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Arts & Culture quickly that there was going to second half. need to be a way for me to be will- “I probably hadn’t written 70 Inspired by the Pandemic, ing to encounter myself and my own voice,” she said. “I couldn’t songs in the previous seven years,” he said.Jewish Musicians Are Rolling Out a Year’s Worth of Spiritual ‘Healing Songs’ By Shira Hanau just be thinking about communal singing and gathering.” While Mintz has typically drawn from the prayer book and the genre of niggunim, wordless melodies, that can be sung by a group, she found herself drawn to the poetry of Feit released his psalm melodies in YouTube live streams, with some racking up a few hundred views. While the videos were not a perfect substitute for the loss of in-person singing he normally leads at Kol came to characterize her music Yehuda Amichai, an Israeli poet Hai, he said the music was a way of throughout the pandemic year. who died in 2000 and often infused touching people from afar. Along with eight other Jewish his work with biblical imagery, and “I think the power and purpose singers and prayer leaders, Brody writing melodies for his poems. of music became much more clear, will showcase the songs written “That’s something I probably that sound literally touches us,” during the pandemic during a con- would not have spent time doing Feit said. “So I think the music that cert Monday night timed to the before the pandemic,” Mintz said. we made during the pandemic was
Shir Yaakov Feit sings the first of 70 melodies he wrote for the Book of Psalms at the beginning of the pandemic. (Screenshot from YouTube) release of the studio recording of her “B’shem Hashem.” For singers and musicians, the past year of canceled concerts has made the pandemic especially difFor Shir Yaakov Feit, a Jewish songwriter who leads Kol Hai, a Jewish Renewal community in New Paltz, New York, the beginning of the pandemic was the most prolific a form of medicine.” Brody is hoping to keep that ability for music to heal and connect at the front of her songwriting going (JTA) — It was only about a ficult. But for some it’s also been a songwriting period of his life. Stayforward. week into lockdown last spring year of expanded capacity to write ing inside at his Hudson Valley “I really hope that what has hapwhen Elana Brody took out her new material. And for artists who home in March last year, he chal- pened this year, with the focus keyboard piano for a jam session. It focus on Jewish spiritual and devo- lenged himself to write a melody a being on healing and prayer and was late at night, so it made sense tional music, much of the new day for a chapter of the book of community, that my music kind of that the new melody that came to material has drawn on the challeng- Psalms. The book has 150 chapters. stays there,” she said. her then was “B’shem Hashem” a ing shared emotions of the pan- “I’m afraid of committing to And Brody is already planning part of the Shema. demic and transformed them into writing a psalm a day for the next additional concerts to include more “It was kind of natural to want to sing this prayer because it’s a bedtime prayer,” Brody said, calling it an “incantation” of sorts. prayer. “We’re kind of hard-wired to digest grief and turn it into art or song,” Brody said of artists like 150 days, but maybe that’s what’s happening,” Feit said in the video from his first psalm tune on March 21, 2020. artists who wrote new material during the pandemic. “There are so many artists out
The words call on four angels to herself. “I wrote an album’s worth Feit didn’t end up going through there who have written a healing surround her — Michael to the of material through this last year, all 150 Psalms chapters, stopping at song this year, so now I’m excited right, Gabriel to the left, Uriel in all transmuting loss into song.” 70. But he’s proud of the melodies to try to make a platform for even front and Raphael behind — with When the pandemic began last he wrote and hopes to return to the more artists,” she said. “For more God above her head. Brody imag- spring, Deborah Sacks Mintz had project someday to complete the healing songs.” ined the angels surrounding the been preparing for a series of conpeople of New York City, which certs and prayer services to proshe had left behind a week before mote her new album of Jewish when she drove to her parents’ music released in May. When those home in Virginia to ride out the concerts were canceled, it not only beginning of the pandemic, and kept her at home. It also forced protecting them as the first wave of Mintz — someone who works as a the pandemic engulfed the city. prayer leader and educator teaching
For Brody, a Jewish singer-song- her songs and leading communal writer who also leads prayer ser- singing experiences — to rethink vices and runs spiritual retreats, the her approach to music. healing intention behind that song “It became clear to me pretty
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Steven Spielberg Launches Foundation to Fund JewishThemed Documentaries
By Gabe Friedman`
Stephen Spielberg and Kate Capshaw attend the 2018 Arthur Miller
Foundation Honors at City Winery in
New York City, Oct. 22, 2018. (Mike
Coppola/Getty Images) (JTA) — Steven Spielberg has launched a film foundation called Jewish Story Partners to fund documentaries that “tell stories about a diverse spectrum of Jewish experiences, histories, and cultures.”
