Press Contacts: Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau: Larry Meehan lmeehan@bostonusa.com direct line for media: 617-867-8231; Stacy Shreffler sshreffler@bostonusa.com, 617-867-8203.

Click here to view our 2008 Events Calendar: explore! Multicultural Boston

May 2008 Edition

Boston’s Jewish American Heritage Month Events

May 2008

Jewish American Heritage Month offers visitors to Boston festivals to celebrate

Jewish American culture & heritage

BOSTON- Boston celebrates the May Jewish American Heritage Month with a series of exhibits, commemorations and special events.

These events are constantly updated; please return to this site for more events. 

• AIPAC New England Leadership Dinner, Sunday, May 4, 2008
  AIPAC, America's pro-Israel lobby will host its 9th Annual New England Leadership Dinner at the Westin Copley Place.  The event will include Donna Brazile, a political commentator and former campaign manager for the Gore-Lieberman campaign in 2000.  The leadership Dinner is the largest annual event in New England showcasing the importance of a strong US-Israel relationship.  Call 617-457-8717 for more information. 

• 2008 Yom HaShoah Commemoration, Faneuil Hall, Sunday, May 4, 2008
  This annual event serves as a way for the Greater Boston community to unite in remembrance of the victims of the Holocaust, to honor survivors and their families and to learn as a community.  The theme for this year's event is: "We were there... we are here: Stories of Survival."  For more information, call 617-457-8652.

• "The City on the Hill: The Spirituality of Boston Architecture" Walking Tour, Saturday, May 17. 2008
  Rabbi Berman leads a tour of historic Boston buildings, focusing on the Jewish and religious dimensions of our city's landmarks. A reception follows at 45 Province Street and is sponsored by the Abbey Group. For more information, visit www.bostonjewishspirit.org. 

• Video at the Vilna: "What I Saw in Hebron" Thursday, May 22, 2008
  Seventy years after the 1929 Hebron massacre, directors Noit and Dan Geva bring us the personal testimony of 12 people who survived the atrocity. Noit Geva’s grandmother, who was only 16 years old at the time of the massacre, was so traumatized by the event that she never spoke of her experience, but recorded what she witnessed in a journal entry entitled “What I Saw in Hebron.” This gripping documentary allows a rare glimpse into a little-known moment in Israel’s history.  For more information, email steven@vilnashul.com or call 617-423-2324.  

• An Evening of Cabaret with Julie Silver, Saturday, March 31, 2008
  A very special benefit performance by one of America’s most popular composers and singers of contemporary Jewish music. Join us to find out why “Few performers engage audiences as quickly or with as much warmth and soul as Julie Silver. Her strong guitar playing, her ability to read her audiences, and her impeccable comic timing make her concerts enormously successful.”  Emmanuel Church at 7:30 p.m.  For more information, call 617-983-1200 or email info@bostonjewishspirit.org.

• "A Thousand and One Inventions"
  The Hadassah-Brandeis Institute (HBI) at Brandeis University will host its inaugural artist-in-residence, Lynne Avadenka through May 21, 2008.  Avadenka's site-specific installation "A Through and One Inventions" will boldly transform the Kniznick Gallery's unique architecture into a work of art.  Painting, drawing and assemblage will create an environment that opens up and reveals layers visually, as a book does conceptually.  This exhibit expands on the themes in Avadenka's limited edition artist's book, "By A Thread." Visit www.brandeis.edu/hbi for more information.   very special benefit performance by one of America’s most popular composers and singers of contemporary Jewish music. Join us to find out why “Few performers engage audiences as quickly or with as much warmth and soul as Julie Silver. Her strong guitar playing, her ability to read her audiences, and her impeccable comic timing make her concerts enormously successful.”  Emmanuel Church at 7:30 p.m.  For more information, call 617-983-1200 or email info@bostonjewishspirit.org.

