Chi’s efforts across the world. These experiences have inspired him to write songs such as “Like a Garden”, “We are family” and “Living with Love”.
John is known for his passionate performances and his ability to move the audience by pouring his emotions into the songs. His motto is:”When singing good songs, sing the song well.”
David and John are touring throughout the United States, performing concerts to spread good thoughts and boundless Great Love. Proceeds from their performances go to the Tzu Chi Foundation to carry out charity mission.

More About David D’Or
Born in Israel, David D’Or is a very famous star in Israel and throughout the world with his powerful tone and musicality in singing. He is a creative singer, writer and composer. His music style manages to combine classical, world and ethnic music to a perfect harmony. His unique counter-tenor voice is characterized as voice from heaven and led him to perform in the presence of the Pope at the Vatican and the King of Thailand. In January 2008, he was invited by Dr. Martin Luther King III to sing in Harlem, New York in celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. His angelic singing is the voice of love calling out to people around the world. For more details, please go to David’s official site at www.daviddor.com.
About Tzu Chi
Tzu Chi Foundation was established in 1966 by Venerable Dharma Master Cheng Yen in Taiwan. For over 42 years, the foundation has been contributing to better social and community services, medical care, education and humanism in Taiwan and around the world. From the first 30 members, housewives who saved two cents from their daily grocery money to help the poor, the foundation has grown to over five million supporters in 45 countries.

Master Cheng Yen firmly believes that suffering in this world is caused not only by material deprivation but, more importantly, also by spiritual poverty. She feels that the lack of altruistic love for others has been the root of many problems in this world. Thus, the foundation’s guiding principle on charity is to “help the poor and educate the rich.”

Tzu Chi focuses on giving material aid to the needy and inspiring love and humanity to both givers and receivers. In addition to charity, the foundation dedicates itself in the fields of medicine, education, environmental protection, international relief work and the establishment of the world’s third largest marrow donor registry. It also promotes humanistic values and community volunteerism.

In 1984, Taiwan Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation USA was established in California, as a non-profit 501(c)(3) charitable organization. Since then, 62 local offices have been established with more than 100,000 supporters in the U.S. working to make a difference in their local communities.

Geva Alon is one of the most versatile and accomplished Israeli singer-songwriters of the last decade. He was born in a small Kibbutz (Then still a socialist commune-like community) close to the ruins of Caesarea. He wrote his first song at the age of 14 and took the guitar seriously, practicing countless hours as a kid. As the founder & leader of "the flying baby" – probably the most powerful rock trio Israel has ever produced – he became known as an extraordinary & inventive guitar-player, capable of both hot-fierce fret-work solos and long slow moving jams into the unknown. But Alon is more then that – a gifted songwriter, he wrote all the lyrics & music to the band's songs. As a singer he possessed a haunting & surprising vocal register - sometimes comparable to early Neil Young.
With the band Alon had recorded 3 albums (their debut is still officially unreleased). Their second album, "inner world" (2001) was hailed as "The best non-Hebrew Israeli rock album since ("the Churchills" legendary psych LP from) 1968". The Band toured extensively all over California for sixteen months & played mostly in & around the bay area. "Pain to give"- their 3rd album was released in 2004 on the "Blue Sun Music" Label to rave reviews. It contained dark memorable moments such as "Doorway To Simplicity" (with a great & gloomy Tom Verlaine's "Feel") alongside long excursions as "Bound To Go Crazy".
In 2006 Geva Alon released his debut solo album "Days Of Hunger". This was a surprising acoustic-based effort, with country-rock & acid-folk edge that met with a tremendous success in Israel. Alon's live performances, usually in small Tell Aviv clubs, drew more & more people in the last 3 years, and he is regarded as a great performer with a "take-no-prisoners" attitude & a tendency for long surprising guitar workouts. "The Wall Of Sound", Geva's latest solo album was a much more rock-oriented journey. A well crafted combination between The Flying Baby's electric power, a dose of pop sensibilities and the acoustic "feel" of his debut. The album sold a couple of thousand copies 3 weeks after its release & the single "Modern Love", an emotional acoustic take on Bowie (the only cover on an all-original album) became an instant hit in Israel.
Photo by Dudu Bachar

Acclaimed bassist Avishai Cohen, whose most recent recording, Gently Disturbed, continues to earn rave reviews, will visit NYC from August 28th through 31st. Cohen will be joined by the same trio – Shai Maestro on piano and Mark Guiliana on drums – who perform with him on Gently Disturbed, which Jazz Times recently lauded as “scintillating”, Downbeat praised as “simultaneously delicate and fierce,” and which the Washington City Paper called “unpredictable” and “deeply compelling.”

The first of three concerts in celebration of Israel’s 60th, we present two of the best examples of the new face of American/Israeli music. Trumpeter Frank London recovers the lost sounds of klezmer, taking the music back to its 19th-century roots with the Klezmer Brass All Stars.
And pianist Omer Klein, a rising star in the Israeli/New York jazz movement, offers a program of his deeply melodic, utterly original compositions, tinged with the sounds of the Middle East.
This concert is partially underwritten by the America Israel Cultural Fund in celebration of Israel’s 60th Birthday.

Merkin Concert Hall continues the celebration of Israel's 60th with a performance of Olivier Messiaen's beloved Quartet for the End of Time. Written in the German POW camp Stalag VIII-A, Messiaen's work flew in the face of Nazi oppression. A group of top musicians, including clarinetist Charles Neidich, will honor the composer's centenary with this performance, along with music of Israeli composers who have upheld Messiaen's humanitarian spirit.
Musicians include:
Moran Katz, clarinet
Arnaud Sussmann, violin
Gal Nyska, cello
Vincent Sangare Balse, piano
This concert is partially underwritten by the America Israel Cultural Fund in celebration of Israel’s 60th Birthday.

