The New York Jewish Week ~ Connecting the World to Jewish News, Culture, Features, and Opinions ~ Weekend Update, Friday, 25 October 2013
The Arts
Music
The Music Of 'Spoken Word'
For Jake Marmer, poetry is an outgrowth of song. (George Robinson, Special To The Jewish Week)
The stage at the Cornelia Street Café isn’t spacious. With a baby grand piano in place it is downright cramped. So it’s not surprising that poet Jake Marmer is bouncing in place as he chants, exhorts and declaims his verse while Greg Wall, Frank London and Uri Sharlin lay down a deep-pile sonic carpet to cushion his words. “It’s been a long way to get here,” Marmer says at the outset of the performance, “and I’m grateful to be in the moment.”
Being in the moment is not usually a major concern for a poet, but this particular moment is the launching of Marmer’s first CD, “Hermeneutic Stomp,” and when you are partnered by three excellent improvisers, the moment counts more than a permanent text.
Marmer is deeply committed to the idea of poetry as an outgrowth of song, so the tension between the written and the improvised is central to his jazz-and-poetry pieces. At 34 he is still a boyish presence, a slight figure in flat cap and black-rimmed glasses, looking like a throwback not to the ’50s jazz-and-poetry heyday but farther into the past, to the ’30s or even the Soviet ’20s. He is obviously constrained by the crowded bandstand, swaying at the knees like a kid working a hula-hoop, punning outrageously, invoking Talmud scholars both real and imagined. At his side Wall on tenor sax, Sharlin on piano and London on trumpet are creating a sort of soulful narrative line in counterpoint to Marmer’s language-drunk abstractions.
Marmer riffs on bits of Jewish history, as in “Painters Nigun,” in which he invokes “a song of people painting walls, walls of a shul that doesn’t exist ... cubist visions across centuries, living sounds, livid sounds.” In “Mishnah of Silence,” he puns, “Said Rav Yehuda: even silence has its laws, even silence./Even silence: smooth, perfectly pressed dry-cleaned trouser silence./But the odd-looking, wrinkled silence chewed up into a broken cosmic accordion is lawless, different every time.”
Of course, the group’s performance is “different every time,” too.
“They’re improvising, and they have the green light to do so,” Marmer explains after the set is finished. “They drive me in performance. I’m looking for the doors to open and something new to come out.”
Wall has done spoken word with music before, notably on his excellent CD of the poetry of Rabbi Avraham Kook.
“Spoken word has an immediacy to it that is very liberating for instrumentalists; the speaker can choose to reinforce or float over any rhythms suggested by the music, and the musicians can respond to the complex rhythms of speech patterns,” he wrote in an e-mail. “Miles Davis used to mention he tried to articulate speech patterns on his trumpet, as a way to break away from typical and all too familiar rhythms. Non-musicians sometimes have a refreshing way of hearing the music, and that means we can’t take their responses for granted. In addition, the text itself adds a whole other layer to the compositional process, whether pre-composed, or improvised.”
“The spoken voice is a sonic element,” London writes in a subsequent e-mail. “But [we’re] often not dealing with melody, or harmony, or even ‘rhythm’ in the most conventional sense. We have to deal with not only the sound, but also the meaning of the words. So our reactions and interactions are based on more than just musical elements.”
The set at Cornelia Street and the new CD are the product of a process that combines the composed with the improvised. When asked about the felt but unseen presence of Allen Ginsberg in some of the night’s poetry, Marmer points to the spontaneity of his own current work as a point of departure.
“I feel Ginsberg’s presence, his rabbinic cloak,” he says with a smile. “But I don’t think he improvised very much and that’s something I’m doing differently. I think I owe as much to Talking Heads and punk and the punk poetry movement as to the Beats.”
It might be counterintuitive to suggest it, but Marmer has a hidden advantage: he is not a native speaker of English (although you wouldn’t know it listening to him.) For him, English is a late addition, a veneer over the Russian he grew up with. He uses English exceptionally well, but at a distance.
“It’s not in my kishkes. So I can play with syntax structures that are broken, that raw feeling of a person just talking.”
His poetic language is plastic, malleable, fungible. If he resembles any other writer it is probably the great Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, an influence he happily acknowledges. “He is huge for me.”
In conversation, as in the introduction to the performance, Marmer keeps using the phrase “in the moment.” When asked what that notion means to him, he wrinkles his brow.
