Jews on Vinyl Revue Wrap-Up

Roger Bennett, co-curator of the exhibition Jews on Vinyl and author of the book that inspired it, was kind enough to pen our inaugural guest blog entry about his experiences with the work leading up to the Jews on Vinyl Revue which took place at the Museum last month. Seeing as how the blog is called "Voices", we hope this will be one contribution to a growing chorus from the Contemporary Jewish Museum community.

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Part of the reason we formed the Idelsohn Society For Musical Preservation (www.idelsounds.com) was to change the legacy of the performers we meet. Over the past five years we have uncovered a lost world of Jewish Music replete with performers whose careers have been in danger of being written out of history. Our efforts have been focused on recording their stories, documenting their career arcs, and in many cases, giving them the opportunity to take the stage again, so a young audience can rock out to their sound and appreciate their legacy. Thanks to Connie Wolf and the board and staff at CJM, we were able to do this in fine style -- and in perhaps the highlight of our work so far, Idelsohn co-founder David Katznelson was able to present Irving "Fabulous Fingers" Fields with a proclamation from Mayor Gavin Newsom, declaring that it was officially Irving Fields Day throughout the city. For this reason alone, the Idelsohn Society backs Newsom for governor.

--Roger Bennett
trailofourvinyl.com

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Photos from the Event

Audience members took a trip down memory lane with the featured performers through slides of them in the heyday of their craft. Pictured are the Burton sisters, the group to which surprise guest Lynn Burton belonged.


Irving Fields, in his element once again on stage at the CJM.


Johnny Yune pulled out all the stops with his finely-honed shtick and song sharing catskills-style tales from his conversion, and ending with sonorous selections from his landmark album "Ose Shalom".

What is the Future of Memory?

By Dan Schifrin
Director of Public Programs and Writer in Residence

When Brenda Way, Artistic Director of the ODC Dance Company, spoke at the Museum in March about her new work “In the Memory of the Forest,” she was careful to note that the dance, based on an oral history of her Polish mother-in-law, was not created as a work “on the Holocaust.” Instead, the multi-media production, which explores Iza Ehrlich’s hiding in the forests outside of Warsaw during Word War II, was designed to explore the unique character of one brave and complex person, who was neither defined nor destroyed by the Holocaust.
The individuality of Iza Erlich’s narrative, along with Brenda Way’s unique ability to listen to it, suggest that the transmission of one person’s story to another is perhaps the most powerful and humane way of keeping alive not just the memory of one person, but a context to mourn those whose memories and stories were forever silenced in Auschwitz and Treblinka.

On Thursday, April 23, during the Museum’s commemoration of Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah), the Contemporary Jewish Museum will host a discussion with survivor Perry Scheinock, and oral historians Susan Rothenberg and Anne Grenn Saldinger, to discuss what happens when fewer and fewer survivors are around to tell their stories. The conversation is presented in conjunction with StoryCorps and the Holocaust Center of Northern California.
A longer piece about the issues of the Holocaust and storytelling can be found here.

Museum as Forum

"What has happened to the human voice?"

-Studs Turkel, the late oral historian, from a 2005 interview recorded when a StoryCorps MobileBooth visited his home.

I'm Ari Rinzler and I'm standing in for Dan Schifrin, Director of Public Programs and Writer-in-Residence, who normally writes here. I've been interning in Public Programs with Dan for the past six months and have had a lot of time to mull over the success of our StoryCorps Storybooth -- for the Museum, and for the Bay Area.

The Jewish tradition of storytelling has spanned from the Bible and Talmud, to Jewish folktales, to our own mothers and grandmothers, and to us. "Everyone has a story," anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff said, which "...told to oneself and others can transform the world." With StoryCorps, the Contemporary Jewish Museum, in partnership with everyone who participates, is doing the important work of documenting the personal, sometimes secret, and almost always touching and profound parts of our collective narrative.


I've often wondered if other people feel the way I do about "other people's stories." Perhaps it's my background in anthropology that gets me uncommonly excited when I hear stories, whether of loved ones or of strangers, in their gloriously mundane details. Or maybe it's how I grew up. I was the lucky one my dad turned to when he needed someone to compile life stories of his high school classmates from New Jersey for their 50th class reunion a few years ago.

I've noticed recenly that StoryCorps has done something, in the tradition of Studs Turkel, that has touched people in ways that extend beyond my esoteric geekiness. There is a certain vulnerability and openness that is required when sharing a personal story, and this openness is something that is a special part of the Contemporary Jewish Museum's mission to explore identity, Jewish and otherwise. The success of StoryCorps makes it clear that the entire Museum is a forum for asking questions, and finding answers -- multiple and overlapping, as Jewish tradition teaches -- in both art, and in ourselves.

