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