Programs
We offer a wide range of high quality of programs.
YI produces and promotes a wide range of programs and services to participating organizations. These programs fall into three categories, all central to engaging and building the Jewish community
Concerts
Black Sabbath: Klezmer, Blues, Blacks & Jews
The collaboration of Black and Jewish composers and performers created a rich body of American music. Examples of black artists that sang Jewish songs are: Cab Calloway, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone and Johnny Mathis. The concert also features Negro Spirituals that connect to Jewish themes such as “Go Down Moses.”
From 2nd Avenue to Broadway
Performance includes music by famous Jewish composers who contributed to the great American songbook in English and Yiddish: Bernstein, Gershwin, Berlin, Jolsen, Ellstein, Rumshinsky, Olshanetsky, and others.
Leonard Bernstein: The Man and His Music
An overview of one of the greatest American Jewish musicians of the 20th century. His life and music were deeply affected by his Jewish roots. His three major symphonies, popular songs, interfaith mass, and Broadway shows are peppered with Jewish themes and ideas addressing faith and love.
Performances
Avi Hoffman’s Too Jewish Trilogy
In these award-winning solo musical performances, Avi Hoffman explores his Jewish roots, and has discovered that all audiences can identify with the humor and music of his upbringing.
Joe Papp at the Ballroom
Joseph Papp, visionary founder of Shakespeare in the Park and the NY Shakespeare Festival/ Public Theatre, gave only one public concert in his entire illustrious career.
Noble Laureate (Mr. Singer & His Demons)
In this play, which incorporates Bashevis’ actual personal diary entries as well as his family memoirs and his fictional characters, we imagine what it was like for Isaac Bashevis Singer as he faced the final journey to his beloved afterlife.
Lectures
Amazing Rabbinic Tales: The Shortest Tall Stories
Based on Rabbinic Literature and Jewish Folklore, these anecdotes and stories have been adapted and integrated into our American cultural mythology.
Celebrating Yinglish
Renowned entertainer and Jewish cultural activist Avi Hoffman, together with his mother, retired Columbia University professor, author, journalist and playwright, Miriam Hoffman present a celebration of ‘Yinglish’ - the unique American linguistic combination of Yiddish and English. From the over 5000 Yiddish words that have officially become a part of the English language, Miriam and Avi have fun with the stories and words that celebrate the idiomatic phenomenon that laid the foundation for modern mainstream culture.
God and the Holocaust
A lecture about the Pre-War and Post-War Jewish world in Europe and the relationship between Jews and their God in Holocaust literature, as depicted in the writings of the great Yiddish playwrights, poets and writers.
My Joe Papp
This enriching lecture describes the seven-year period that Professor Miriam and her son Avi Hoffman interacted and worked intimately with Joseph Papp, the most important and prominent Theatre impresario in America.
The Roots of Paula Vogel’s Indecent / Yiddish Theatre: The Foundation of Modern Culture
The aim of the lecture is to offer a comprehensive historical overview of the development of the Yiddish Theater as a social and literary expression of the Yiddish language which served as the basis for much of modern mainstream culture.
Holocaust Education and Awareness
Address Unknown
The story of a friendship between a San Francisco-based Jewish art dealer and his former business partner, who has returned to Germany as the Nazi Party comes to power.
Reflections of a Lost Poet
This serio/comic musical monologue follows the life and times of one of the greatest Yiddish poets.
Shop on Main Street
Adapted from the novella by Ladislav Grosman The story takes place in the Slovak town of Sabinov in June, 1942 and revolves around the relationship between Tono Brtko, a poor Catholic Slovak carpenter, and Mrs. Lautman, a widowed Jewish shopkeeper of failing health.
Signs of Life
Originally produced off-Broadway in 2010, this musical drama is based on actual events that took place in the Terezin ghetto.
The Quarrel
Based on Chaim Grade’s brilliant essay “My Quarrel with Hersh Rassayner.” The most articulate of all post-Holocaust literary examinations and is considered a classical work on the level of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet!"
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