Small and perfectly proportioned: TAU Night at the Movies features the next big thing in Israeli talent

Every year I’m impressed by the quality of short student films presented by the Tel Aviv University Trust. It’s delightful to see such tight storytelling in as little as 12 minutes. That’s the length of Kapunka (trailer above), the film that opened this year’s mini festival, and it set the benchmark high.

The tale of crafty Shmulik – who sees his way round the rabbinate law of shmita that decrees land be left fallow every seven years – is also timely for this is that seventh year. Shmulik’s solution to sell his land temporarily to Changrong, his senior Thai worker, with the idea of buying it back when the year is up, inevitably goes spectacularly wrong. And I do mean spectacularly! To reveal more would be a shame, but director Tal Greenberg’s abrasively funny film may well remain a unique opportunity to marvel at a Thai temple sprouting in an Israeli field like Jack’s beanstalk. Greenberg’s cinematography is gorgeous, colouring a vivid landscape, the Spaghetti Western score is spot on for a comic confrontation on the land and the actors are wonderfully matched. It’s great to see the significant community of Thai workers in Israel given space too. Greenberg is definitely one to watch.

The spotlight turns on a rather larger minority community in Leeor Kaufman’s Papa. At first sight this is a story of schoolboys bullying 11-year-old Stas, who is a recent immigrant from Russia. His violinist father is reduced to busking and Stas, desperate for acceptance into a gang of Israeli boys, is reduced to a less than filial act. Kaufman says the film is first and foremost about fatherhood, putting your children first. Poignantly Sioma Perl, the TAU theatre department carpenter who plays Papa, was a theatre director in Russia before he emigrated to Israel. No wonder his performance has such depth. Kaufman gets terrific performances out of his young actors too and his film is both poignant and unsettling.

Even more unsettling is HomeMade, Lior Sagi’s story of a kibbutz mother trying to clear her son’s name when he is arrested for molesting a kibbutz child. Sagi cleverly puts the mother in charge of the nursery of even younger children, so she first appears confidently regaling them with bright, happy children’s stories. Her body language crumples as soon as she is confronted by the adult world in which she herself has become a news story. The cruelty of the young female TV journalist by whom she has agreed to be interviewed and the eventual outcome of the film are discomfiting and Sagi is not afraid to tackle this difficult subject.

Maayan Cohen is not afraid to be explicit in his shockingly funny comedy Zazaland, about a Georgian family trying to arrange a marriage for their gay son. The contrast between the prim, po-faced bride and her family and her prospective bridegroom’s louche and rather gorgeous lover, gleefully hiding naked in his bedroom, make for squeals of audience laughter and Cohen orchestrates the increasingly farcical situation he’s created with aplomb. His film is part of a project to take inspiration from a classic Israeli film to make a new short. He’s done a great job of making a pithy, daring little comedy inspired by Dover Koshashvili's full-length drama Late Marriage and his choice of a Georgian family is a subtle extra homage to Kosashvili's Georgian heritage.

Finally, the most unashamedly charming of the five films, Lee Nechushtan’s Dinner (pictured above) proves that it’s never too late to date. Gadi, a 76-year-old local deliveryman, is looking forward to a dinner date he’s arranged via an agency, but he must first get through his busy day and one delivery threatens to scupper his evening. Veteran film and theatre actor Gedalia Besser charms as feisty Gadi and Nechushtan sets up the situation beautifully. She introduces her hero in his cosy cluttered apartment listening to an old favourite and organising his date on a cream-coloured old-fashioned Bakelite telephone, and then expertly steers her story through the encounters he has with a succession of regular customers.

On this showing the future of the Israeli film industry is safe in the hands of its graduating filmmakers and I’d be surprised if we don’t hear these five names again.

By Judi Herman

Review: The Hook by Arthur Miller – A compelling study of the ongoing struggle working man has for social justice

In the mid 1940’s Miller was captivated by the Red Hook neighbourhood of Brooklyn that contained so many docks and landing piers. He was fascinated by the close community of longshoremen (dockers) and their precarious life of casual day hire, unsafe working practices and exploitation by corrupt Union officials in thrall to the Mafia. Intrigued by the death of Pete Panto, a longshoreman who vanished after confronting Union corruption, Miller wrote “a play for the screen", believing that cinema could be a more democratic way of playing his story to the community he was writing about.