Holocaust Concert of Remembrance
Celebrating 60 years of Israel’s birth and the and the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht.
Featuring the Israeli Ensemble Klezshop

Inspired by their Jewish roots, the dynamic and wildly popular musicians of Soulfarm and the Moshav Band will offer up their unique blends of rock, reggae, folk, funk, and soul for this year’s Daniel Pearl World Music Days concert at the Museum.

Chava Alberstein, vocals & guitar

Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 4 in A major
Tchaikovsky, Symphony No 4 in F minor
Gustavo Dudamel, Conductor

Bernstein: Halil
Bernstein: Concerto for Orchestra, “Jubilee Games”
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 4 in F minor
Gustavo Dudamel, Conductor
Eyal Ein-Habar, Flute

Bruch: Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor
Bach: Double violin concerto in D minor
Brahms: Symphony No. 4 in E minor
Gustavo Dudamel, Conductor
Pinchas Zukerman, Violin
Nitzan Bartana, Violin
American Friends of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra Benefit Gala
Photo by Ben Antman

Yoni Rechter, vocals & piano
“Yoni Rechter has made a great contribution to the Israeli music scene.” – Radio Hazak

David Greilsammer, music director & piano
Gilad Harel, clarinet
Rameau: Overture to Zoroastre
Mozart: Masonic Funeral Music for Orchestra in C minor, K.477
Keren: New Work for Clarinet, Piano, Narrator and Ensemble (world premiere, 92nd Street Y commission)
Bernstein: “Kabbalah Variations” from Dybbuk Suite No.2
Mozart: Piano Concerto No.22 in E-flat Major, K.482

Martinu: Duo No.1 for Violin and Viola, “3 Madrigals”
Rachmaninoff: Sonata for Cello and Piano in G minor, Op.19
Faure: Quartet for Piano and Strings No.2 in G minor, Op.45
Jennifer Koh, violin
Jaime Laredo, viola
Sharon Robinson, cello
Benjamin Hochman, piano
Benjamin Hochman was a recipient of America-Israel Cultural Foundation scholarships.

David Broza, vocals & guitar
“The richness of Broza’s language, the imagery and overall meaning stand uncompromised.” – The New York Times

Distinguished Artists in Recital:
Pinchas Zukerman – Violin and viola
Mark Neikrug – Piano
Mozart: Sonata for Violin and Piano in B-flat Major, K 454
Shostakovich: Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op.147
Takemitsu: From Far Beyond Chrysanthemums and November Fog for Violin and Piano
Franck: Sonata for Violin and Piano in A Major

Chamber Music at the Y
Alexander Fiterstein, clarinet

MASTERS OF THE KEYBOARD
Shai Wosner, piano
Program:
Vivier: Shiraz
Debussy: Preludes, Book 1
Schumann: Carnaval, Op.9

Distinguished Artists in Recital
Nikolaj Znaider. Musicians from the New York Philharmonic, Saleem Abboud Ashkar

Zukerman ChamberPlayers and Yefim Bronfman
Joel Quarrington, double bass
Mozart: Quartet for Piano and Strings in E-flat Major, K.493
Schubert: Quintet for Piano and Strings in A Major, D. 667, “Trout”

The Tokyo String quartet with Alon Goldstein, piano
Beethoven: Sonata for Violin and Piano in F Major, Op. 24, “Spring”
String Quartet in C minor, Op. 18 No.4
Piano Sonata No.4 in E-flat Major, Op. 7
String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 18, No. 6

Rounding out Merkin Concert Hall’s celebration of Israel’s 60th, we will spotlight the long history of cantorial music, which has produced some of the greatest singers the world has ever known. The tradition continues to this very day, as shown by this concert featuring David Lefkowitz, Richard Botton, Mo Glazman and Jill Abrahamson—four of the best cantors from New York’s dynamic, diverse Jewish community.Featuring Nadav Lev on classic guitar.
This concert is partially underwritten by the America Israel Cultural Fund in celebration of Israel’s 60th Birthday.

Born in Europe, they came to live in a new country, intent on creating music for a nation in its infancy. The first generation of Israeli composers drew on their European training and on the sounds of the Middle East to forge a unique musical identity for the nation of Israel. Leon Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra perform works by Israel’s musical patriarchs: Ben-Haim, Partos, Seter, Tal, and Sternberg.








Location Address:

Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center

Inspired by the existential literary themes of Franz Kafka and the style of Alberto Giacometti, Zagreb-born artist Varda Rotem presents 11 bronze sculptures that grapple with the human condition.

photo above:Varda Rotem, Just Before, Bronze sculpture,2007.

50 highly intricate papercuts for a Passover Haggadah by virtuoso artist Archie Granot, specially commissioned for a private collection. Combining complex geometric motifs with Hebrew text, the multi-layered papercuts are technically amazing and visually stunning. Granot lives in Jerusalem; his work is featured in the collections of the Jewish Museum, New York, the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

photo above:Archie Granot, Sh’foch, papercut Haggadah page 38, 53cm x38cm (21" x15"), 2007. Courtesy Yeshiva University Museum.

“…When you rush though an office, your days and your life – When do you stop and see the moments; the unbelievable universality and the unparallel uniqueness of your numerous single-moments?...”

A visual journey that lasted eleven nights –

The colors, fantasies, rhythms and creations – all placed together for reflection and synthesis, as suggestions to unimagined destinations.


Mon-Fri 9:00 am-4:00 pm

photo above:Adi Zekcher, "Netherlands" - Day 147, Oil on Canvas, 2008

In this exhibition organized by the Aperture Foundation, Neil Folberg’s spectacular 2001 series of black-and-white photographs captures the drama and spirituality of night skies in Israel and the Sinai. Born in San Francisco, Folberg resides in Jerusalem, and is a former student of Ansel Adams. His photographs have been collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Bibliothèque National, Paris, and the Tel-Aviv Museum.

photo above: Neil Folberg, Ein-Saharonim, toned gelatin silver print, 1998. Courtesy Neil Folberg and the Aperture Foundation.

