Free verse, song and talk

Visitors to Jerusalem's Hebrew Book Week fair will be treated to a number of free, quality musical performances.

By EVA COHEN, JP STAFF
book fair 88 (photo credit: )
book fair 88
(photo credit: )
Visitors to Jerusalem's Hebrew Book Week fair at its new location in the old train station this week will be treated to a number of free, quality musical performances. Wednesday night provides the chance to see the new production Hayuta, a musical fantasy created by composer/conductor Roni Porat to texts and poems by the late playwright Hanoch Levin (9 p.m.). The Zalman Shazar Center also hosts events for Book Week, including the launch of David Asaf's chronicle of lesser-known incidents in Jewish history, Ne'ahz Be'savach (Caught in a Thicket: Embarrassing Chapters in the History of Hassidism). The center, located at 2 Betar St. in Talpiot, will feature on Sunday evening prominent academics such as Emanuel Etkes and Shmuel Feiner, whose specialties are the long-standing battle between different streams of Judaism over the last 200 years. The next evening (Monday), the center launches Ezra Mendelsohn's Maurycy Gottleib: Art, History and Memory, which examines the ever-popular painter of 19th-century Jewry. Despite his short life (1856 to 1879), more than 300 of Gottleib's works survive, although not all are finished. Mendelsohn says he chose Gottleib as his subject matter because he is interested in the connection between Jewish history and cultural studies. "This event is a valuable way for people interested in the subject to enter into discussion about the Jewish historical phenomenon in an interdisciplinary fashion," says Yirchmael Cohen, who will be hosting the evening, which takes takes place at 7. Admission will be free. The Ma'abada theater space on Hebron Road honors Book Week with a series of NIS 25 presentations, such as one dedicated to the late beloved Dalia Rabikovich, which features readings and a selection of her poems set to music, with vocalist Rona Kenan (Wednesday at 8:30 p.m.) Further information and ticket sales at www.sfarim.org.il.