Kesher Talk

I'm a big StorahTelling fan, so I was very pleased to see the troup get some press:

When the live music starts — a reedy horn, viola and dumbek drum doing a sort of Middle Eastern improv — there are some surprised stirrings from the sleepy adolescents in the audience. Then the sound of a Yehudah Amichai poem recited slowly in Hebrew reverberates through the room, the electronic synthesizer overlay giving it the illusion of being in a cave. A young man at a piano reads the English translation into a microphone. An impassioned piano and vocals rendition of Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah” follows.

Then, when everyone is wondering what all this has to do with the Torah portion, a trim, youthful man in a large knit purple yarmulke walks to the front of the room. What follows is difficult to classify. It’s not storytelling. Not a play. Not quite performance art. And definitely not the standard Torah service. Yet it has elements of all four. Welcome to Storahtelling, where “story meets Torah and history sometimes meets fantasy,” according to its founder and director, Amichai Lau-Lavie.

If you live in the New York area, make an effort to see them. If not, get your local Jewish community to bring them to town.

posted by Judith @ 3/27/2003 11:00:56 AM