Original Article Published On The Jewish Ledger

According to a 1,000-year-old Chinese legend, a great emperor was feeling lonely and sad, as his wife had gone on a journey and hadn’t yet returned. He summoned his court magician to locate her and bring her home. The magician, knowing this request was nearly impossible, thought quickly. He found a piece of leather, a knife, a light source and a screen; on-the-spot, he created a shadow puppet show about a wife returning from a journey. The emperor was happy, or at least temporarily distracted and entertained, and the art of shadow puppetry

was born. Shadow puppeteers from China to Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, India, New York City and New Haven have been entertaining audiences ever since.

One of these Shadow puppeteers is Daniel Barash of New Haven, the founder of The Shadow Puppet Workshop; their website can be viewed here: http://www.shadowpuppetworkshop.com

Through his organization, Barash works with children ranging from pre-kindergarten to 5th grade, conducting one-session puppeteering workshops or multi-session residencies. He also leads family workshops, which allow children and their parents to work together with shadow puppets.

Barash has performed and worked regularly at Temple Beth Sholom in Hamden (including Sukkot and Chanukah programs), at the Jewish Community Center of Greater New Haven (where he created a Noah’s Ark shadow puppet performance with summer campers) and at various Shabbat programs in a range of synagogues.

Barash first learned about shadow puppets at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in Manhattan while working as a bar and bat mitzvah teacher.

“I was in their Purim play and was fascinated when the directors used shadow puppets when Esther invited Mordechai and Haman to the banquet. I knew that someday, I’d use shadow puppets in my work.”

Barash went on to receive a master’s degree in elementary education from New York University. After gaining experience as part of a theater arts company at NYU, he served as a theater arts specialist in the New York City Public Schools, and for a decade performed a one-man educational theater program for students around the U.S. and in countries like Belarus, India, Laos and Lithuania.

Experiencing the Art From

But it was while working with fifth graders on a folk tales curriculum, Barash remembered the Purim play at B’nai Jeshurun, thought shadow puppets might be useful, and decided to do an experiment.

“First I explained what folk tales are, then I did a show – I still remember – it was a story about How the Big Dipper Got to Be in the Sky,’ and then I asked the students if they wanted to form a puppet company.”

The students were hooked and began writing in teams to write scripts, make puppets, and perform their stories for their classmates.

“The students designed original puppets for their shows, and a light source was projected on their two-dimensional rod puppets, casting shadows on a screen,” Barash recalled. “The audience watched the moving shadow images from the other side of the screen.”

While Barash continues to lead workshops and perform across the country, he works a great deal in Connecticut and in the New Haven area where he has lived for the past seven months. He has worked with institutions like the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, the Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital, the Foote School, New Haven Public Schools, the New Haven Free Public Library and the ChuanBao Chinese School.

In all of Barash’s workshops participants first watch a traditional shadow puppet performance and then experience the art form themselves by creating their own shadow puppet presentation.

Barash said that his workshops have helped students engage in the study of language arts and social studies, including historical, biographical and multicultural themes. Barash also notes that working with groups of students allows for students of different learning styles and strengths and weaknesses to work effectively together. Barash has many success stories.

“I passed one mother on the street, and she told me that after a recent workshop, her daughter had been designing and performing shadow puppet shows for three straight weeks in her home.”

Barash has also had some amazing success stories working with Jewish organizations and Hebrew School groups.

“One local educator told me that some of her kids who had been turned off to Jewish education were totally engaged by the shadow puppetry workshops,” notes Barash.

Barash has done programs on “350 Years of Jewish Life in America,” immigration in the 1880s and “How We Shaped History” including presentations on the Revolutionary War, The Civil War, The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, and on biographical figures like Rabbi David Einhorn, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.

Sydney Perry, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven and former long-time director of the Department of Jewish Education of the Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven, called Barash “a genius! He is creative, animated and best of all entertaining while educating. It is a winning combination and the teachers are sure

to be the beneficiaries of both his art and his pedagogy.”

On Sunday, Jan. 16, Barash will have an opportunity to share his work and talents with a large group of Jewish educators at the Jewish Community Center of Greater New Haven as part of The Judith A. Kaye Jewish Educators Annual Conference.

Barash will be teaching a workshop entitled “Shadow Stories: Using Shadow Puppetry to Explore 350 Years in America”. In this hands-on workshop, teachers will first brainstorm the many stories that can be explored using this unique medium. They will then have the opportunity to bring one of these stories to life by creating their own puppets and performing their own shadow puppet play.

Barash is passionate about his work and about its potential use in Jewish education.

“Shadow puppets can be used to explore the richness of our heritage,” notes Barash. “There are so many Jewish stories waiting to be told using this unique performance medium.”

On Sunday, Jan. 16, Daniel Barash will lead a workshop at the Judith A. Kaye Jewish Educators Annual Conference at the JCC in Woodbridge.

Original Article Published On The Jewish Ledger

It is not easy to define “Jewish music.” And it is even more difficult to define Jewish “religious” music.