Miller’s Panto is Marty Ferrera, a loud-mouthed and opinionated longshoreman, complete with docker’s hook round his neck. He is also, as Miller himself wrote, that “strange, mysterious and dangerous thing” that is a “genuinely moral man…it’s as though a hand had been laid upon him, making him the rebel, pressing him towards a collision with everything that is established and accepted.” What is established and accepted on the docks is the injustice and corruption of a system that sees work awarded in exchange for bribes, making the hand-to-mouth existence of the longshoremen even more precarious. Marty makes his stand against the system when he can no longer support his wife and child, denied work even after offering his own bribe. So he decides to stand for Union President to address the issues head on.

But Marty Ferrera never reached the screen. Pressure from Hollywood executives and arm-twisting by the FBI who worried it would foment dissent in the dockyards, caused Miller to abandon the project and his director, Elia Kazan, went on to make the more acceptable On the Waterfront some five years later.

So how come the play is receiving its world premiere at Northampton’s Royal and Derngate Theatres this year? It’s down to the painstaking work the theatre's Artistic Director James Dacre has put in on realising the project. Of course his staging, a co-production with Liverpool's Everyman, coincides with the centenary of Miller's birth and Dacre says this timely play “talks about the living wage, zero-hours contracts and industrial communities on the brink of enormous change.” Together with designer Patrick Connellan, Dacre spent years collating Miller’s drafts of the play, illuminated by Miller’s own notes. But what we see has been pulled together into a more than workable script by playwright Ron Hutchinson, who proved he has a special insight into and era for Americana in his brilliant Hollywood comedy Moonlight and Magnolias (charting the painful birth of Gone With the Wind, the movie). Hutchinson was struck by the way Miller went out of his way to avoid stock characters and show just how the main protagonists are neither all good nor bad.

The challenge for the team has been to translate something written for the scale of the cinema into a stage production. Connellan’s brooding set, thanks to clever use of Nina Dunn’s projections and Charles Balfour’s moody lighting, is dockyards, streets, offices and homes, allowing all the cross-cutting demanded by the filmic element of the script. There is more than a nod here to film noir and the strictures of black and white lighting.

Dacre marshals his cast as if they are a vital part of the intercutting, and working with movement director Struan Leslie, choreographs the transitions between scenes with beautiful precision and speed.

Jamie Sives as Marty Ferrera (pictured centre, at the top of the review) is suitably Brando-esque as required, yet brings out the humanity of this common man in a way Miller would have appreciated. Susie Trayling, as Marty’s passively supportive and docile wife Therese is nicely understated in a part that’s reminiscent of Linda Loman in Death of Salesman. Joseph Alessi gives a commanding performance as the ruthless Union Chief (if anyone is the man you love to hate, he is!) and the ensemble is effectively swelled by a community ensemble of local amateurs, totally convincing in the non-speaking crowd scenes. Some of the professionals, though, occasionally distract with slightly wandering New Jersey accents.

It’s not in the end as completely satisfying as Miller at his best in the plays we know and love, but it is a compelling study in treachery and probity and the ongoing struggle for social justice for the working man. It all makes for a genuinely exciting evening, with unexpected and twists and turns in a story perhaps more fast-moving yet less in-depth than in Miller’s dedicated stage plays.

By Judi Herman

Photography by Manuel Harlan

The Hook runs until Saturday 27 June. 7.45pm & 2.30pm. £10-£29. Royal & Derngate, Northampton, NN1 1DP; 016 0462 6222. www.royalandderngate.co.uk

The show then moves to Liverpool Wednesday 1 - Saturday 25 July. 7.30pm. £12-£20. Everyman, Liverpool L1 9BH; 015 1709 4776. www.everymanplayhouse.com

SERET 2015 reviews: Do You Believe in Love?

