Festival of the Arts

The Jewish Community Center of Metropolitan Detroit will host the Stephen Gottlieb Festival of the Arts August 25-September 1, 2013, with an exceptional program of concerts, lectures, hands-on art projects, family events, exhibits and films, and featuring Broadway star Tovah Feldshuh as Golda Meir.

The festival will be held at The Berman Center for the Performing Arts, at the JCC in West Bloomfield and at the JCC in Oak Park.

An Evening with Charles Strouse
Celebrating Friends of the Berman
Thursday, August 29th 7:30p.m.
The Berman Center for the Performing Arts

There is no other living composer from America’s songbook whose music has become part of the everyday life.  Charles Strouse’s music has attracted Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Harry Connick Jr. and Jay-Z and led to three Tonys, two Emmys and two Grammy awards.   A long standing member of the Theatre Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame with songs like I Don’t Need Anything But You and Tomorrow, Charles Strouse breathed life into the iconic Broadway characters Annie and Oliver Warbucks and left us wondering What’s the Matter with Kids Today? in Bye, Bye Birdie.  He scored legendary movie moments such as Bonnie & Clyde and gave us the opening music from television’s All in the Family, the memorable Those Were the Days.


Golda’s Balcony starring Tovah Feldshuh
Three wonderful performance opportunities:

Saturday, August 31, 8 p.m.
Sunday, September 1, 2 p.m.
Sunday, September 1, 7 p.m.

Center members: $62 Non-members: $67
(All prices include service charge)

Golda’s Balcony tells the unlikely story of a little girl born in Kiev, who later works as a teacher in Milwaukee and goes on to become the outspoken, dedicated prime minister  of Israel.  And yet, it is true!  Four-time Tony Award nominee Tovah Feldshuh brings Golda Meir to life in this remarkable story.

Tovah Feldshuh most recently starred on Broadway as Irene Gut Opdyke in “Irena’s Vow,” for which she received the Broadway World.com Theatre Fan’s Choice Award for Best Leading Actress in a Play.  For her work on the New York stage, from “Yentl” to “Saravà!” to “Lend Me a Tenor” to “Golda’s Balcony,” she has earned four Tony nominations for Best Actress and won four Drama Desk Awards, four Outer Critics Circle Awards, the Obie, the Theatre World Award and the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Actress (for “Golda’s Balcony”).  On October 3, 2004, “Golda’s Balcony” became the longest-running one-woman show in the history of Broadway.  Ms. Feldshuh made her directorial debut in New York City with Naomi Ragen’s “Women’s Minyan.”




 “By Summer’s End”
Sunday, August 25th  7:00p.m. 
All tickets are $12 (Service charge included)

It’s the summer of 1978, and everyone in Israel is talking about the Camp David Peace Accords.
Except  Michal. Michal’s concerns are right at home.  Why can’t her daughter read or write yet? Why does the girl’s teacher want to keep her back a year? At the same time, Michal’s father, Chaim, comes back into his daughter’s life after 20 years. Summer will unlock many secrets and reunite a family that has been apart for too long.

Tallit Handweaving
Sunday, August 25th  7:00p.m.   1:00p.m.-4:00p.m.
Presented by Coat of Many Colors Handweavers
Janice Charach Gallery
There is a $180 charge to make one tallit.  For reservations, please contact Gallery Director Terri Stearn at 248.432.5448

Imagine being enclosed by a one-of-a-kind tallit.  Unique because you both designed and created this work of art. Michael Daitch of Coat of Many Colors Handweavers will teach weaving to anyone, at any level.  Lessons are on a one-to-one basis, and every participant will complete a tallit in three hours or less.

Yael Kohen presents “Jewish Women in Comedy”
 Tuesday, August 27th 7:30 p.m.
Presented by the Henry & Delia Meyers Library and Media Center
Co-sponsored by the Annual Jewish Book Fair

This gift to the community, sponsored by the library’s Special Speaker’s Fund, is generously underwritten by Delia Jampel and John Frank.

