Haven: Issue 12 (January 2025)

The PJFM monthly resource for upcoming news!

Table of Contents 3

THE ABAYUDAYA JEWISH COMMUNITIES OF UGANDA

5 KUGEL 7 AIN’T NO BACK TO A MERRY-GO-ROUND 8 Einstein on the Beach 11 Spotlight: Oneohtrix Point Never

HAVEN | ISSUE 11

Peter Decherney’s photographs and films offer a rare glimpse into Uganda’s Abayudaya Jewish community, exploring its history, culture, and resilience. From the first Ugandan woman rabbi to the secret cave synagogue used during Idi Amin’s regime, this special event uncovers the untold stories of a people navigating faith, identity, and survival. This pop-up photography exhibition includes a reception and Decherney’s two short documentaries, THE CAVE SYNAGOGUE and DAYS BETWEEN REST, which offer an intimate glimpse into this remarkable community. Decherney is joined by historian and producer Sara Byala, Rabbi Shoshana Nambi (the first Ugandan woman to be ordained as rabbi), and Rabbi Ethan Witkovsky of Temple Beth Hillel-Beth El for a discussion panel proceeding the films.

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Peter Decherney is an award-winning fine art photographer, filmmaker, and author. He holds the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Endowed Term Chair in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is Professor of Cinema & Media Studies and Director of the Penn Global Documentary Institute. Peter is the author or editor of seven books including HOLLYWOOD’S COPYRIGHT WARS: FROM EDISON TO THE INTERNET and HOLLYWOOD: A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION. He has also written for The New York Times, Forbes, and Inside Higher Ed, among many other publications. His photographs of global Jewish communities have been exhibited in museums, galleries, and universities. His book of photography and history, ENDLESS EXODUS: THE JEWISH EXPERIENCE IN ETHIOPIA, is forthcoming.

Peter’s films focus on migration and the political role of artists. His virtual reality docuseries, THE HEART OF PUERTO RICO, about artists in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria (co-directed with Jean Lee), won the Best VR Experience and Best Director awards at the AT&T Film Awards. His documentary, DREAMING OF JERUSALEM (co-directed with Sosena Solomon), about the Jewish Community in Gondar, Ethiopia, is a Discovery+ original. IS IT BECAUSE I’M A GIRL, about the South Sudanese Hip-Hop Dancer Nao.G, premiered at the Miami Film Festival and has won five top festival awards. His most recent films are two short documentaries about the Abayudaya Jewish communities in Uganda. Peter has been an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Scholar, a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, and a U.S. State Department Arts Envoy to Myanmar.

He is an award-winning teacher, whose open online course on the history of Hollywood has enrolled more than 80,000 learners. He also holds a secondary appointment at the Annenberg School for Communication and an affiliation with the Penn Law Center for Technology, Innovation, and Competition.

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KUGEL

The Shtisels Return!

SHTISEL fans, there is a prequel series on the way!

Years before her future husband, Akiva Shtisel, was even a twinkle in her eyes, Libi (Hadas Yaron, FILL THE VOID) lived in Antwerp, Belgium with her father, Nuchem (Sasson Gabay, THE BAND’S VISIT). Nuchem is a charming jewelry dealer, unafraid of bending the rules to make a sale. But when his wife finally tires of his swindling and says she wants a divorce, their family life is thrown into disarray. In light of her parents’ crumbling partnership and despite her age (22), Libi is yet to find a suitable match. Instead, she devotes all of her energy and resources to becoming a successful writer. But then, a chance encounter with an Orthodox man on the Antwerp tram throws a wrench into her plans.

Told with the same authenticity, humor and delight that made SHTISEL a worldwide hit, KUGEL follows the pair as they navigate hijinks and heartbreak in Europe’s ultraOrthodox community. The series celebrates how every person is as complex, individual, surprising, and addictive as a slice of delicious kugel.

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KUGEL Episodes 1 + 2

“KUGEL is a show that wants to tell a story — a funny, heartbreaking, human story — to remind us how each person is unique, a once-in-alifetime noodle in the great sea of noodles that makes for one big, brown, Jerusalem-style kugel. A bit spicy, a bit sweet.”

-Yehonatan Indursky (CoCreator of KUGEL)

PJFM is excited to premiere Episodes 1 + 2 exclusively at the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History! In addition, all ticket buyers automatically receive a FREE onemonth subscription to IZZY, KUGEL’s streaming network, so you can finish the series on your own.

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AIN’T NO BACK TO A MERRY-GO-ROUND Presented by the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History

In June 1960, when Howard University students sat on the gilded horses of a Maryland merry-go-round, their arrests made headlines in the emerging “Sit-Down Movement.”