Dana Melamed is one of the selected artists in the 183rd biannual exhibition at the National Academy museum on Fifth avenue, Manhattan. The show runs May 29th through September 7th.

Founded in 1825, the national academy is an honorary association of professional artists, a museum and a school of fine arts. Among its academicians and exhibiting artists are Frank Lloyed Wright, Frank Gehry, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Andrew Wyeth.

“The National Academy museum presents its biannual invitational exhibition, an exceptional selection of contemporary works by over 125 of the finest artists from across the country”.

photo above:Dana Melmed, "No One Nowhere"

The dazzling video installations of the Israeli-American artist Michal Rovner project teeming masses of little anonymous figures onto the walls of a room or large rocks, appearing to crawl all over the flat planes and craggy surfaces. They give a sense of mass humanity, of a dynamic culture and of man’s vulnerability and insignificance in a large society.

Michal Rovner was a recipient of America-Israel Cultural Foundation scholarships.

This exhibition is curated by Dr. Kenneth Wayne, Chief Curator of Collections and Exhibitions.

photo above:Michal Rovner. Culture Plate #4. 2003. Digital projection and panel. 48 in. diameter. ©Michal Rovner. Photo courtesy the artist and PaceWildenstein, New York.

Mother Economy, a film by Israeli artist Maya Zack, is a meditation on Holocaust remembrance and an homage to resourceful women during violent periods of political upheaval. Wearing glasses, a lace-collared blouse, and her hair neatly arranged in a bun, the protagonist maintains order and composure by performing domestic chores with scientific precision and efficiency. The homemaker locates and identifies objects belonging to absent family members while broadcasts from the radio suggest the destruction and chaos occurring outside her controlled space. She traces a tennis racquet, cigarette ash, pocket change, and other personal artifacts on paper covering the walls and floors. The paper is pink, a color associated with financial newspapers and femininity. Taking on the role of home economist, she proceeds to catalogue objects before her. Using an abacus and formulas from her notebook, she compiles data to bake a round kugel (noodle pudding) which is cut to resemble an economic pie chart.

Both the artist and her fictional character struggle to make sense of personal and collective trauma when information is scarce. Zack’s video was strongly influenced by a visit to her grandmother’s former house in Kosice, a city in present-day Slovakia. Unable to enter the house, Zack tried to imagine the interiors-both present and past. For the film’s mise-en-scène, Zack incorporates period clothing and furniture, but it remains an incomplete sketch of the past. Although the work is entitled Mother Economy, the artist intended her hero’s identity to remain ambiguous. The protagonist may be a dedicated non-Jewish housekeeper who remained in the house long after the family’s deportation and continued to perform rituals in their absence. If she is the Jewish mother, she survives because of calculated efforts to distance herself from traumatic memories.


Maya Zack (Israeli, b. 1976) lives and works in Tel Aviv. Her work has been exhibited at the Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art (Tel Aviv), Altneuland Gallery (Berlin), The Israel Museum, The Haifa Museum of Art, The Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and the 4th Gwangju Biennale in Korea. In 2008 Zack was awarded Germany’s Celeste Art Prize for Mother Economy.

photo bove:Maya Zack (Israeli, b. 1976)
Mother Economy, 2007
HD transfer to DVD, 19 min.
Courtesy of the artist

Israeli born photographer Orit Siman-Tov’s latest series, Leisure Time in Israel, takes a look at contemporary Israelis and the leisure activities they enjoy. This series goes beyond the images we have become accustomed to in the evening news and presents a diverse community participating in familiar activities, such as sunbathing and skiing. These relaxing images create an introverted tension, in so far as they are in direct contrast to the more common images of armed conflict and political strife that the region is known for. Siman-Tov’s work has been exhibited all over Israel, Germany and the United States.

photo above:Orit Siman-Tov,Ein-Bokek, 1997,color print

Born in Jerusalem, Israel in 1975. Yoav Horesh has lived the US since 1997. He has exhibited nationally and internationally including at Palazzo Milano, Jerusalem National Theatre, PRC Boston, StoneCrop Gallery, Nathan Bernstein Gallery and with Amnesty International in NYC among other venues. Yoav’s work is part of the collections of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Museum of New Art and other private collections. He has been the recipient of various awards and commissions including the Agnes Martin Award and the Mortimer Frank Grant.

In his body of work, “Aftermath”, he explored sites of recent terrorist attacks after they were repaired and the destruction erased not only from the landscape, but from the collective memory. Yoav provides the viewer an alternative gaze at otherwise mundane or ordinary places and each photograph, by virtue of the medium, inevitably turns the viewer into a latecomer at the depicted site, as the images depict a tale of the loss of experience. The viewer is challenged to first recognize, and then digest the idea of the aftermath, as an ongoing process rather than the moments and remnants of physical destruction itself.

photo above:Yoav Horesh, Pre-Fabricated Homes in Nitzan for relocated settlers. 2005.

The Flomenhaft Gallery is proud to announce their summer group exhibition. Come, browse and feast your eyes on some the most exciting works by our gallery artists and selections from our collection.

Several of Dina Recanati’s works on view occupy a special place in her development and are so exciting they should not be missed. Dina's books but not what one would expect, working in both wood veneer and bronze. Books as objects were natural subjects for Recanati. They record for posterity lives lived, their memories, triumphs and vulnerabilities. Books engage the reader as no other medium, for in their reading we give our fantasies free reign.

photo above:Dina Recanati, Book, 1987, Bronze
Work from Neil Folberg's series "Feast of the Senses…In Umbria," his latest excursion in photography, is included. Folberg combined all of the elements that have characterized his earlier photographic work, evocative landscapes and architectural settings, portraiture and the use of artificial lighting to create an almost surreal, intense light that evokes the richness of Renaissance painting. But to this he has added an additional element, that of theater. Also, for his photographs in the book, "Travels with Van Gogh and the Impressionists" (Abbeville Press), with text by Lin Arison, Neil Folberg has been awarded the 2008 Bronze Medal by the Independent Publisher, Voice of the Independent Publishing Industry.