Funny, tender and even gripping, this is Tova’s story – a larger-than-life matchmaker with a heart of gold, down-to-earth philosophy, a devoted husband and a crippling disease.

Tova conducts her business from the easy chair to which she is confined, loud and proud despite having no movement at all from the neck down, thanks to the muscular dystrophy that struck after she gave birth to her daughter Dolly. “I do everything with my mind,” she declares, and she certainly proves it in Dan Wasserman’s documentary.

Although she has a special interest in would-be brides and grooms with their own disabilities, she welcomes everyone and anyone of any age looking for a life partner. So the film opens with a parade of the long, the short and the tall; the old and the young; the abled and the differently-abled; all looking for love and each with their own wish list. She pulls no punches and is not afraid to ask wheelchair user Yossi whether he can get to the toilet unaided. “Do you believe in love?” is her constant question and she advises all her clients to be prepared to compromise.

And so the viewer is drawn in to the stories of Tova’s clients. You find yourself hoping against hope that they will find happiness with Mr or Ms Right. There’s spiky Rosan in her wheelchair, out and proud about her chain-smoking and entirely unprepared to compromise to impress health-conscious Asi on their first (and probably last) date. The beautiful young blind woman, with whom you get to share the pain of having a potential date hang up the phone when she confides that she cannot see, gets short shrift from Tova, who tells her sternly not to mention her sight until the prospective husband has set eyes on her.

In case you think her successes are few and far between, it is her proud boast that she has arranged more than 550 matches. The filmgoer does get invited to the wedding of one of Tova’s successes, thanks to daughter Dolly who goes on behalf of her mother and relays the ceremony via her mobile phone. The joy of both bride and groom is palpable and immensely touching and Wasserman does indeed give the audience a guest’s-eye-view of the details of the traditional ceremony.

And then there’s the overarching story of Tova herself and her devoted husband Gaby. It doesn’t matter that he has "heart and psyche problems", including a strange compulsion to buy huge quantities of fresh peppers every day. It’s his total devotion to Tova that is so moving and their unwillingness to survive each other as they make clear in the living wills they make on video.

The climax of the film is their 43rd wedding anniversary party, surrounded by their large and noisy family and many friends. The highlight is watching the film of their 1960s wedding, and it is extraordinarily moving to see the young sprightly couple dancing together – she so slender and lively, as she points out herself. But time certainly has not withered this indomitable spirit and she and Gaby are a shining example of what you can look forward to if you believe in love.

By Judi Herman

Do You Believe in Love screens Monday 15 June. 4pm. £14. JW3, 341-351 Finchley Rd, London NW3 6ET. www.seret.org.uk

Another loss for the original 1968 Oliver! cast – Ron Moody will be missed

Ron Moody (left) with Lord Dahrendorf, 1975

"My proudest moment was the number Reviewing the Situation. I suspect that, because I gave my all to the role, and because I was working with such a fine team of people, it inhibited my future career. I turned down quite a few offers afterwards because I thought the people didn't come close to those I'd worked with on Oliver! which, in retrospect, was a mistake." – Ron Moody, 8 January 1924 – 11 June 2015.

Judi Herman reports on the recent death of actor Ron moody, one of the last remaining adult actors, bar Shani Wallis, from the 1968 musical Oliver!.

Readers will no doubt have heard a great deal over the last week about the long life of Ron Moody. Of course he is best known for his creation of Fagin, unforgettable for his gleeful physicality and for his musical phrasing. He relished rolling Bart’s delicious lyrics around his tongue, something I was lucky enough to experience live when I was not quite old enough to be in Fagin’s gang.

Much later on I went with Steve, my husband, to see him live in his one-man show at the also late-lamented Mermaid Theatre in London’s Puddle Dock. Doing a shtick about Hamlet, testing the audience's knowledge about Shakespeare’s play, he barked out the question: "Where did Hamlet live?" Moody had done a lot of stuff about the East End that night and before I could stop myself, I heard my voice yelling "Tower Hamlets!" After that there was no stopping Moody, he picked on me mercilessly for the next hour and I loved every minute of it (as did the rest of the audience). A true great, apparently sprightly right up to the end – he’ll be missed!