I like the idea of any forum, like a blog, or public radio or a museum that gives voice to those who are generally not heard. So come, participate. If you haven't been able to snag yourself a slot in the booth for the winter there are still ways to be a part of StoryCorps in the coming months. This past Sunday, the facilitators hosted a very cool introduction to StoryCorps at the museum, including some demystification of what actually happens "in-the-booth." They also played some rare clips that have not yet been heard on National Public Radio. They'll be hosting another evening like this on February 12 and I hear the theme for the samples that day will be love.

If you want to record a story, mark your calendars for March 1, when the next round of slots opens up online (at www.storycorps.net)

Signing out,
Ari

The Art is YOU

By Dan Schifrin
Director of Public Programs and Writer in Residence

At the far end of the Museum’s Sala Webb Education Center, past the collage of faces and objects comprising the exhibition “Being Jewish”: A Bay Area Portrait, a small steel cottage sits. There are no works of art inside. Rather, the works of art are YOU – visitors whose life stories are as precious as the paintings in the galleries.

Starting on October 12, the Contemporary Jewish Museum will host a StoryCorps StoryBooth, part of its yearlong collaboration with the famed oral history program, selections of which are presented on National Public Radio on Friday mornings. These interviews – one person talking with another, with CD’s given to the participants, the Library of Congress, and StoryCorps for possible broadcast – are a unique opportunity to record the voices and stories of loved ones. (Slots are limited, so make your reservation soon).

To celebrate the beginning of this project, StoryCorps founder Dave Isay will speak at the Museum on Sunday, October 26. He will play excerpts from celebrated StoryCorps interviews, read from his book Listening Is an Act of Love, and talk about his work.

On Thursday, October 30, McSweeney’s editors Dave Eggers, Peter Orner, and Craig Walzer will discuss their “Voice of Witness” literary series, including the new books: Underground America: Narratives of Undocumented Lives, and Out of Exile: The Abducted and Displaced People of Sudan. This program emphasizes one of the moral imperatives of StoryCorps, which seeks, in part, to amplify the marginal voices in our society.

Despite the industrial feel of the StoryCorps booth, its modest size and shape recalls the sukkah – the special outdoor hut Jews build each fall for the holiday of Sukkot, which symbolizes both the autumnal cycle of life, and the temporary nature of our lives. Sitting there each evening sans TV and Internet, its thatched roof designed to make the stars visible, the sukkah reminds us of the importance of conversation, and the ancient tradition of family and friends sitting around the table, their stories the glue that has long kept communities together.

The StoryCorps booth, although fitted with a solid, soundproof roof, beckons us to remember how precious and temporary our stories are – unless we preserve them.

Changing the World, One Mirror at a Time

By Dan Schifrin
Director of Public Programs and Writer in Residence

It’s not often that one visits a contemporary art installation, opens up the comment book, and reads the following: “First of all, I am a broken vessel, a victim of abuse, and I am in the process of healing.” Or: “Today, June 8, makes 7 years since I lost my wife.” Other entries include promises to help the environment, or work with local schools to improve the quality of education.

If anyone has doubts that contemporary art has relevance to people outside certain cultural circles, Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ piece “Birthing Tikkun Olam,” part of the Museum’s exhibition In the Beginning: Artists Respond to Genesis, puts them to rest.

Ukeles’ installation is a unique combination of Biblical interpretation, public participation and social action. Her gallery space contains two walls of small, hand-held mirrors, surrounded by biblical texts and the artist’s kabbalistically-inspired poetry. Visitors are invited to take seriously the idea that people are made “in the image” of God, and collaborate with Ukeles to make the world a better place. More specifically, Ukeles asks visitors to fill out a public agreement to do something concrete to improve the world.

Is this too much to ask? Apparently not. Since the Museum opened in early June, thousands of people have carefully considered the request, and written out (and in some cases drawn) their commitments.

On July 31, Phase II of the installation began. On this “Day of Transfer and Exchange” (the first of three), a few dozen visitors sat in a Museum classroom downstairs and wrote out a comprehensive “covenant” with Ukeles, in which they agreed to undertake an act of tikkun olam – Hebrew for holy social work. Then they took the covenants upstairs, replacing the mirrors with their piece of paper, fulfilling the artist’s goal of making her art a full collaboration. After two more events like this, all the mirrors will have been given away to visitors, replaced with personalized agreements.