The photographs from Neil's Impressionist series, as well as additional photos from the Umbria series are available to view in our annex. Other wonderful artworks by Dina Recanati are on view in our annex as well. The Summer Exhibition includes works by Emma Amos, Romare Bearden, Paul Brach, Jean Dubuffet Miriam Schapiro, Mira Lehr, Roger Shimomura, Jaune Quick-to-see Smith, Linda Stein, Carrie Mae Weems and Rimma and Valeriy Gerlovin.

The UJA Federation of New York presents a selection of mixed media works by Tamar Hirschl, featuring Jerusalem and other cities of Israel. Curated by Laura Kruger.
Visitors must be signed into the building.

photo above:Tamar Hirschl

Point of View Gallery is proud to present "Summer Group Show", a photography exhibit opening July 24th, which portrays a compilation of various artists that have shown their work at the gallery in the past.

Head curator, Amelie Sourget, has chosen the best and favorite pieces from our vast collection to be on display for your viewing pleasure through the month of August.

The series of art pieces at the show is comprised of photographs ranging from conventional photography to more contemporary, multi-media art.

Among the artists being shown are two Israeli born photographers, Drew Tal and Tamir Sher. The two artists seem quite different in style and subject matter, but in actuality, they each share a passionate interest in world religions, an interest that is strongly represented in their art.


Tal's sensuous, powerful works: 'Faith" and "The Word", on display, reflect the artist's own intimate narrative about spirituality, religion and social consciousness. To quote Gallery & Studio magazine: "Tal's special gift [is] to make idealized human faces and figures speak volumes about the conflicts between the flesh and the soul... revealing the spiritual side of beauty and, conversely, the beauty of spirituality."

Sher's amazing photographs are of the Holy Land itself, Israel. Sher was born in Tel Aviv and feels a strong connection to his land and his religion. He feels that, "By encompassing both day and night in each visual impact, the lines are starkly drawn between light and dark, just as they are on many levels in everyday life."

New works on paper by gallery artists:
Jeffrey Beebe, Miriam Cabessa, Frederick Jesser, Cheryl Kelley, Miki Lee, Anthony Lister, Fahamu Pecou.

Summer Sangria Soiree: Thursday, August 14th. 6-9pm
Exhibition Dates: August 1st - August 31st
Tues. - Sat. 11-7 & Sunday 12-6



image above:Miriam Cabessa

The works of Israeli Artists, Orly Aviv, Aviva Baharav and Rei Dishon will be on display in the Chelsea International Fine Art Exhibition at Agora Gallery. The Chelsea International Fine Art Exhibition represents not just artists, but the countries and communities they hail from, each piece reflecting a little of humanity's many faceted soul. Out of respect for this and in an effort to grant joy to children in need, 25% of Agora Gallery's proceeds of sales resulting from the competition exhibition will be donated to Art Start an award-winning, nationally recognized program. Art Start works with children and teens facing the daily uncertainties and instabilities of living in homeless shelters. Though these children face many obstacles, they have dreams. Art Start uses the arts to provide them with opportunities for success. They give them the tools, structure, support and most importantly a chance to be heard.
To view Orly Aviv’s work, please visit: www.agora-gallery.com
To view Aviva Baharav’s work, please visit: www.agora-gallery.com
To view Rei Dishon’s work, please visit: www.agora-gallery.com

Gallery Hours: Tues-Sat 11am-6pm

image above: Orly Aviv, Lusi
Digital Print on Paper
2007

Samy D. is a pioneering ceramic artist, living in Israel and creating since 1997. His works are well published in dominant design and fashion journals and are held at the homes and galleries of important art collectors around the world. Samy D.'s store in Shabazi st., Neve-Zedek, lead a significant change in the Israeli world of ceramic functional art: it is for the first time that a dominant studio continuously presents the works of an artist, bearing his individual signature and its dynamics along the years. This signature is characterized by innovative and humoresque lines interwoven with ever- classic fineness.

photo above:SAMY D, Green Canistar

The Museum of American Illustration at the Society of Illustrators presents “Politics ‘08”. Opening September 4th through October 4th, 2008, the exhibition will showcase the original art from today’s top illustrators surrounding this year’s primaries and general elections. With recent coverage of debates, a growing awareness in politics has piquied the media’s interest in political illustration and caricature once again, creating an array of important and controversioal images, Through magazine ebsites and artist’s blogs, illustration is bringing Americans together online to discuss the politics of the day, stressing the importance to vote in the upcoming elections. Art from magazines and newspapers of all political affiliations will be represented in this exhibit, allowing artists to express their views on the 2008 election in print and in a variety of new media.
Curated by former Art Director at TIME Magazine, Edel Rodriguez, the exhibition features the work of political illustrators including Steve Brodner, Philip Burke, Tim O’Brien, Hanoch Piven, Stephen Kroninger and Barry Blitt. Original art used for print by Rolling Stone, The New York Times, TIME Magazine, The New York Observer and the controversial New Yorker cover of Barack and Michelle Obama will be on display along with the printed publications.

In her pictures of performers and wrestlers from small towns in Ukraine, Eastern Europe, England, and Israel, Chelbin offers a glimpse into worlds both strange and familiar. The settings, costumes, and even some of the subjects themselves may seem exotic, but her portraits look beyond that to capture a transcendent sense of individual character.

To purchase Michal's monograph by Aperture visit:
www.aperture.org

photo above: Michal Chelbin,Jenya in My Hotel Room, Ukraine, 2005

Silverstein Photography Gallery is having it’s second Annual (SPA), with the curatorial nominees and their corresponding selection of Photographers. As part of the gallery’s ongoing effort to provide exposure to emerging artists whose work incorporates the medium of photography, Silverstein Photography annually invites ten prominent curators to nominate one artist whom they feel deserves the opportunity for further exposure within New York’s cultural milieu. This year, particular emphasis has been placed upon the inclusion of curators from international institutions, reinforcing the gallery’s commitment to providing an avenue for those artists working outside of the United States.
Ickowicz was chosen to exhibit by Nissan Perez, Photography curator in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

image above:Gaston Zvi Ickowicz, from the Dry series (1) 2007-2008, inkjet print

what is piven made of?
spend an evening with him and find out!