Jewish sculptor Simone Krok found inspiration in Old Testament and Kaballah for exhibition based on Paradise Lost

Acclaimed sculptor Simone Krok’s latest exhibition, Paradise Lost, is named after John Milton’s 17th-century epic poem and explores the crucial themes of Milton’s work: creation, the fall of man, the loss of innocence and of free will. Milton’s work was heavily influenced by the Old Testament and the story of Adam and Eve, and Krok also takes inspiration from the Old Testament, as well as other religious traditions. Many of the pieces in Paradise Lost are inspired by the Jewish spiritual practice of Kabbalah.

As a Jewish South African, much of Krok’s work has been influenced by the parallel injustices she witnessed in her early life, with the apartheid in her home country and the concentration camps she saw when she travelled to Eastern Europe. In this exhibition, Krok aims to explore why the human race ‘lose the innocence we were born with as children and why it is that we so frequently use our freedom of choice to enter into the destructive path of greed, power, violence and manmade suffering that is all too common in our modern world.’ Paradise Lost closes this Thursday, so be sure to catch it if you can.

By Alice Weleminsky-Smith

Paradise Lost runs until Thursday 18 June. Gallery 223, 137-139 Lower Marsh St, London SE1 7AE. www.gallery223.co.uk

Simone Krok poses by The Sequence of Many Levels of Deception (also pictured above)

(L-R) Bronze, Co-exist, Gold, Jacob's Ladder

Review: On her third helping of The Merchant of Venice, Judi Herman has a discomfiting but enthralling evening

The Merchant of Venice production photos_ 2015_Photo by Hugo Glendinning (c) RSC _MER_157

Don't let the buggers grind you down. Try to come over as laid back. They wear a strange eclectic mix of what they see as achingly trendy, or sharp city wear, set off with flamboyant footwear in bright – too bright – poster colours. So wear a dingy blouson over an old cardigan and keep your dignity, simply wipe off their spit when they show their contempt for you. This could be what's going through Shylock's mind in Makram J Khoury's finely calibrated performance, which positively radiates a relaxed gravitas.

It is to be hoped that Khoury, the popular, award-winning Palestinian-Israeli actor didn't base it too closely on his experience as a man caught between two worlds in his native country. Certainly when Christian Venice shows its contempt by spitting on Shylock's "Jewish gabardine", the gasp of horror that runs through the audience is even more of a shock wave than the similar audience reaction when this treatment is meted out to Jonathan Pryce's dignified Shylock at Shakespeare's Globe.

Khoury’s trajectory is frighteningly clear here, from distracted father outraged by his daughter Jessica’s's elopement and her profligate spending and disregard for her dead mother's ring, to vengeful would-be killer. Given the special disgust displayed towards him by Jamie Ballard's alarmingly volatile Antonio, it's hardly surprising he seizes the opportunity to whet his knife and prepare his scales in open court, now entirely indifferent to what the hostile Christians make of his behaviour.

This is the third time this year that I have seen this problematical play and each time I am struck by how little stage time Shylock shares with Jessica. Shakespeare magnifies the awkwardness of what today would be dubbed their dysfunctional relationship by showing so little of it onstage. And, in the few moments they do share together, Jessica is in turmoil over her imminent elopement and the need to deceive her father to make her escape.  Here director Polly Findlay and designer Johannes Schültz trap Scarlett Brookes’ awkward, gawky Jessica at an impossibly high window in her father’s house. So there even less connection as he leaves for the dinner with his new creditor Bassanio that will give her the window of opportunity she needs to escape with her Christian lover Lorenzo (James Corrigan), as well as her father’s jewels and ducats.