Visitors were clearly moved by the experience. “I’ve never been so fulfilled in front of a piece of art,” explained Zachary Teutsch, who works with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) union, and was in town from Washington D.C. for a conference. Echoing the artist’s mystical language, he continued: “We have power, and can create justice in the world, when we can all work together like this. When workers come together we can send sparks up to heaven, as well as send them to each other here on earth.”

Jennifer Leigh, a Palo Alto psychologist and life coach for teens, was equally moved. “I made a covenant with God when I was 12. No one has asked me to make a covenant since then,” said Leigh, the author of the forthcoming book Girls, You Just Don’t Get it! What Guys Want You to Know about Love and Respect. “I am so grateful for this invitation to dig so deeply into my heart.”Leslie Stone, from Sausalito, said that the event “gave me an opportunity to do something about the world other than complain. Having the artist include us like this is a gift.”

We at the Museum are curious to know how visitors feel about the installation as the mirrors are replaced with personal covenants. Tell us what you think

Jews, Cartooning and The New Yorker

By Dan Schifrin
Director of Public Programs and Writer in Residence

Not every boy dreams of growing up to write cartoons for The New Yorker, or books for children. But I did. In high school I often brought one-panel cartoons into my English class, hoping that my witty reference to Kafka and Shakespeare would boost my popularity (sadly, I only got extra credit, which at 16 seemed quite the booby prize).

Growing up with a younger sister, for whom I often improvised stories, songs and sometimes entire musicals, I felt it was theoretically possible to invent stories as strangely rich as those written by Hans Christian Andersen, Isaac Bashevis Singer and Shel Silverstein.

It was later in life when I realized that one man, William Steig, had managed to create both canonical cartoons and children’s books, as well as a museum full of drawings evoking the absurdity and pathos of life.

William Steig: "I got my first haircut..."

William Steig, "I got my first haircut at Ditchick's Barbershop," final illustration for When Everybody Wore a Hat (2003), pen and ink and watercolor on paper. Original version, in pen and ink and wash, c. 1959. Collection of the William Steig Estate. © 2003 William Steig.

This diverse virtuosity is on tap at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, with its current exhibition From The New Yorker to Shrek: The Art of William Steig. Apart from presenting original drawings, and exploring the genesis of books like Shrek and Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, the exhibition asks essential questions about the intersection of biography, imagination and art.

The presence of this exhibition in a museum with the words “contemporary” and “Jewish” in the title also provokes viewers to ask: What is the focus of contemporary art? What does Jewish culture mean? And how does the work of William Steig, an author and cartoonist who passed away in 2003, bring these pieces together?

For me, the answer is bound up with the development of the visual culture of The New Yorker, long the country’s most influential magazine. When William Steig broke into the rarefied world of The New Yorker cartoonists, the style and substance of the magazine was reflected in the work of Peter Arno, whose wealthy ne’er-do-wells had nothing to do with the poverty and immigrant striving of the Steig family up in the Bronx, battling the Great Depression with every financial and cultural tool at their disposal. Steig, by contrast, brought the dislocation, rugged determination and heightened emotionalism of his milieu into the magazine, giving it a particular Jewish slant, and making the magazine more relevant at the same time.

Another answer has to do with the increasingly visual nature of American, and therefore American Jewish, culture. As the work of literary cartoonists like Ben Katchor makes clear, cartoon strips, with their compression of story and allusiveness of line, speak to our contemporary hunger for maximum meaning, in minimum time.

On July 17, the Museum will host Robert Mankoff, Carton Editor at The New Yorker, who will explore the influence of William Steig on the culture of the magazine. As one of the magazine’s most noted cartoonists, Mankoff will also explain not just the development of cartoons at The New Yorker, but how the cartoon form so quickly draws us in, while simultaneously presenting so many layers of information and feeling. Click here to learn more about this event.

Contemporary Jewish Museum Welcomes All to its New Daniel-Libeskind Designed Home

On June 8, the Contemporary Jewish Museum kicked-off its inaugural year in its new building with a community wide celebration. Here is a look back at the celebration.

Director Connie Wolf speaking at the ribbon cutting ceremony.

Mayor Gavin Newsom helped Board Chair Roselyne C. Swig and architect Daniel Libeskind cut the ribbon.

Visitors lined up to visit the Museum on opening day.

Visitors in the Sala Webb Education Center in front of the exhibition, "Being Jewish": A Bay Area Portrait.


Performers included oakland-based storyteller Mary J. Smith and children's music singing sensation Jonathan Bayer.

Youngster gathering her supplies to make a souvenir poster in the Sala Webb Education Center.

Story-time in the exhibition, From The New Yorker to Shrek: The Art of William Steig.

Celebrants getting down to Kol Creations on Jessie Square.

All photos by Kira Sugarman.