Piven will talk about the serendipitous nature of his career, how it all started by chance but mainly about how the move away from NYC, coincidence, chutzpah, innocence and luck along with a flexible and open mind helped him develop his career into other areas beyond the traditional restrains of Illustration.

Global Illustrator Hanoch Piven was born in Uruguay, raised in Israel and schooled in New York’s School of Visual Arts.
two years following his SVA graduation Piven won the Society of Illustrators Gold Medal in the Editorial Category. Although Piven left NYC for Israel, his colorful and witty collage portraits have remained a constant presence in the American Illustration appearing in most major American magazines as well as in the Annuals of Illustration. All this, while his work became nationally in Israel by leading a major advertising campaign for a major newspaper, conducting creative workshops throughout the creating two TV shows in Israel and in Spain and being involved in some other projects he doesn’t remember now.

Direct from Safrai Gallery in Jerusalem, this traveling exhibition and sale will feature a collection of 1500 works of art by 100 Israeli artists displaying original oil paintings, watercolors, lithographs and etchings.

image above:
Peter'g
Ring around the Roses
32x39.5 cm 12.75x16
Serigraph

Pilobolus in Israel, 2008; photographs by Robert Whitman
80 photographs by photographer Robert Whitman of the internationally acclaimed modern dance troupe Pilobolus, taken in the stunning landscapes of Israel.

In the mid-20th century, the world was amazed by the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. These parchment texts, created more than 2,000 years ago, were found, starting in 1947, in caves located near the western shore of the Dead Sea. This exhibition features six scrolls, none of which has ever been seen in New York City; three are being exhibited for the first time anywhere. Treasured and revelatory, the Dead Sea Scrolls, together with over 30 artifacts discovered in Qumran, near the caves where the documents were found, provide unique insights into the livees of ancient peoples and the formulation of modern religious practice.

This exhibition represents the collaboration between the Israel Antiquities Authority and The Jewish Museum. All of the objects are from the National Treasures of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

For the first time in the history of humanity, more people live in urban than rural areas. The new media and still images from Uri Dotan address this increasing phenomenon, and therefore talk to people across the world who live an urban lifestyle. Movement, of people, vehicles, light, water and air, is a common characteristic in Uri’s oeuvre. The completion of movement never occurs, like movement on a Mobius strip. On an unending loop into infinity the viewer has the notion of time never ending or perhaps being frozen in time. In some of Uri’s work this urban landscape looks forward into the future, with the architecture and sounds compelling the viewer to contemplate not only the present, but the future of our urban and natural environments.

Uri Dotan is an Israeli artist based in New York who has exhibited his work all over the world. Born in Jerusalem, he began his career in Tel-Aviv in 1983 as the co-editor of art magazine Tatrama and the pioneer of the legendary artistic community on Shenkin Street. He exhibited two one-man shows in Tel-Aviv before moving to New York to pursue an MFA degree in Computer Art from the School of Visual Arts. After graduating he went on to exhibit in Santa Monica, Princeton, New York, Tokyo, and Vienna. His recent work includes video and sculptural projections, sound and web installations, and digital prints. His various exhibitions include 3 solo shows at Paul Rodgers Gallery, 3 group shows at Jim Kempner Fine Arts, Andrea Meislin Gallery and the Chelsea Art Museum in New York City, and in 2007 a solo show at Raw Art Gallery in Tel Aviv.


photo above: Uri Dotan, Tel Aviv Love Cycle, 2008. Archival ink on archival paper. Edition of 3 with 1 Artist Proof

Uri Dushy's suitcase man is made of steel and is an allegorical figure of the Jew who is forced to travel without a home of his own, without stopping to unload his personal baggage. Five decades after the Holocaust, Dushy has used the icon of the wandering Jew as testimony to those who perished but also as a symbol of man's eternal dream. The majority of his sculptures have been influenced by film art and theatrical set designs.

photo above:Uri Dushy

Dalia Rubin's stunning paintings re-imagine the natural world as a tranquil display of textures and forms in beautiful equilibrium. Her works conceptualize and rearrange organic shapes, while also allowing them to maintain their character: plant life still pushes through stone in these paintings, or reaches for sunlight, or floats on sea-green waves, yet with an austerity counterpoised by the lush colors that Rubin brings forth through her brushwork. Additionally, Rubin eschews creating the illusion of three-dimensional space on her canvases. Instead, her plants, stones, water, and sun are presented in stylized portraits that make powerful use of the canvas's vertical and horizontal spaces.
This is the silent, natural world we too often take for granted, and these works are more than still-lifes, more than arrangements of color and shape; with a daring mix of symmetry and abstraction, Dalia Rubin distills the universe of organic life down to its forms and textures, then raises it up for our contemplation, a world both new and intimately familiar.
To view Dalia Rubin’s work, please visit: www.agora-gallery.com

image above:Dalia Rubin:Pebbles 5
Acrylic & Mixed Media on Canvas

This will be Yael Bartana’s first in-depth exhibition at a New York museum. Bartana (b. 1970, Afula, Israel) is best known for investigating society and politics, primarily of her native Israel, through video and photography. Her P.S.1 solo show will feature approximately five videos made over the last seven years.

Organized by P.S.1 Chief Curatorial Advisor and the Museum of Modern Art Chief Curator of the Department of Media Klaus Biesenbach.

