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Temple Hesed and the Jewish Community Center of Scranton will celebrate Yiddish culture Wednesday night as part of a pilot project spanning a dozen Jewish organizations across North America.

Funded with $4,000 in grants, Temple Hesed of Scranton partnered with the JCC to host the Magid Ensemble — a New England-based group who will hold a free, all ages “immersive storytelling experience” followed by a workshop from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the JCC’s Koppelman Auditorium, 601 Jefferson Ave. The temple is bringing the ensemble to Scranton as part of a pilot program through the Amherst, Massachusetts-based Yiddish Book Center’s “Yiddish Arts and Culture Initiative for Jewish Communities” program, which gave Temple Hesed $1,500, said Rabbi Daniel Swartz of Temple Hesed. The Jewish Federation of Northeastern Pennsylvania also gave Temple Hesed $1,500 for the project, and the Scranton Area Community Foundation gave an additional $1,000, Swartz said.

The seed funding from the Yiddish Book Center helped Temple Hesed to secure the additional grants, and without the funding, it wouldn’t be possible, he said.

To have a more centralized location in the city, rather than his temple on Knox Road, Swartz partnered with the Scranton JCC to host the performance.

The Magid Ensemble will perform with a violin, accordion and cello while telling the tale of “Shterna and the Lost Voice,” Swartz said. To enliven the performance, the ensemble will use a “crankie box” — or an unfolding panorama of backlit paper-cut shadowbox art, which comes from a long tradition of paper-cut folk art in Central and Eastern Europe in the Jewish communities and outside of them, he said.

The performance follows Shterna on “an epic hero’s journey through the living world, the underworld and the immortal world in order to retrieve the lost voice of her friend,” according to an event flyer.

The moving background in the crankie box illustrates the story as it’s told, Swartz said.

“It’s just this gorgeous, immersive experience,” he said. “Nowadays, when we hear the term immersive experience, we tend of think of high-tech, virtual reality … this manages to be immersive just through the sheer artistry and passion of the people who are doing it.”

Following the performance, which has a 50-minute runtime, the Magid Ensemble will hold a crankie box workshop where participants can craft their own miniature crankie boxes, he said.

The Yiddish Book Center supports Jewish communities seeking to deepen and enrich their engagement with Yiddish literature, art and culture, according to its website. When an organization, like Temple Hesed, is selected, they send representatives for a three-day workshop and receive funds to host a series of events exploring Yiddish culture and fostering a deeper understanding of its relevance to Jewish identity.

Temple Hesed applied to participate in the book center’s arts and culture initiative in May and quickly learned they would be one of 12 pilot projects chosen across the United States and Canada, Swartz said. Participating organizations encompass schools, synagogues, Jewish Community Centers and independent programs, he said.

During a workshop in August, Swartz met with experts in literature and arts while experiencing performances of Yiddish folk dance and music, including a performance by the Magid Ensemble.

“All of us who saw it from this initial pilot group were just wowed,” Swartz said.

Yiddish culture suffered a heavy blow during the Holocaust when a vast proportion of the Jews who were killed were part of Yiddish culture, but it is seeing a real renaissance, he said. It’s a rich culture, but it’s one that is not as widely understood, Swartz said.

Drawing parallels to modern times, Swartz said Yiddish culture involved people belonging to multiple identities — Jews did not just speak Yiddish, but rather two or three other languages of the surrounding cultures, with the Yiddish language itself incorporating elements of Slavic languages, German, Old French, and a little bit of Latin and Hebrew, he said.

“It’s this really fascinating mixture, and it was a culture that struggled with a lot of the kinds of things that we’re trying to face today in terms of, ‘What makes an identity?’” he said.

Swartz hopes to bring people from not just the Jewish community but from the broader Scranton community to the JCC on Wednesday.

“Being able to experience it together as a piece of live theater, as opposed to seeing something on your screen, it’s just that much richer,” he said, later adding, “You certainly don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy this.”

Moving forward, Swartz wants to host additional Yiddish cultural events using leftover funds while also exploring additional funding.

Originally Published:

2024-12-16 21:50:05

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