Indeed Findlay, sharing her vision with Schültz and costume designer Anette Guther, builds an especially alienating dystopic Venice, where it’s easy for the audience to share Shylock’s discomfiture. Belmont, wealthy heiress Portia‘s nearby estate, similarly offers little in the way of refuge, even to its owner and her chosen guests from the city, let alone the foreign suitors at whom this Venetian lady pokes fun. The audience is reflected in the huge brass mirrored wall atop which Jessica appears and there is nowhere to hide on a thrust stage with only a mysterious (and perhaps more distracting than hypnotic) pendulum on which to rest the eye, joined briefly later by three symbolic ‘caskets’ lowered from above.

There is certainly nowhere to hide in Venice or Belmont, from creditors in the city, from the whim of a dead father, controlling his daughter’s choice of husband from beyond the grave. And there is nothing to distract from the actors, who first take the stage from seats on Brechtian benches at the rear. If anything, Guther’s flamboyant, jarringly disparate costumes are the set dressing. Patsy Ferran’s intelligent Portia might be grateful to don sober lawyer’s garments, after the hard poster colours of the little shift dresses that seem to be current Venetian jet set fashion here.

There is, though, a shock awaiting her at court. For at the centre of Findlay’s reading of the play is what turns out to be a love triangle, where Portia sees what the audience has known from the start – she must share her new husband Bassanio (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd) with Ballard’s tortured (and I don’t mean by Shylock), depressive Antonio, who claims him with a desperate kiss as he awaits his fate. It certainly makes sense for Portia to channel her discomfiture and anger into her inspired and literally blood-chilling case against Shylock. So this ‘comedy’ becomes even more of a problem play, if Portia and Bassanio’s wedded bliss looks uncertain before their marriage is even consummated.

Meanwhile, Khoury’s now coldly focused, implacable Shylock makes the most of his day in court, almost whetting his knife on Antonio’s bare chest. No wonder Antonio screams and cringes. And though Shylock loses everything, he is perhaps more incredulous than broken and makes it clear that playing for sympathy - from court or audience – is beneath him.  Even he is upstaged by a tsunami of banknotes raining down on the court – effective but perhaps heavy-handed symbolism.

The Merchant of Venice production photos_ 2015_Photo by Hugo Glendinning (c) RSC _MER_148

By the time Portia and her faithful waiting gentlewoman Nerissa (an especially warm and literally supportive performance from Nadia Albina – these girls are close) return to Belmont, Jessica and her Lorenzo do not look entirely comfortable with each other either. Jessica seems almost aggressive as she and Lorenzo top each other with their references to pairs of mythical lovers who might have shared such an enchanted night as theirs, alone on Portia’s estate while its mistress is away at court. The magic should have been enhanced by a floor gradually lit by candle after candle filling the stage, the effect doubled by that mirror wall. But their brash brightness is too obvious a visualisation of Lorenzo’s description of "the floor of heaven thick inlaid with patines of bright gold"; the patina on the brass of that mirror would have done nicely. Perhaps the only real beauty in the evening is provided by the choristers, "young-eyed cherubim" indeed, to quote Lorenzo again, singing Marc Tritschler’s unearthly plainsong from the heights of the set. It’s a particularly discomfiting and alienating reading of this difficult play and though the creative vision is clear, it is perhaps too much of a straitjacket for the drama.

By Judi Herman

The Merchant of Venice runs until Wednesday 2 September (broadcast live in cinemas on 22 July). 7pm & 1pm. £5-£60. Royal Shakespeare Theatre, CV37 6BB; 084 4800 1110. www.rsc.org.uk

Greetings from Israel! Raphael Gee reports on Limmud Tel Aviv

The Two Rafis - Raphael Gee (R) and Rafi Zarum (L) at Limmud Tel Aviv, 2015

The two Rafis: Raphael with Rafi Zarum, the dean of the London School of Jewish Studies, who presented sessions on James Bond and 7 levels of laziness

"Just back from the two-day inaugural Limmud Tel Aviv. I am not certain how many attended but those who did were a mixture of Israelis and olim from many countries including the UK, France, Italy, Turkey, the USA, South Africa and Australia. There were sessions in both Hebrew and English. Of the English sessions, topics included leadership, a talk by a retired Israeli intelligence agent (his name was not given but when he got up to speak, I recognised him from previous UK Limmud conferences, so his cover was effectively blown), Nidda (Jewish family law), Israeli innovation for developing countries, water co-operation and Jewish origins of value investing. There were also some journalists from the Jerusalem Post and The Media Line."