Terror is, in and of itself, an image making machine. The very point of terror is a spectacle that plays endlessly in the media. In 9/11, thousands may have died, but billions of people watched the attack and the falling towers endlessly until those images were etched into the global psyche. While terrorism and its representations have been widely discussed ever since 9/11, very few of these contemplations have tackled the issue of specific formal qualities and pictorial strategies of terrorism. The exhibition The Aesthetics of Terror tries to do exactly that; namely, it investigates certain visual characteristics of the spectacle of Terror and its echoes in contemporary art. The exhibition employs the distinction made by artist Roee Rosen on the principle gap between representations of underground terrorism, produced by terrorist groups, and images of State Terror - this is the gap between figuration and abstraction. The representational apparatus of State Terror, says Rosen, is based on the blurring or erasure of central figures, exchanging it for abstraction: Smart Bombs' aerial views of bombardments, for example, or the blocking of visibility by grids or satellite type images that obscure rather than illuminate. On the other end, representations of underground terrorism strive for a central, powerful figure or symbol - the portrait of a suicide bomber, collapsing skyscrapers and the icon of bearded Bin Laden with his golden gown and triangular composition - "this is an icon in the religious sense: a human, semi-divine person whose very appearance defies the divide of life and death", Rosen claims.



What happens when an image of war or terrorism moves from the newspaper or news networks, to the gallery or museum? What causes the shift from an image having "documentary" relevance to it becoming an aesthetic object circulating in the art system? As artists navigate these boundaries, either through direct translation or through appropriation, does violence retain its power to inspire fear and dread, or does this contextual transposition fetishize violence, stripping it of meaning through aestheticization? The Aesthetics of Terror explores the juxtaposition/integration of the traumas of the daily news with art and question the nature and purport of this integration.



The Aesthetics of Terror maps the relationship between abstraction and technology; color and violence, pixilated images and sovereignty, saturation and contour, authenticity and resolution. Much of the work in the exhibition deals less with direct depiction of violence and terror than with its media representations or perceptions of war as filtered through the media - itself a corporate entity whose failure to lay bare the species of evil that is being enacted under the rubric of a war on terror is also very much the point. The Aesthetics of Terror strives to suggest the emergence of an artistic sensibility which has been informed by the imagery and politics of terrorism in the current common culture as they have been formulated and conveyed through the popular media. Artworks might imitate or mirror this media rhetoric, identify its mechanisms to the viewer, critique it, push back or protest against it.

Through the writings of contemporary scholars from around the world, the exhibition catalogue proposes a further investigation into the image production machine of terror. Co-curator Manon Slome implements the exhibition's formalistic reading of terror imagery through the exhibited works. Co-curator Joshua Simon presents a close reading of suicide bombers videos as a case study for terror as image making. Dutch writer and curator Sven Lutticken suggests a survey of recent image wars in Europe. Israeli writer, curator and filmmaker Ariella Azoulay presents a visual essay on State Terror - through photo documentation from the West Bank and Gaza, she depicts destruction as the sovereign's architecture. German critic Boris Groys reads the Abu Ghraib photos in relation to western traditions of humiliation and survival and scholar Eric Stryker suggests an historical overview of the relations of art and terror from the French revolution to present day.

Israeli Artists include:
Zoya Cherkassky, Yitzik Livneh,Jan Tichy,Sharif Waked, Roee Rosen.

full list:
Josh Azzarella, Daniel Bejar, William Betts, Blue Noses, Chris Burden, Maurizio Cattelan, Zoya Cherkassky, Chapman Bros., Jeanette Doyle, Marlene Dumas, Harun Farocki, Johan Grimonprez, Jenny Holzer, Coco Fusco, Kent Henricksen, Jon Kessler, Fransje Killaars, Yitzik Livneh, Naeem Mohaiemen, Claude Moller, Richard Mosse, Yves Netzhammer, Miguel Palma, Cristi Pogacean, Sophie Ristelhueber , Roee Rosen, Martha Rosler, Ivana Spinelli, Stephen Shanabrook, Avdey Ter-Oganian, Jan Tichy, Sharif Waked, Andy Warhol, Catherine Yass, Yitzik Livneh

A fully illustrated catalogue will be produced for the exhibition with texts by Manon Slome, Joshua Simon, Ariella Azoullai, Sven Lutticken, and Eric Stryker.

The body of works shown is defined by Samy D. as autobiographical as each single work of the series deals with a certain part of the poem "Child Harold's Pilgrimage" by the English poet, Lord Byron as a means of representation for a segment of Samy D.'s personal and artistic biography. The works discuss the various aspects of inter-personal communication, stressing the fine differences between the intended message, the mediated message and the one received by the addressee. The theme is reflected in the art through delicate paraphrases performed on Lord Byron's text that enrich the text a subjective interpersonal perspective.

photo above:SAMY D.

Hubbard St. Dance Chicago is back with two exciting programs of dance. Program 1 includes Passomezzo a duet by Ohad Naharin, Artistic Director of Batsheva Dance Company. The duet depicts the intimate dialogue between a man and a woman. Naharin’s partnering mingles vulnerability with conflict, articulating a touching, true–to–life exchange.
Photo by Rosalie O’Connor.

Prior to founding Gallim Dance, artistic director Andrea Miller danced with master choreographer Ohad Naharin’s Batsheva, in Tel Aviv. Now, Miller presents her own explosive movement vocabulary, which hangs somewhere between elegance and insanity, in this smart, powerful program. Gallim will be presented at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival on Inside/Out. Photo by Stephen Schreiber

Jacob’s Pillow presents the dancers of Aspen Santa Fe Ballet in appealing and sophisticated work handpicked from top choreographers from all over the world. The nationally acclaimed company, dually-based in Aspen, Colorado and Santa Fe, New Mexico, is a leader in terms of dance repertory, acquiring and commissioning work from top choreographers across contemporary and ballet modes. The company’s Pillow program includes Petal by Helen Pickett, 1st Flash by Finnish choreographer Jorma Elo, Slingerland by William Forsythe, and Chameleon by Israeli choreographer Itzik Galili.
Chameleon is a dance for five women and portrays the constant metamorphosis of femininity. Galili’s work highlights the versatility of Aspen Santa Fe Ballet’s dancers, incorporating theatrical facial expressions in the movement. The Israeli-born choreographer has trained in diverse techniques himself, including traditional Israeli folk dancing, ballet, and contemporary dance. Galili danced under Ohad Naharin for the renowned Batsheva company and has choreographed for The Dutch National Ballet, Nederlands Dans Theatre II, Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genéve, as well as creating more than fifty works for his own company, NND/Galili Dance.