The eternal question: “Are women funny?”  Yael Kohen’s book We Killed: The Rise of Women in American Comedy chronicles female comedians beginning with the unforgettable Phyllis Diller, who turned stories about being a housewife into a comic career.  Joan Rivers got her start by complaining about her single life while Gilda Radner would imitate public figures as well as doing celebrity impressions.  We Killed is filled with over 100 interviews with women of comedy such as Sarah Silverman and Chelsea Handler that shows that a rich history of over sixty years of rib-ticklers belongs as much to Eve as to Adam.
 
Hilarious video clips and memorable stories will make this an engaging, laugh-out-loud evening!
Following the program, please join us for a book sale and signing with Yael.

Taste of Melton with Ruth Bergman, Instructor
Tuesday, August 27th  10 a.m.
Sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit and the Jewish Community Center of Metropolitan Detroit
Conference room 205 – West Bloomfield

Jazz at the J Series with Cliff Monear and Nicole New
Tuesday, August 27th 1:30 p.m.
Marion & David Handleman Hall
All tickets are $9 (Service charge included)

Detroit’s own Nicole New brings her unique style, drawn from her eclectic performances of jazz, pop, bluegrass and musical theatre, rich tone and rhythmic phrasing to the Jewish Community Center. 

Cliff Monear’s jazz group, The Cliff Monear Trio, is one of the busiest performing rhythm sections in the Midwest.  Mark Stryker, Detroit Free Press music critic wrote “what gives the music personality is Monear’s suave touch, relaxed swing, fresh melodic and harmonic turns and the unpretentious way he draws on familiar influences.”
Together, Nicole New and Cliff Monear perform music by Jewish composers from the 1940’s through the 1990’s.

Rabbi Benjamin Blech
Yeshiva University professor and author of The Sistine Secrets: Michelangelo’s Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican
Presented by the Jewish Community Center of Metropolitan Detroit’s SAJE (Seminars for Adult Jewish Education)

Two remarkable presentations:
 “The ‘Jewish’ Sistine Chapel: The Hidden Jewish Messages of Michelangelo”
 “The Holy Jewish Treasures in the Vatican: A Miracle on a Mission to Rome”
“The ‘Jewish’ Sistine Chapel: The Hidden Jewish Messages of Michelangelo”
Wednesday, August 28, 2013   7:30 p.m.
The Berman Center for the Performing Arts
Jewish Community Center, West Bloomfield

The Vatican’s original plan for the Sistine Chapel was for Michelangelo to create 12 grand, impressive portraits of the Apostles. Instead, the artist painted the famous ceiling with a complex design of more than 300 figures – none of whom is Christian. Why?
For hundreds of years the mystery remained unsolved.
Rabbi Benjamin Blech put together all the pieces of an extraordinary story - a brilliant artist, an underground of freethinkers and a private group of Kabbalists - and finally found the answer.
Please join us as Rabbi Blech reveals the truth behind the secrets of the Sistine Chapel and the many surprising Jewish messages hidden on and behind the Vatican’s formidable walls.


“The Holy Jewish Treasures in the Vatican: A Miracle on a Mission to Rome”
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Noon (Lunch and Learn)
Jewish Community Center – West Bloomfield

The Vatican library is home to more than 800 ancient and valuable Jewish manuscripts.  How did these come to be part of the Vatican collection, who uses of them and what is their fate?
Rabbi Blech is one of the few rabbis in history to have established a close relationship with the head of the Catholic Church and one of only three rabbis ever to be invited to the Vatican to confer a blessing on the Pope.
You’re invited to hear Rabbi Blech discuss his intriguing private meeting with Vatican leaders to consider the future of those Jewish treasures.  The rabbi also will reveal a modern miracle that he witnessed, in reference to a famous Jewish text, while in Rome.

Rabbi Benjamin Blech is a professor of Talmud at Yeshiva University and the author of 12 best-selling books, including three of the popular Idiot’s Guide series and Understanding Judaism: The Basics of Deed and Creed, which the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations called “the single best book on Judaism in our generation.” A frequent lecturer in Jewish communities throughout the world, Rabbi Blech has written for Newsweek, The New York Times and Newsday.


For a full schedule of events at this year’s JCC Stephen Gottlieb Festival of the Arts, log on to www.jccdet.org. All tickets may be ordered by calling (248) 661-1900 or visiting www.theberman.org.  The Berman is located at 6600 W. Maple Road in West Bloomfield.