“Most of my life I’m racing after certain things,” he says. “I’m 34, I should have my Ph.D. already. Instead I’m doing this. And I’m grateful and thankful it happened this way.”
“Hermeneutic Stomp,” Jake Marmer’s CD, is the first release from Blue Thread Music, a new label specializing in Jewish music, affiliated with the magazine Jewish Currents. Marmer’s book “Jazz Talmud” is published by Sheep Meadow Press.
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An Israeli Auteur Emerges
The bard of working-class Sephardim, in film and now on the page, Shemi Zarhin is having his moment. (George Robinson, Special To The Jewish Week)
One of the most difficult things a filmmaker can attempt is to create a narrative that shifts tones abruptly but effectively; to veer between comedy and tragedy with such skill that an audience follows along unflaggingly, regardless of where the emotional currents lead.
With his latest film, “The World Is Funny,” Shemi Zarhin moves to the head of that particular class. Taken in tandem with the publication of his first novel, “Some Day,” Zarhin is emerging as one of the most gifted of a very talented cohort of Israeli auteurs. If you have any doubt of that, go to the “Shemi Zarhin Movie Marathon” Oct. 22-23. The program will include “Bonjour Monsieur Shlomi” (2003), “Aviva My Love” (2006) and “World” (2012), as well as a Q&A with Zarhin, who will read from the novel.
“I have wanted to raise awareness to Zarhin’s work for years,” Isaac Zablocki, director of the JCC’s Israel Film Center, wrote in a recent e-mail. “He has truly created a new genre of Israeli films that represents Israeli life with universal cinematic tools, but so specifically told from within. He has been the ultimate example of the rise of new Israeli culture.
Beyond the films he directs, you will see his name influencing every Israeli film that tells a universal internal story — like ‘Noodle,’ about a flight attendant taking care of a Chinese child, or ‘A Matter of Size,’ about Israeli dieters who give up on their program to be Sumo wrestlers. [Both films were written by Zarhin.] These are worlds that exist only in movies, but with true Israeli specifics that are most realistic.”
It is Zarhin’s rootedness within a specific location — Tiberias — and milieu — the aspiring Sephardic working class — that gives his films and the novel such flavor.
Consider “Aviva,” a sprightly and warm film that utilizes the old, dismissive stereotypes of Israeli Sephardim as a boomerang that turns round to clout its Ashkenazi thrower. The film’s central figure, the eponymous Aviva (Assi Levy), is a Moroccan Jew who is juggling in her job as a hotel cook, caretaker for her crazy mother, unemployed husband and three kids who suffer from a variety of character flaws and tics. At the same time, pushed by her sister Anita, she is trying to pursue a writing career under the guidance of one-book wonder Oded (Sasson Gabai). As the plot synopsis might suggest, Zarhin starts the film off in a highly comic vein, bordering on TV sitcom.
But after the first 20 minutes, it takes a sharp but well-modulated turn into something much darker. Perhaps Oded sums it up best when he asks his pupil, “You’re a funny woman, why are your stories so tragic?”
In both “World” and “Some Day,” Zarhin extends his reach daringly, combining several plotlines in rewardingly intricate mosaics. “World” expands on the theme of storytelling by centering its multiple narrative threads in a writing workshop populated by an odd mix of locals that includes Zafi (newcomer Naama Shitrit), a young woman who cleans houses and serves as one of the key links between the various characters. The main storylines feature Yardena (Assi Levy again), who is puzzled to discover that she is pregnant at 40 despite being, she thinks, celibate for years; Meron (Danny Steg) and his sons, one of whom has been in a coma for almost a decade and awakens with the mind of a 10-year-old; and Golan (Eli Finish), a disk jockey with a girlfriend dying of cancer and an obsession with the defunct comedy trio HaGashash HaChiver. Indeed, it’s an obsession that is shared by everyone in Tiberias, another link among the characters and that culminates in a wonderful shot of the town seen from a distant hill, with comedy group echoing from what seems like every radio in Northern Israel.
As in his earlier films, Zarhin is concerned here with the fraying of family ties under extreme pressure. We learn early in the film that Yardena, Meron and Golan are estranged siblings, but only will be told in the last half-hour what drove them apart. In the meantime, with his seamless camera movements and artfully matched cuts, Zarhin insists on their interconnectedness despite the years of separation. Like everything else in this deliciously complex film, it’s an elegant and very satisfying structure.