Fortunately, Boston’s Robert Cohen, writer, lecturer and music historian, has been tackling questions of Jewish music for many years. He has just released a compilation CD of contemporary music, “Open the Gates: New American- Jewish Music for Prayer, Vol. 1.”

Cohen asks provocatively in the liner notes, “Jewish religious music that sounds like American folk or roots music rather than Eastern Europe, the Sephardic Mediterranean, or Israel? That owes more to Woody Guthrie or Judy Collins than to the great cantor Yossele Rosenblatt, more to Peter, Paul & Mary than to the synagogue choirs of the 19th and early 20th centuries.” Travel the country and visit synagogues and you will hear worship services which run the gamut – from the traditional to upbeat to folksy.

Cohen has been sharing his musical and historical expertise through a series of lectures on Jewish music at the JCC of Greater New Haven. The lectures are part of a year-long celebration of the 350th anniversary of Jewish Life in America.

Cohen’s first lecture, entitled “The American-Jewish Immigrant Experience in Song” addressed the issue of music as social l history. Cohen’s second lecture, was entitled “Jewish Music Into the Mainstream: Themes in Popular, Classical and Folk.” In this talk, Cohen noted, “Throughout the past century, American-Jewish composers and some non-Jewish musicians as well have infused mainstream musical forms and styles: from popular song and musical theater to folk, bluegrass and country and from classical and jazz to reggae and world music.”

Cohen’s final lecture at the JCC of Greater New Haven will take place on Tuesday, Dec. 21, at 7:30pm In “American-Jewish Music Comes of Age,” Cohen will lead the audience through an exhilarating range of styles, with a focus on Hassidic and American folk music, and consider the key sources and influences behind this musical renaissance.

Cohen is perhaps best known for the documentary he wrote for NPR, entitled “One People, Many Voices.” The documentary, broadcast on NPR, incorporated 100 pieces of contemporary music and was narrated by Theodore Bikel. The program is now part of the permanent collection of the Museum of TV and Radio in New York City. Cohen has also been a featured speaker on both Jewish music and American folk and popular music at the New York Council for the Humanities.

Original Article Published on The Jewish Ledger

NEW HAVEN — Elie Wiesel, Abraham Joshua Heschel and Rabbi Hillel would have been proud.

The Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) and the Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven assembled a group of Jewish, Christian and community groups for a rally at New Haven City Hall, on Dec. 10, Human Rights Day, to focus attention on the atrocities in the Darfur region of the Sudan.

Dr. Milton Wallack, chairman of the JCRC, served as moderator of the rally which featured eight speakers, including rabbis, ministers, an alderman, and an aide to Rep. Rosa DeLauro. “We are here to stop the inhumanity, to express outrage, to appeal to the government to do even more,” explained Wallack. “More than 70,000 people have been killed due to the fighting, disease and malnutrition since March, 2004; two million people have been driven from their homes; and 350,000 are expected to be killed in future months.” Wallack continued, “We cannot and will not accept inhumanity to mankind. That is why we have assembled this interfaith, intercommunity group.”

Sydney Perry, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Greater

New Haven, delivered a passionate address which recounted atrocities of the past century and stressed the Jewish imperative to “remember.” “I have been to Auschwitz-Birkenau four times and I ask, NOT Where was God?’ but Where was man?’” Perry stated. She told the crowd it is time for decisive action to stop “wholesale destruction of villages, poisoning of wells and government backed killing militias.”

Rev. Eric Smith, president of Interfaith Cooperative Ministries, reminded the group that “people of all faiths stand for righteousness” and that we must “stand up for justice.” Rabbi Rick Eisenberg, spiritual leader of Congregation B’nai Jacob and a member of the board of the JCRC quoted from the Torah and Abraham Joshua Heschel and offered hope that “the lights of Chanukah and the Christmas season will help brighten these dark days of late autumn and early winter. We pray for the determination to bring light and hope to alleviate suffering in Darfur.”

Other speakers, including Alderman Yusuf Shah, Yale student and Yale Daily News columnist James Kirchick, and David Waren, executive director, Connecticut Regional Office of the Anti-Defamation League, offered history, stories and calls to action to address the situation in Darfur.

According to various information packets distributed at the rally, Darfur is an impoverished region in western Sudan. Darfur is part of a longstanding civil conflict over land, resources and political power. The Sudanese Government has backed Arab militias, known as the Janjaweed. The Janjaweed reportedly “ride into villages on horses and camels, killing men, raping women, destroying the villages and stealing whatever they can find.”

Rally leaders reminded the group that the rally was being held on Human Rights Day. They said that humanitarian agencies have run into roadblocks, including lack of funds from the international community and Sudanese bureaucratic obstacles.

At the conclusion of the rally, attendees were encouraged to sign petitions “calling upon the Government of Sudan and the United Nations to take immediate steps to alleviate the human suffering and to urge the international community to take decisive action to end the atrocities and to allow humanitarian aid to reach the starving, injured and displaced refugees of the region.”

For more information, call the JCRC at (203) 387-2424 ext. 318.