About Town: April 21

Wednesday, April 27


SHOLEM ALEICHEM COURSE

The World of Sholem Aleichem, a six-week course with Janie Respitz,begins at the Jewish Public Library, 7-9 p.m. The course on this great Yiddish humourist is in English, as are readings. Registration, 345-2627, ext. 3006.

Thursday, April 28


MOVIE PREMIERE

The Argentine movie Anita, about a young woman with Down syndrome, has its Montreal premiere at the Jewish Public Library, 7:30 p.m., with English subtitles. Named best film at the recent International Latino Film Festival in Los Angeles, its title character becomes lost after the 1994 terror bombing of the AMIA Jewish centre in Buenos Aires. Tickets, 345-6416.

Friday, April 29

HOLOCAUST EXHIBIT
Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom opens its Shoah Memorial Gallery after 8:15 p.m. Shabbat services. This permanent exhibition comprises Holocaust-related artworks by several Canadian artists, among them Marcel Braitstein and Marion Wagschal. Anita, 937-3575.

…Et Cetera…


ETHIOPIAN SCHOOL
Benjamin Sternthal and Jul
ie Schneiderman, a Montreal couple, say the school they raised money to build in the remote Ethiopian village of Shumargie is now finished. The two-room concrete building replaces the makeshift structure the children used before. They raised the needed $21,500 mainly among friends and business associates in Montreal through the Kulam Project, which they founded
It was the first major undertaking by Kulam (Hebrew for everybody), which is guided by Jewish values, and its partners, Toronto-based Jewish humanitarian group Ve’ahavta and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. On opening day, each of the 60 students received a backpack filled with school supplies. “Our contractor delivered the project on time and on budget – something we rarely see in North America,” Sternthal said. “We are confident academic results will significantly improve and we are very proud that our Shumargie school is changing the reality, for the better, of the entire community.”
Kulam has applied to the Newman’s Own Foundation, the late actor Paul Newman’s philanthropic organization, for a grant to install solar panels to light the building with free, sustainable energy so that it can by used by the community outside school hours. Kulam projects such as building wells and supporting a youth village for orphans of the Rwandan genocide are in the works. [email protected].

ACADEMIC SYMPOSIUM
Jewish studies scholars from across North America will take part in a symposium at Concordia University, May 9-11, on “History, Memory and Jewish Identity.” Organized by the department of religion, it “aims to re-evaluate the ways in which various Jewish groups throughout the history of Judaism have remembered and recorded the past, and the relationship between these representations of the past and the construction of Jewish identity.” It’s funded by the Social Services and Humanities Research Council of Canada. All sessions will be open to the public. http://religion.concordia.ca/jewishid.

HAMANTASHEN FOR HAITI
A group of young volunteers baked about 2,000 hamantashen and 1,500 cookies before Purim to raise funds for Haiti. “Hamantashen for Haiti” was launched last year by students Zak Rosentveig and Gabriela Morningstar Mizrahi after the devastating earthquake. This year’s effort was even bigger, and, the Grammy Award-winning Montreal-based band Arcade Fire is matching all funds raised through the sale of the treats. All production costs were sponsored, so all the money goes to development projects in rural Haiti under the Montreal-based organization Kanpe. Baking took place at Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom and each package was hand-decorated.

ISRAELI FILM FEST
The seventh annual Israeli Film Festival takes place May 14-23. Among the features and documentaries, with subtitles, are The Human Resources Manager and Three Mothers by Eran Riklis, and the docs I Shot My Love and Bridge Over the Wadi by Tomer Heymann, who will introduce them. Another guest is Dr. Raz Somech, the real-life hero of Israeli Academy Award-winner Precious Life, who will answer questions after the screening.
Israeli dance is also being showcased in Montreal next month. Up-and-comers Ori Josephine Lenkinski and Michael Miller will take part in the Festival TransAmeriques May 26-June 11. Lenkinski was born in Guelph, Ont., in 1981 and studied at McGill University. After moving to Tel Aviv in 2007, she produced that city’s Third International Dance Film Festival. She has performed in productions by Israeli choreographer Rachel Erdos and, in works by Canadian choreographer Noemie Lafrance, including Melt in New York last year. Miller, also 30, dropped out of the Technion to pursue dance as a career. He has created and performed in pieces at the illustrious Suzanne Dellal Center in Tel Aviv to high praise.

LIES MY FATHER TOLD ME
Montrealer Elan Kunin’s adaptation of Lies My Father Told Me into a musical runs at the Segal Centre for Performing Arts May 1-23. Originally a semi-autobiographical radio drama by Ted Allen and later a movie, Lies is set in Montreal’s Jewish immigrant neighbourhood in the 1920s and is about a six-year-old boy’s relationship with his grandfather, a pedlar. The play is directed by Bryna Wasserman.

GOODMAN CENTRE FORUM
CTV medical contributor Dr. Marla Shapiro hosts a forum on “Cancer Survivorship: With, Through and Beyond,” May 16 at the Mount Royal Centre, for McGill University’s Rosalind and Morris Goodman Cancer Research Centre. Shapiro, a McGill graduate, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004 and wrote the best-selling Life in the Balance about her experience. The event includes a patrons’ cocktail, lecture and book-signing. Rosalind Goodman is honorary chair.

McGill-Queen’s University Press has published Jewish Roots, Canadian Soil: Yiddish Culture in Montreal, 1905-1945 by Rebecca Margolis, an associate professor in the Vered Jewish Canadian Studies Program at the University of Ottawa. Looking at Montreal’s Jewish community during the first half of the 20th century, Margolis explores the lives and works of activists, writers, scholars, performers and groups devoted to Yiddish cultural life… McGill University chemical engineering student Omer Dor is sharing top prize with David Morris in the TD Friends of the Environment Foundation’s annual competition. The students’ proposal for a rooftop garden on McGill’s Ferrier building, sustained by gas emissions from the production of heat and hot water, beat 132 projects submitted from 59 colleges for first prize. They won $20,000 and a paid internship with TD FEF, and McGill gets $100,000 to make the campus more energy efficient…
Singer-songwriter and poet Leonard Cohen, 76, has won the $50,000 Glenn Gould Prize for lifetime achievement. He’s only the third Canadian to receive this international honour for the arts and communication… Montrealer Maurice Joseph has begun his pro basketball career in Israel. The high-scoring ex-University of Vermont guard plays for Hapoel Afula of the second-division National League…
Congregation Shaar Hashomayim’s Cantor Gideon Zelermyer will sing the Canadian and U.S. anthems July 5 at Fenway Park when the Boston Red Sox play the Toronto Blue Jays. Zelermyer sang the anthems at the Bell Centre in November before a Montreal Canadiens-Philadelphia Flyers match, probably the first Jewish cantor to do so at an NHL game in Montreal.