The same might be said of “Some Day.” Again the city of Tiberias and its workaday Sephardim are the center of the artistic universe. Again Zarhin gives us a protagonist with a buried talent, this time for cooking. Shlomi is an awkward 7-year-old at the outset of the novel: smart but unable to read, and madly in love with his neighbor, the precocious Ella, a daughter of survivors of the Shoah. His mother Ruchama is an unusually tall but striking woman with a unique culinary gift, one that eventually will emerge in her son as well. His father Robert is a diminutive lady-killer with long hair and a facility as a handyman. His kid brother is a language-obsessed physical weakling with a tendency to persistent ear infections. Some of the plot developments are signposted early on — inevitably, it is Hilik, the little brother, who will teach Shlomi to read. Robert will fall into bed with a couple of obvious candidates.
Zarhin’s approach to the multiple stories and dizzying shifts in point of view reflects his background as a screenwriter and director. As in “World,” he keeps the wheels spinning giddily, moving back and forth in time and space, mixing magical realism and urban grit deftly. He seldom makes the mistake of letting the surreal elements do the hard work of creating character or working through narrative complications. Rather, they are expressions of heightened emotional states, working as much metaphorically as anything else.
At 450 pages, the book feels a trifle attenuated, but not seriously so, and Zarhin sidesteps some too-obvious narrative choices neatly. The translation by Yardenne Greenspan maintains a nice control of tone, no small trick in a book whose tone shifts so frequently. But that is becoming Zarhin’s trademark.
The Shemi Zarhin Movie Marathon takes place Oct. 22-23 at the JCC in Manhattan (76th Street and Amsterdam Avenue.). For the schedule of films, Zarhin’s reading and more information, call (646) 505-5700 or go to www.jccmanhattan.org/film. “Some Day” by Shemi Zarhin is published by New Vessel Press, an excellent new house specializing in contemporary books in translation; the book is available in paperback or as an e-book; for information go to www.newvesselpress.com.
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Blogs
THE NEW NORMAL
Chayei Sarah: Countering Society's Obsession With Measurement, Comparison (Rabbi Michael Levy
We in the disability community encounter standards and measures at every turn. We often hear phrases like "high functioning," "developmental delays," "battery of tests," "number of paraprofessional hours required," "attention span," "degree of socialization," "progress in daily living activities," and "work readiness." Such measurements are often helpful and sometimes crucial, but it isn't necessary to use them to compare one human being to another.
The pressure to appear as competent as everybody else is so intense that we may "distort reality" to make people with disabilities feel that they "measure up." One hears stories of such children hitting home runs, because the opposing team has been instructed to bobble their weakly hit ball when it could easily have been caught.
I find myself wondering: Will "arranged heroics" prepare such children for employment and marriage, which demand honesty about who we are and what we can accomplish? What about the non-disabled child, who always is picked last when the captain chooses sides, strikes out three times in a game, and never receives special treatment? Can anything be done about society's obsession with measuring and comparing?
Measuring with A Spiritual Perspective
An 80-year old and a 40-year old had just passed away and were waiting to enter heaven. The 40-year-old was summoned first.
Enraged, the 80-year-old shouted, "Don't they respect the elderly in Heaven?"
The chief angel responded, "In Heaven, we don't use earthly time to measure a soul's age. If a person used his or her day well on earth, we add it to his or her spiritual age. If he or she wasted the day, then we don't count it."
"During your eighty years," continued the angel, "you used twenty years' worth of your days well. This other gentleman used 27 out of his 40 years well. In Heaven, he's older than you are. Please respect your elders and wait quietly until I call you."
The parable clarifies a phrase in this week's Torah portion "Abraham was old, well on in years," (literally, he came with many days.) The second clause of the sentence may seem superficial, but it refers to Abraham's age measured by "heavenly standards." He excelled in hospitality and divine service during his earthly existence.
How Rav Zisha Measured His Days
At the end of his life, the Chasidic Rav Zisha said, "I'm not worried if they will ask me why I didn't display the kindness of Abraham, the genius of the Vilna Gaon, or the courage of Isaac. I'm only worried that they'll ask me why I didn't become Zisha, why I didn't accomplish what I could have."
We are not obligated to be the most outstanding scholar, an admired athlete, the life of every party, or an upwardly mobile business-person. Judaism does urge each of us to use our God-given gifts each day to improve our character traits and to strengthen our communities.
To measure your days, ask yourself, "What can I do today that brings me closer to fulfilling my own individual potential?