"Breath 22" by Noa Sagie will be presented in the upcoming D.u.m.b.o Dance Festival 2008. Sagie, an Israeli dancer and choreographer, moved to New York City after completing her 2 year army service, trained with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and was a recipient of the LCU Foundation Scholarship. Her work has been presented at the Ailey Citigroup Theater, PMT Showcase, Joria/West Side Dance Project among other venues.
"The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it:
to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it,
and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum..." (Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being)
"Joined on stage by Madelyn Biven, Gyung Moo Kim, and a red ball, Ms. Sagie swept aside traditional notions of how dance ought to occupy a stage" (G. Oliveira, GBH.tv)

Direct from Tel Aviv, the Inbal Pinto Dance Company presents Shaker — hailed by critics as “a must see,” “magical” and “fascinating” piece of dance theater. The performance Shaker is a witty blend of modern, ballet, mime and acrobatic movement. Its magical, enchanted world is enhanced by music from Chopin, Gavin Bryars and Arvo Pärt, along with 1950s Swedish folk songs performed by Japanese pop artists.

A unique stage performance, by Ilan Azriel, combining movement, dance and visual theater. Through the use of special effects, creative mechanics and acrobatic dance, inanimate objects come to life with energy, emotion and even personality, as silver industrial materials create a luminous and reflective world.

BENEDICTUS by Motti Lerner,directed by Daniella Topol
A staged reading of a play by Israeli playwright. The play takes place 72 hours before an American attack on the nuclear facilities in Iran. An Israeli arms dealer tries to rescue his sister from Teheran. He meets his childhood friend who is an influential Iranian Ayatollah and together they get involved in the last attempt to prevent the war.
Mr. Lerner has been invited to the Lark Play Development Center to present BENEDICTUS as a public reading that is part of Playwrights’ Week 2008.

The stories in "The Girl on the Fridge" made Etgar Keret Israel’s most celebrated young writer. This selection represents the best of Keret’s first collections, in which his signature blend of compelling strangeness and daring humor came to full, bizarre flower. Etgar Keret’s previous English short story collection, The Nimrod Flipout was published by FSG in 2006 to widespread critical acclaim: Keret was called “a master” in The Washington Post Book World and Newsweek wrote that “his quirky collections . . . offer a glimpse into the Israeli subconscious.”
Gary Shteyngart called the stories “oddly buoyant” and “supremely addictive” in The New York Times Book Review.

"The Girl on the Fridge", translated from the Hebrew by Miriam Shlesinger and Sondra Silverston, will be published as a paperback original by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

The Feminist Press presents:

Best-selling, internationally recognized Israeli novelist Judith Katzir recreates an artist's coming-of-age during the 1970s as she explores the concealed, erotic relationship between a teenager and her married teacher Michaela.

Judith Katzir was born in Haifa, Israel, in 1963. Her previous works include Inland Lighthouses and Matisse Has the Sun in His Belly, for which she received the Book Publishers Association’s Platinum and Gold Book Prizes, the Prime Minister’s Prize, and the French WIZO Prize.

translated by Dalya Bilu.

To This Day, Nobel prizewinner S.Y. Agnon’s last novel (first published in Hebrew in 1952), is also his last to be translated into English. It is a brilliantly accomplished and haunting work. On the surface it is a comically entertaining tale of a young writer—a Galician Jew who has lived in Palestine, returns to Europe on the eve of World War I, and is now stranded in Berlin— who wanders from rented room to rented room in a city with a severe wartime housing shortage. On a deeper level it is a profound commentary on exile, Zionism, divine providence, human egoism, and other typically Agnonian concerns. A truly satisfying novel to complete the Agnon canon.

To This Day (Ad Hena) has been translated by the eminent translator and critic, Hillel Halkin, who has also contributed an outstanding analysis of the work in an extensive introduction.

Lilith's Summer 2008 issue features the English-language debut of acclaimed Tel Aviv writer Shoham Smith, translated by Naomi Danis. Israeli artist Sigalit Landau's intriguing video "DeadSee"
(currently at the Museum of Modern Art in New York) appears on Lilith's cover and, along with images from Nelly Agassi's provocative video "A Place Where the Silence is Made of Gold," illustrates Smith's stories.
This powerful fiction and art continue Lilith's year long spotlight on Israel from a female perspectiv.

"Young Israeli Artists Make Waves in New York," the cover story of the spring 2008 issue, features a freewheeling discussion of politics, gender and culture clash, with visual artists Ofri Cnaani, Anat Litwin, and Nivi Alroy, filmmaker Gili Letzter and jazz singer Mika Hary (on the cover), brought together by anthropologist Tamar El-Or. Click here to down load the article: www.lilith.org. Click here for more about the issue:
www.lilith.org

Great news for the readers of the New York Times Magazine: a new comics story, "The Murder of the Terminal Patient" by Illustrator and Graphic Novelist Rutu Modan will be published in 17 weekly installments starting June 29.

Rutu has been also nominated for two Eisner Awards, the American comics industry’s top honor, in the categories of Best Writer/Artist and Best Graphic Album-New for Exit Wounds. The book has been published so far in nine languages and is slated to come out in Hebrew this fall.

In 1960s Transylvania where the novel begins, five-year-old Ildiko becomes victim to psychological abuse at the hands of her babysitter, Yutzi, whom she worships and follows everywhere. Though Ildiko's family immigrates to Israel soon after, Ildiko's life continues to be shaped by the secret deep within her; not until many years later is Ildiko able to reveal her story. In flashback fashion, she recounts her horror to her worried husband, who at the novel's start is nearly hysterical with worry about a recent mysterious and possibly violent incident. Only as Ildiko's story unfolds--and with it the parallel stories of her family and her husband--do readers come to understand what has taken place and how Ildiko's story has come full circle. This psychological thriller focuses on family relationships and the aftermath of childhood trauma, and although not a novel specifically of the Holocaust, the narrative is driven by characters whose lives were shaped by it, so much so that those events become a silent character in the book.