Glen Echo Amusement Park, a whites-only attraction since 1909, stood across from a predominantly Jewish housing cooperative, whose residents joined the students in protest. For ten weeks, despite intense heat and violent counter-protesters from the American Nazi Party, Black students and white suburbanites marched side by side. Their picketing led to friendships, collaboration between union leaders and student activists, and the radicalization of young people, helping shape the next generation of Civil Rights leaders. AIN’T NO BACK TO A MERRY-GO-ROUND uncovers this pivotal but often overlooked chapter in the fight for equality.

“The way that we teach the civil rights movement does not center on the regular people, but the vast majority of the fuel in the movement were people who never went to the bridge at Selma but acted locally in their own swimming pools. And if we don’t learn about those people, then we miss this incredible opportunity to be inspired by accessible heroes.”

- Ilana Trachtman (Director of AIN’T NO BACK TO A MERRY-GO-ROUND)

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 6 6:30 PM CASH BAR | 7:30 PM WEITZMAN NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AMERICAN JEWISH HISTORY BUY TICKETS HERE PAGE 7

EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH Exploring Philip Glass’ Seminal 1975 Operatic Masterpiece

Every day, the Earth completes a full rotation. Each year, the planet completes a rotation around the sun. Your heart and the hearts of billions of creatures beat thousands of times every day. You wake up and complete your morning ablutions, and it feels good. It’s good to have a daily routine.

It’s nice.

Modern Judaism is obsessed with capital-T “Tradition.” Tradition keeps alive something ancient - something buried so deep in the collective unconscious that people can no longer remember it is given life by their actions. Jews light the candles on Hanukkah. They ask the four questions on Passover. Whether it’s the circle of life and death, the steady pace of time, or your daily routine, there’s something about cycles that is Real. Something that feels holy.

Philip Glass is one of the Jewish faith’s most accomplished and influential composers. A godfather of Classical Minimalism - a movement that focuses on repetition and arpeggios - there’s a case to be made that his work most closely aligns with the tenants of Judaism as they relate to tradition.

EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH, his 1975 collaboration with director Robert Wilson, is a masterpiece of the movement - a 4.5-hour opera that utilizes repetition until something real, ancient, and holy awakens in the listener.

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EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH The astounding beauty of this opera cannot be overstated. Glass' music fuses so perfectly with the minimalist set design and Lucinda Childs' incredible choreography. The speaking, dancing, and even just simple movements and facial expressions elucidate the opera's vision, and Glass' music realizes that vision. It is a vision not of a linear story but simply of some ideas. Einstein and his relationship to the atomic bomb are brought up, as well as the simple act of living under nuclear threat. The age of space exploration is rather explicitly evoked in the penultimate scene, "Spaceship." Women's liberation? The opera touches on that as well.

And yet, the crowning jewel of this colossal work is that it apparently says nothing concrete about its themes, or even its titular subject. As Glass himself put it, “We don't give you a plot; we give you a theme. And the audience completes the story."

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EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH

The precision, stamina, and focus required to pull this off are otherworldly.

Sentences, motions, and musical phrases are repeated ad nauseum. There doesn’t seem to be room for any performer to breath, yet neither one note nor movement is out of place. It is terrifying to watch in a way - to see what mastery looks like and the possibilities of art to transcend form and genre to become its own perfect thing.

The heavy Jewish undertones of the opera fall on the shoulders of its titular figure, whom despite the name of the show remains shrouded in mystery by the opera’s end. Rather than focusing on the complicated legacy of Albert Einstein, the opera places him in front of the stage as violinist throughout key moments. Einstein acts as the conductor, blind to the world he created, and swarmed by his own brilliance.

The 2014 staging of EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH is available to watch on Vimeo.

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Daniel Lopatin may not be a household name, nor his most successful musical endeavor: Oneohtrix Point Never. However, between his collaborations with artists such as The Weeknd and Rosalia and his soundtracks for GOOD TIME (2017) and UNCUT GEMS (2019) his output might feel very familiar.

Oneohtrix Point Never is a NYC-based musician, composer, and producer who has been at the forefront of ambient, new age, and experimental music for over a decade now. Borrowing his name from a Boston radio station that often played 80s hits through unreliable airwaves, he blends experimental electronic sounds with abstract composition, often creating intricate layers of distorted textures, ambient atmospheres, and glitchy rhythms. Drawing from a range of genres, including avant-garde, ambient, and industrial, his work pushes the boundaries of conventional music, evoking both futuristic and nostalgic feelings. Known for his immersive soundscapes and complex structures, Oneohtrix Point Never explores themes of technology, memory, and human emotion through a distinct, otherworldly sonic lens, making him one of the most exciting Jewish musicians in the world today.

Listen to Oneohtrix Point Never on Spotify.

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