By Raphael Gee

For future Limmuds, visit their Tel Aviv or UKwebsites.

Review: The Merchant of Venice – The Globe offers a full-blooded production of a problem play

The Merchant of Venice may be considered the most problematical of Shakespeare’s problem plays, especially in the current climate of a perceived threat of heightened antisemitism, but there’s more than one Yiddish version of the story, including M. Zamler’s 1929 novel with a brand new title, Shaylock (Der Soyher fun Venedig). Tellingly it is billed as based on Shakespeare’s tragedy.

Shylock’s is not the title role in Jonathan Munby’s spirited, yet thoughtful new production for Shakespeare’s Globe, but Jonathan Pryce’s commanding, complex Shylock takes centre stage in each of the few scenes Shakespeare writes for him. In fact Shylock and his rebellious daughter Jessica (played by Pryce’s real-life daughter Phoebe Pryce) get a few more lines than usual – they first erupt on to the stage in the middle of a furious row – in Yiddish!

Pryce (a notable Fagin, but banish all thoughts of that here) has said in interview that he would love it if the audience booed him, yet by the time they watch him arriving in court armed with knife and scales to cut and weigh the famous pound of Antonio’s flesh, it’s clear how much he has had to bear from all the Christians of Venice – especially from Antonio, who really does "spit upon" his "Jewish gabardine" (with the compulsory yellow circle, forerunner of the Nazi yellow star, stitched on the breast) even as he is asking to borrow money. There’s an especially shocking moment, when Shylock’s treasured copy of the five Books of Moses (the Torah), that he clearly carries with him for constant consultation (here looking up the story of Jacob and Laban which Shakespeare has him reference), is wrenched out of his hands and contemptuously flung on the ground. And skull caps off to Munby for some nice research – when Shylock stoops to rescue it, he kisses it to restore respect, a gesture you can see in any synagogue when a prayer book is accidentally dropped.

His distress at hearing that Jessica has exchanged his late wife’s ring for a monkey is especially touching, bringing a temporary moment of quiet sympathy from the usually raucous groundlings, at least the night I saw the play.

Phoebe Pryce’s Jessica has her own awkward path to negotiate once she has broken free of her father to flee with her Christian love Lorenzo. Although wealthy heiress Portia makes the new couple welcome at her grand home and leaves them in charge of it, she causes her young guest a moment of discomfiture when she takes her place to partner Lorenzo in a formal dance that just happens to be slightly suggestive too – does it perhaps smack a little of droite de seigneur?

And usually the last the audience sees of Shylock is a broken man begging for leave to go from the court, under imminent threat of being forced to convert to Christianity. Here his last word is "credo" ("I believe") part of a Latin mass, a conversion ceremony orchestrated by Antonio – either watched or imagined by a distraught Jessica.

But of course Shakespeare’s Globe is not staging Shaylock. Munby’s reading of Shakespeare’s comedy really does get laughs from the whole house, not just the delighted groundlings, two of whom get to strut their stuff onstage to some of the loudest applause that greets every bit of inspired stage business. They are roped in to help out the clownish servant Launcelot Gobbo, who deserts Shylock for a new master ahead of Jessica’s flight. Stefan Adegbola works the crowd with obvious and expert delight. It’s a pleasure to watch him at work – and so happy in it too!

Others shine in smaller roles as well. Dorothea Myer-Bennett as Portia’s waiting gentlewoman Nerissa, is wonderfully sprightly and intelligent, getting laughs from every echo of her mistress, for example as she is courted by Gratiano, man to Portia’s chosen suitor Bassanio; and even in the sometimes tedious subplot which sees both mistress and maid, disguised in male attire tricking their new husbands into yielding up the rings they gave them to plight their troth. David Sturzaker’s Gratiano is more likeable than some, despite his eager embrace of antisemitism, which is after all as endemic in Venice as anywhere else in 16th-century Europe – and despite an opening gambit that has him throwing up after a night out.