Hamutal Bar-Yosef is “immediately recognizable as a great poet,” wrote Stanley Moss. “Her poems are written about her life, which has been tragic and sometimes glorious, Israel, the Jews and their culture, what it means to be alive, the world—all very big subjects.” Night, Morning: Selected Poems is her first collection to be translated into English.

This reading is presented in collaboration with the Bronfman Center for Jewish Life.

Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies
Columbia University
THE SYLVIA AND JOSEPH RADOV LECTURES
AMOS OZ
renowned Israeli author
Agnon Professor of Hebrew Literature, Ben-Gurion University
THREE ISRAELI PERSPECTIVES

Judaism: A Culture of Doubt and Argument
Tuesday, September 23, 2008, at 8:00 p.m.

Between Israel and Palestine
Thursday, September 25, 2008, at 8:00 p.m.

A Tale of Love and Darkness
Thursday, October 2, 2008, at 8:00 p.m.

All lectures are in English.

Throughout his career, David Grossman has been a voice for peace and reconciliation between Israel and its Arab citizens and neighbors. In five new essays on politics and culture in Israel today, he addresses the conscience of a country that has lost faith in its leaders and its ideals.

In the title essay, he writes, “It is hard to talk about yourself, and so before I reflect on my writing experience now, at this time in my life, let me say a few words about the effect of a trauma, a disaster situation, on a society and on a nation as a whole.” This collection includes an already famous speech concerning last year’s disastrous Lebanon war that claimed the life of Grossman’s own son, Uri.

Moving, clear-sighted, courageous, touching on literature and artistic creation as well as politics and philosophy, these writings are a cri de coeur from a humane voice of reason during a time of uncertainty.

Journalist Leon Abramowitz never intended to immigrate to Palestine. Yet in 1922, four years after he was sent there from Europe to report on the lives of the pioneers, he discovers that the editor who dispatched him has run off with half of the paper's money, leaving Leon forgotten in The Promised Wilderness. This chain of events opens The World a Moment Later, which tells the story of Abramowitz and his two children. One son stays in Europe, while the other, young Haim Abramowitz, joins his father in Palestine, heading a group of orange pickers and destined to become a legend in his time. This is also the story of Yehezkel Klein, an ex-underground activist who wanted to be a "regular" Zionist but finds himself instead taking a vow of protest against his country-to never to leave his home; Lev Gutkin, a handsome Russian who arrives in Israel with a smoking gun after his long-standing plan to assassinate Stalin is thwarted when Stalin dies; David Bonhoeffer, a righteous nomad who tends to poor souls who have been neglected even by the Social Services; the late Naomi Riklin, who still controls the life of Doctor Riklin, healer of the infertile; Rivka Abramowitz, who eats only lemons and spices, and Shmuel Klein, a medal of honor-wearer who is an electrician by profession and a pyromaniac by hobby.

The World a Moment Later is the shadow book of the official Zionist lexicon. It is the book of those who were forgotten by the national narrative of Israel, collected here to be remembered. These are the people who did not enter the encyclopedias, but still, their lives contributed anger, wisdom, despair, frustration, bitterness, malice and endless love to the country. This is a fully-fledged humanistic novel which respects the myths of Theodor Herzl and Ze'ev Jabotinsky, but nonetheless is dedicated to the anonymous masses. It stems simultaneously from realism and fantasy, and provides an in-depth exploration of the question: what are we doing here?

Translated by Jessica Cohen from the Hebrew "HaOlam, Ktsat Acharkach".
Choice Award Winner for the 2007 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature.

A couple, long married, are spending an unaccustomed week apart. Amotz, an engineer, is busy juggling the day-to-day needs of his elderly father, his children, and his grandchildren. His wife, Daniella, flies from Tel Aviv to East Africa to mourn the death of her older sister. There she confronts her anguished seventy-year-old brother-in-law, Yirmiyahu, whose soldier son was killed six years earlier in the West Bank by “friendly fire." Yirmiyahu is now managing a team of African researchers digging for the bones of man’s primate ancestors as he desperately strives to detach himself from every shred of his identity, Jewish and Israeli. With great artistry, A. B. Yehoshua has once again written a rich, compassionate, rewarding novel in which sharply rendered details of modern Israeli life and age-old mysteries of human existence echo one another in complex and surprising ways.


About the Author:

A. B. YEHOSHUA is one of Israel's preeminent writers. His novels include Journey to the End of the Millenium, The Liberated Bride, and A Woman in Jerusalem, which was awarded the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in 2007. He lives in Haifa.

Maya Bejerano, a leading Israeli poet, is considered by many poetry readers as a national treasure. She was born in Israel in 1949, and holds a B.A. in Literature and Philosophy from Bar-Ilan University, and an M.A. in Library Sciences from Hebrew University. She has published ten volumes of poetry, and her collected poems, Frequencies, appeared in 2005. She has also published a children’s book, a book of essays, and two short stories collections. Her poems have been set to music, and her work has been translated into Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Polish, Romanian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, and Vietnamese. She has participated in numerous international poetry festivals, and is the recipient of several poetry awards, including the Prime Minister Award, the Bernstein Award, and the Bialik Award.

The Hymns of Job and Other Poems (BOA, 2008) is the first volume of Bejerano’s work to appear in English translation, thus bringing to the American reader a versatile and original poet.

Yehudit Katzir is a leading fresh female voice from Israel and her work has been translated into many languages. Dearest Anne is a coming of age story set in mid-1970s Israel. After divorce shatters her family, Rivi is raised by her neglectful mother and helps care for her two younger brothers. She documents her feelings in a diary addressed to Anne Frank.