A native of Bradley Beach, New Jersey, Rabbi Michael Levy attributes his achievements to God’s beneficence and to his courageous parents. His parents supported him as he explored his small home town, visited Israel and later studied at Hebrew University, journeyed towards more observant Judaism, received rabbinic ordination, obtained a master’s degree in social work from Columbia University and lectured on Torah- and disability-related topics.
As a founding member of Yad Hachazakah -- the Jewish Disability Empowerment Center (www.yadempowers.org), Rabbi Levy strives to make the Jewish experience and Jewish texts accessible to Jews with disabilities. In lectures at Jewish camps, synagogues and educational institutions, he cites Nachshon, who according to tradition boldly took the plunge into the Red Sea even before it miraculously parted. Rabbi Levy elaborates, “We who have disabilities should be Nachshons --boldly taking the plunge into the Jewish experience, supported by laws and lore that mandate our participation.” Rabbi Levy is currently director of Travel Training at MTA New York City Transit. He is an active member of Congregation Aish Kodesh in Woodmere, NY. He invites anyone who has disability-related questions to e-mail him at info@yadempowers.org
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WELL VERSED
Start-Up Jerusalem: A New Home For High-End Design Eva L. Weiss
The “YH” in the name of the swanky YH4 Architects’ Gallery is for Yad Harutzim (loosely translated as “Striver’s Row’’), the name of the Jerusalem street where the Gallery established itself this past year. YH4 is a leader in the budding revival of the city’s dowdy Talpiot industrial district. The neighborhood’s car dealerships, retail and wholesale enterprises and fast-food restaurants are conspicuous, but some of the city’s premier cultural and business start-ups are hidden from the eye. One of YH4’s neighbors on the fourth floor of an aging grey-cement building is the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School.
Once you leave the creaky elevator and make your way through the outdoor corridor to YH4’s glass entranceway, “you feel like you are in Manhattan,” as Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat commented on Facebook. So far, architects, design professionals, home-buyers and random visitors (the space is open to the public) are finding much to like. The founders describe YH4 as a gallery, showroom and workspace. On display are some of the most elegant fixtures, furniture, kitchens, and home electronic systems available in Israel. But beyond the upscale imports, there is an emphasis on the home grown, from an ecological wall (combining the ancient cooling elements of clay and water) to the pop-up stores featuring innovative works by up-and-coming Israeli designers.
Architect and design curator Gal Gaon chose his collection’s sliced-clouds coffee tables and metal origami wall pieces for his recent pop-up store at YH4. He notes that the YH4 provides Israel’s first open commercial space for architects and designers to work together and learn from each other. The gallery offers public talks by leading architects (“How will architects shape the city’s future?” was the first topic in an ongoing roundtable) and a professional library for browsers. “Of course, home buyers are a key focus,” founding partner Netanel Mayer is quick to add, “they are the ultimate beneficiaries of our collaborations.”
Eva L. Weiss is a writer and editor who lives in Jerusalem.
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Nosh Pit
A Classic Israeli Breakfast (Amy Spiro, Online Jewish Week Columnist
At pretty much any cafe you stop by in Jerusalem (and plenty of meat restaurants as well), you'll see shakshuka on the menu. It's a dish of North African origin that consists of eggs cooked in a spicy tomato sauce. Sounds simple? It is, but it's also delicious, cheap and great for breakfast, lunch or dinner.
It's originally a fairly spicy dish, but it is easy to tone that up or down depending on your preference. My recipe calls for a can of crushed tomatoes, but you can start with fresh, you'll just need a lot longer to cook them down into a sauce. Classically, this dish is made in a cast iron skillet (which makes it easier to finish off in the oven), but just a regular old frying pan will work too.
Recipe: Serves 2-3
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
1 small chili pepper, diced (optional)
1 clove garlic, minced
1 can crushed tomatoes
1 teaspoon spicy paprika or chili pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 to 3 eggs
Heat the oil in a medium skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring regularly, until the onions have started to brown, 10-15 minutes.
Add in the chili pepper and garlic and stir to mix, cooking for about two minutes.
Add the tomatoes and stir to mix. Let cook until the sauce begins to bubble, about five minutes. Cook until slightly thickened, another five to seven minutes. Stir in the spices.
Make two or three indentations in the skillet with a wooden spoon. Crack an egg into each indentation. Cover the pan and cook until the eggs are cooked through, five to seven minutes, depending on your doneness preference.
Serve hot, preferably with bread.
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