• "The Boston Jewish Experience: Reconnect to the Tapestry"
  This exhibition focuses on Boston Jewish life between 1850 and 1950 when Boston's Jewish population grew and flourished in primarily seven neighborhoods that evolved over time.  Boston's Jewish population reached its height of 115,000 people with over 50 synagogues in the 1930s.  Boston's Jews defined a new American identity that balanced older traditions with new world expectations and opportunities.  Together they wove a tapestry of religious, educational and community activities based upon historical values, dreams and resources of the new world.  They left a legacy of education, philanthropy and culture that continues to thrive and renew itself today.  Showcased at the Boston Center for Jewish Heritage at the Historic Vilna Shul, exhibit hours are Wednesday, Thursday, Friday 11 a.m. - 5 p.m. and Sunday from 1-5 p.m.  For more information, visit www.vilnashul.com or call 617-523-2324.  

• "Tree of Paradise: Jewish Mosaics from the Roman Empire"
  The McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College hosts this art exhibit, which is on view through June 8, 2008.  The exhibition presents the reconstruction of an ancient mosaic floor from a synagogue in Hammam Lif, Tunisia - the ancient town of Naro, later called Aquae Persianae by the Romans.  Twenty-one mosaics - along with some 40 works from the Brooklyn Museum's Roman art collection, including contemporary jewlery, coins, marble statues, ritual objects and textiles - shed light on the role of synagogues in the Diaspora during Late Antiquity, the development of Jewish and Pagan symbolism in this period, and the relationship between ancient and modern understanding of the synagogue as an institution.  The works of art included in this exhibition reveal a society where Jews were more integrated and accepted than ancient texts would suggest. Visit www.bc.edu/artmuseum for more information. 

• Boston Walks' "The Jewish Friendship Trail"
  A walking tour trail to sites of Jewish experiences in Boston's West and North Ends circa 1870s through 1920s.  The trail is designed as a 2.5 hour walking tour, best taken as a part of an escorted group, and includes visits to the Beacon Hill home of Justice Louis Dembitz Brandeis, the Vilna Shul, the Segal Residence, the West End House and the Holocaust memorial.  For more information or to schedule group tours, email bostonwalks@hotmail.com or call 617-489-5020. 

Did you know?

• Boston is home to one of the first Jewish neighborhoods in North America - the North End of Paul Revere fame, and to other original Jewish neighborhoods - the West End, Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan.
• The 15 year-old Holocaust Memorial in downtown Boston was built after efforts from a group of survivors of Nazi concentration camps who have found new homes and new lives in the Boston area.  The design of the only downtown/outdoor memorial in the US utilizes powerful symbols of the Holocaust.  The six luminous glass towers, lit internally to gleam at night on a black granite path, recall the six main Nazi death camps.  Six million numbers are etched in glass, suggesting the infamous tattooed numbers and ghostly ledgers of the Nazi bureaucracy and bring memory to the six million Jews who died.
• Jewish American natives include Leonard Bernstein, Leonard Nimoy and Louis Brandeis.
• Boston's Salem Street - the Butcher Street - once featured shop signs in Yiddish.
• The Vilna Shul is Boston's oldest synagogue located in the heart of Beacon Hill.  Built in 1919, the Vilna Shul remained a Sul until 1985 when it fell into disrepair.  Since then, the Boston Center for Jewish Heritage has turned the historic site into a living museum for new generations to experience the Jewish history.
• Just west of Boston, Brandeis University is the only nonsectarian Jewish-sponsored college or university in the country.  Founded in 1948 in Waltham, Brandeis is ranked in the top tier of the nation's universities. 
• Jewish Heritage Trail developed by Steven Ross
• The Charles Playhouse was originally designed and built in 1839 as the fifth Universalist Church, by renowned architecht Asher Benjamin.  In 1864 it became the first synagogue in Boston, home of the congregation Ohabei Shalom.
• Brookline's quintessential Jewish neighborly Harvard Street is home to many Jewish restaurants, bakeries and Judaic shops including Israel Book Shop, Kolbo Fine Judaic Art, The Butcherie of Brookline, Kupel's Bakery, Rami's and Rubin's Kosher Deli.
• The birthday of Israel is celebrated at the Boston Esplanade in July
• Waltham, MA is home to the nation's oldest and largest archive, library and museum interpreting the American Jewish experience - the American Jewish Historical Society. The New England headquarters collects and makes available to researchers materials relating to the New England Jewish experience.

Boston visitor information - from updated weekend event information to special hotel offers during May Jewish American Heritage Month visits are available www.BostonUSA.com; toll free 1-888-SEE-BOSTON;   e-mail visitus@BostonUSA.com