Scott Karim’s Prince of Morocco, somehow managing to be dignified and ridiculous at the same time and Christopher Logan’s wonderfully daft Prince of Arragon, straight out of Carry On Columbus, get the very most out of their cameo roles. They underline the ‘Little Venice’ prejudice of Portia and her clique, worthy of UKIP; for the young women have already ridiculed suitors from all over Europe before this brave pair dare to face the rather cruel trial that Portia’s late father has decreed for those who seek her hand.

That’s not to say that Rachel Pickup’s intelligent, even prickly Portia and Daniel Lapaine’s handsome though febrile Bassanio and Dominic Mafham’s repressed Antonio don’t hold their own throughout. It’s more a paean to the completeness and effectiveness of this production in every role.

Mike Britton’s simple stage design, letting his colourful costumes sing out, and Jules Maxwell’s delicious music, played and sung by a surprisingly small and hugely effective ensemble (singers Jeremy Avis (also musical director) and Michael Henry and Nuno Silva with Dai Pritchard on clarinets and Catherine Rimer on cello) enrich this hugely satisfying period production.

By Judi Herman

Photography by Manuel Harian

The Merchant of Venice runs until 7 June. 7.30pm & 2pm. £16-£43 seats, £5 standing. Shakespeare's Globe, 21 New Globe Walk, SE1 9DT; 020 7401 9919. www.shakespearesglobe.com

Geraldine Auerbach reports on the tragic death of two giant figures in Britain's Jewish music scene

© Complete Music and the Brickman family via Times Union

Composer Ronald Senator and his wife, pianist Miriam Brickman, tragically died in a fire in their home in Yonkers, New York on Thursday 30 April. Geraldine Auerbach, the founder of the Jewish Music Institute in London, explains how important they were in the world of Jewish music in Britain.

I am not sure how I first met Miriam and Ronnie Senator – but they were pivotal to the first Bnai Brith Jewish Music Festivals. Miriam was a real catalyst, putting (or pulling) ideas, people and programmes together in most creative ways that always led to something special and to lasting and developing relationships. She would always come up with something innovative and spectacular.

To the very first festival on 24 June 1984 she brought a super chamber concert in the Purcell Room with herself on piano and Stanley and Naomi Drucker, clarinettists from the New York Philharmonic, and her friends Sybil Michelow and Malcolm Williamson who had formed a piano and voice duo. For the second festival in 1986 she brought another chamber concert, which included bassoon and viola players from the Nash Ensemble. The programmes were always exciting, introducing new works of Jewish interest by new composers and as always, there were pieces by Ronnie Senator in the concert.

Miriam also brought me something much more remarkable. It was Ronnie Senators' 'Kaddish for Terezin’, a huge oratorio he had written in memory of his first wife who had been incarcerated in Auschwitz. It involved an orchestra, choir and children’s choir, a cantor and a narrator. Something much bigger than I had ever contemplated. But I thought it was important – and, impressed by her enthusiasm, I was inspired to make it happen – in a special setting. The Director of CCJ, the wonderful Rev Marcus Braybrooke suggested it could be ideal for Canterbury Cathedral – and that he would broach the subject with the Dean, with whom he was having lunch next day. It transpired that the Deanery in Canterbury had housed Jewish refugees and that he had wanted a Holocaust memorial (but not a statue) so this fitted the bill.

That set the most amazing activities in motion. Malcolm Singer stepped up to the podium to provide and conduct the orchestra and choirs and had a friend with a superb children’s choir.  I felt Rabbi Hugo Gryn, who himself had been in Terezin, should be the narrator. Louis Berkman cantor of Belsize Square – the synagogue created by Holocaust survivors or escapees – should be the soloist. This amazing premiere was broadcast live on BBC Radio London with interviews with Hugo and other survivors during the interval.