It’s funded by the Righteous Persons Foundation, which Spielberg and his actress wife Kate Capshaw founded after Spielberg’s experience making “Schindler’s List” in 1993. Two Jewish philanthropies — the Maimonides Fund and the Jim Joseph Foundation — also contributed funds. (Both organizations also help fund 70 Faces Media, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s parent company.)
“We are especially proud to help establish this initiative — which will make visible a fuller range of Jewish voices, identities, experiences, and perspectives — at a time when social divisions run painfully deep and mainstream depictions too often fail to reflect the Jewish community in all its complexity,” Spielberg and Capshaw said in a statement Thursday announcing the foundation.
The organization, which starts with $2 million, will soon announce its first round of grantees, who will receive $500,000 in total this year. It is already taking applications for a second round of grants and says it hopes to ramp up its funding over time.
The project’s director is Roberta Grossman, a filmmaker who has specialized in Jewish-themed documentaries. Caroline Libresco, a longtime Sundance Film Festival programmer, will be its artistic director. And “Friends” creator Marta Kauffman is a board member.
“I’m looking forward to helping create a stable and lasting funding organization that can fill the funding gap for independent filmmakers who want to tell a Jewish story,” Kauffman said in a statement.
Spielberg’s Righteous Persons Foundation has funded a range of Jewish initiatives beyond the film world, including the USC Shoah Foundation, which has created an archive of recorded Holocaust survivor testimonies.
Spielberg is also a recent recipient of the Genesis Prize, nicknamed the “Jewish Nobel,” which is given to “extraordinary individuals for their outstanding professional achievement, contribution to humanity, and commitment to Jewish values.” He said he will donate his $1 million prize earnings along with $1 million of his own to 10 different organizations fighting for racial and economic justice.
Helen Mirren to Play Golda Meir in Upcoming Film ‘Golda’
By Gabe Friedman
(JTA) — It’s a Meir moment.
Academy Award winner Helen Mirren will portray Golda Meir, Israel’s only female prime minister, in an upcoming biopic set during the Yom Kippur War.
Production on “Golda” will begin later this year, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The news follows the announcement last month of another star-powered production on Meir, a series titled “Lioness” led by Israeli actress Shira Haas of “Unorthodox” fame.
While “Lioness” will follow Meir from “her birth in Kiev to her American upbringing in Milwaukee, her role in the formation of Israel and her rise to become the new nation’s first and only female prime minister,” according to a report in Deadline, “Golda” will focus on the turbulent Yom Kippur War period.
Along with the rest of Israel, Meir and her all-male cabinet were taken by surprise by the attack on the eve of the holiday in 1973 by Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian forces. The ensuing bloody conflict — chronicled in the recent acclaimed Israeli production “Valley of Tears” on HBO Max — shattered the nation’s growing sense of confidence at the time in an embattled region.
“Golda” will be directed by Israeli filmmaker Guy Nattiv, who won the 2018 Academy Award for best short for “Skin,” a film involving neo-Nazis that he later made into a feature.
“As someone who was born during the Yom Kippur War, I am honored to tell this fascinating story about the first and only woman to ever lead Israel,” Nattiv said in a statement. “Nicholas Martin’s brilliant script dives into Golda’s final chapter as the country faces a deadly surprise attack during the holiest day of the year, a core of delusional generals undermining Golda’s judgment.
He added: “I could not be more excited to work with the legendary Miss Mirren to bring this epic, emotional and complex story to life.”
Helen Mirren arrives at the Berlinale International Film Festival in Berlin, Feb. 27, 2020. (Thomas Niedermueller/ WireImage/Getty Images)
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