Yeo-Ho-Ho

Instead of Ho-Ho-Ho this Christmas, I ended up with Yeo-Ho-Ho -- Yeomen of the Guard, that is. I spent both Christmas Day and Christmas Eve in the theater, and will be doing the same tomorrow evening on New Year's Eve. These holidays are complete non-entities in Jerusalem -- we already had our New Year back in September with Rosh Hashanah. I'm dragging some of my castmates out with me after the show tomorrow night, but most of them don't really bother celebrating the secular New Year. Some of them didn't even realize that we're performing on New Year's Eve until I reminded them!

Performing with an Israeli G&S group is a world of difference from my group back home, where I caused a bit of scuffle for having to miss rehearsal for Simchat Torah. Here, the production revolves around both the Jewish holidays and Shabbat. We all got together as a cast to light the menorah each night before the show -- not to mention the fact that there are obviously no shows on Friday nights.  One of our leading men actually flies from the US to Israel for the show each winter because it's impossible for him to perform G&S and observe Shabbat back in the states -- he's amazing!

Here are some photos from the show. Enjoy, and Happy New Year! 

Santa Claus Ain't Coming to Town

You would think that the fact that Jerusalem is a holy city for Jews, Muslims, and Christians alike would mean that symbols of the two most celebrated winter holidays -- Chanukah and Christmas -- would be highly prominent during this time of the year. Not so much. Perhaps my opinion will change when I venture over to the Christian Quarter of the Old City on Christmas Eve, but right now it certainly doesn't look like Santa Claus is coming to this town! Instead, latkes, sufganiot (jelly doughnuts), menorahs, and dreidels are everywhere! As amazing as it is, I must admit that I do kinda sorta miss the Christmas spirit -- it feels like the Grinch stole Christmas here!

One of my favorite things to do during the Christmas season is to drive around and admire all of the elaborate holiday decorations. To compensate for the fact that I can't really do that in Israel, I took lots of pictures of Chanukah in Jerusalem. Some highlights:


I was indeed very tempted by these beautiful sufganiot, but I satisfied my craving by taking pictures instead of actually buying and eating them!

Outside of Israel, the letters on the dreidel stand for "Nes Gadol Haya Sham" -- a great miracle happened there. Because the miracle of Chanukah happened in Israel, Israeli dreidels substitute the letter shin for a peh, changing the saying to "Nes Gadol Haya Po" -- a great miracle happened here.


In addition to sufganiot, the shuk also sold menorahs and dreidels of all shapes and sizes. Take note of the outside glass box menorah. Since the menorah is meant to serve as a public advertisement of the miracles that occured during Chanukah, many religious Jews actually light their menorah outside, placing it in a box to protect it from the elements.



Lastly, Chanukah marks yet another Jewish holiday taking place since the capture of IDF soldier Gilad Schalit. His loyal supporters manned their post outside of the Prime Minister's house, pleaing and petitioning for his return.

As for me -- I'm thrilled that I'm spending more than half of the eight days of Chanukah onstage. Last night we had a Chanukah cantorial concert, Yeomen of the Guard opens tomorrow night and runs through next week, and on Saturday night I'll be performing in an original operetta called Keys to the City. The operetta tells the story of the Chanukah miracle of 1917, when the Turks surrendered control over Jerusalem to the British. It's an incredibly moving and beautiful story that features clever lyrics and catchy melodies written and composed by the director and conductor of Yeomen.

I wish all of you a joyful holiday season and a Happy New Year!

Free Concert Trifecta!

Last night we collaborated with the cantorial students of Hebrew Union College on a concert featuring the music of Cantor Gershon Ephros. While we've been rehearsing the choral portion of the concert for the past month, the concert itself marked the first time I had the opportunity to see everyone perform their solo pieces. Hearing an eclectic collection of works by Ephros gave me a greater appreciation for his contributions to liturgical music (he is best known for creating the very first cantorial anthology). We had a nice crowd for this (free) concert, featuring students from both seminaries as well as members of the community.

This weekend is also the Hamshushalaim festival, a three weekend-long smorgasbord of cultural events meant to promote Israeli tourism. It basically means that the entire city of Jerusalem abounds with free concerts. Since our concert was over by 9pm, a group of us walked over to the Italian Synagogue for an art song recital featuring music by Tosti. The hall was beautiful but unfortunately very small -- so small in fact, that we were standing in a big crowd towards the back!

After a few songs, we decided to head over to another free concert at the Shrine of the Book, home of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The concert featured an incredible a cappella choir conducted by Judy Axelrod, my voice teacher here in Israel (Side note: I'm SO happy that I managed to find such a great voice teacher here ). The music spanned classical, Israeli, and popular genres, and included a hilarious madrigal-style rendition of the Beatles' "Can't Buy Me Love" as well as a very talented countertenor singing Purcell's "Music for Awhile" (a baroque art song). But the best part about the concert was definitely the venue itself. It was neat to be sitting amongst some of the oldest known biblical documents -- not to mention the fact that it had magnificent acoustics!

While there's definitely a part of me that misses all of the cultural events in New York, I suppose I can't complain that I managed to participate in or hear three very different concerts in one evening here in Jerusalem!

Oh, and one more thing I forgot to mention: Throughout the course of the evening, I was toting around a bottle of "etrogcello" -- a version of the Italian liquor limoncello made with etrogs leftover from Sukkot. To make etrogcello, I grated etrog rinds and let them steep in vodka for a little over a month. Then I added a simple sugar syrup, let that sit for a few days in the vodka mixture, and -- voila! The result was a delicious treat that I shared with my classmates to celebrate after the concert. Some people thought it was too sweet, some thought it was too strong, but the overall consensus was that it was tov meod (that's "very good" in Hebrew -- although I kinda think the Italian "molto bene" is more approrpriate in this instance). The etrog added a unique flavor, and I think I might try to make this an annual post-Sukkot tradition.

The funny thing is that I had to enter many security checkpoints throughout the evening to get into all of the concerts, and not one person batted an eye at the fact that I was blatantly carrying around an open bottle of alcohol. That would totally not fly in America! :)

History Repeats Itself

Thirteen years ago, when I visited Israel for the first time with my family in celebration of my Bat Mitzvah, we did an archeological dig in the town of Bet Shean. It's a city located at the junction of the Jordan River and the Jezreel Valley, and when my family was there they were in the midst of excavating the best preserved Roman-Byzantine city in all of Israel. 

Last week I was fortunate enough to return to what is now the Bet Shean Archaeological Park, which officially opened in 1997 -- two years after my family and I "helped" with the excavations (or rather, hindered. I vaguely remember my mom shattering a piece of shell -- sorry mom!) Here's what it looks like now:

These are authentic Roman golden arches that can be seen from the top of the Tel...

This is where the movie version of "Jesus Christ Superstar" was filmed, and the very tree from which he was hung! (in the movie, that is...)