But that wasn't all. When Dr David Bloch, of Tel Aviv University, who was presenting a concert of Israeli contemporary music at the festival, heard about the Terezin Project and suggested we invite two musicians – pianist Edith Kraus from Israel and bassist Karel Berman from the Prague National Opera – who had last performed together in Terezin. He suggested an amazing film of music in Terezín for us to show and also suggested we invite Josa Karas who had just published a book about it. All of which we did.

And so it was that all day while Jewish choirs and a cantor and Rabbi rehearsed in Hebrew and blew a shofar in the Cathedral, the film was showing over and over in the school hall – and recitals (two of them) took place in the recital hall – which just happened to be the old Synagogue in Canterbury. Then after a reception in the Chapter House with the Archbishop of Canterbury the cathedral was filled with Jews and Christians listening to Ronald Senator’s Holocaust Oratorio. A film was made of the day focusing on Edith and Karel and shown on national television on Remembrance Sunday in November 1986, which also happened to be the commemoration of Kristallnacht.

With this auspicious beginning, Miriam went on to have performances of Ronnie’s Kaddish for Terezin mounted in other special places such as St John the Devine in New York, the Vatican in Rome and in Terezin itself.

It was not only the heavy stuff. For the next Festival in 1988 Miriam brought Klezmer to the UK. She introduced me to Giora Feidman the astonishing clarinettist who wowed London at the Logan Hall then and again in 1990, as well as in later festivals. In the ’88  festival Miriam also put together another innovative chamber concert, this time called Echoes of Jewish Poland at St John's, Smith Square with Sybil singing as well as Simon Fisher on Violin, Antonio Lysy on cello and Rivka Golani on viola, who premiered Ronald Senator’s Dance Suite for viola solo.

It was also in 1988 that Miriam introduced me to Isabelle Ganz who delighted everyone with her group Alhambra in a concert of Sephardi Life Cycle songs at the Almeida Theatre and presented the delightful Sacred and Secular music of the Sephardi Jews at the Purcell Room, Supported by Nitza and Robin Spiro.

It was always exciting to be in the presence of Miriam and Ronnie. Especially Miriam, who was so enthusiastic and brimming over with ideas and suggestions that were helpful to all.

Miriam Brickman and Ronnie Senator brought true riches in Jewish music and musicians to greatly enhance the Bnai Brith Jewish Music Festivals and thus Jewish music in the UK. The last time that Miriam and Ronnie were with us I think was at the Bloch Conference in Cambridge in 2007 where she performed in the concert.

They were always together – flitting between homes in London and New York – often catching a lift on the QE2 where Miriam would entertain on the piano and Ronnie would give lectures that enthralled the passengers. He was 89 and Miriam 81. Their health was failing. Despite this shocking news of the fire at their home, there may be something comforting or poignant that in their last moments they were also as one, and like Elijah were taken together up to heaven in a fiery embrace. Always innovative and spectacular.

JR OutLoud: An audio tour of the Jewish Museum's exhibition For Richer For Poorer: Weddings Unveiled

With exactly a month left to go and see this glorious exhibition, Judi Herman takes listeners on an audio tour with curator Elizabeth Selby to whet appetites. There are dresses from different decades – Edwardian, flapper and home-made wartime austerity. There are invitations, menus and even dance cards. There’s a range of ketubot (Jewish marriage certificates) from different eras and from plain to highly decorated. There’s a gallery of glamorous photo portraits of happy couples by Boris – the doyen of wedding photographers – and of course his giant camera is on display too. There’s even a chance to stand under the chupah (Jewish wedding canopy)! Judi Herman got to do just that, as she and Elizabeth Selby explored the fascinating history of weddings within the Jewish community from the 1880s to the mid-20th century. So even if you can't make it to the exhibition, this tour will make you feel as if you too have been invited to the wedding!

By Judi Herman

See pictures from For Richer For Poorer – Weddings Unveiled.

For Richer For Poorer: Weddings Unveiled runs until 31 May and Your Jewish Museum: Love runs until 19 April. Jewish Museum, 129-131 Albert Street, NW1 7NB; 020 7284 7384. www.jewishmuseum.org.uk