Jewish cultural arts at GW – From Under the Fig Tree

When was the last time you attended an honest-to-goodness dinner party? You know, the kind of get-together that takes place in the middle of the week and is untethered to religious ritual, the kind of occasion where the conversation flows as freely as the wine.

Dinner Table — Dinner table. Flickr/David Duran

Years ago, dinner parties were the coin of the academic realm, the domain of that special breed of spouse known as the faculty wife. Once she vanished from the scene, the dinner party vanished along with her.

I didn’t realize how much I missed that social institution, that exercise in collegiality, until I attended one just last week. What rendered it a special occasion wasn’t just its novelty, but the circumstances under which it was held. This dinner party was organized and hosted by one of my students, Elizabeth Livesey, to mark the culmination, the capstone, of her two years of training in GW’s MA in Jewish Cultural Arts.

We encourage the students in the program to think inventively about the relationship between content and creativity: to infuse Jewish cultural programming with substance and, concomitantly to enlarge the possibilities for smart, critical and layered engagement with Jewish culture and history.

Ms. Livesey’s “curated dinner,” as she called it, did exactly that. An homage to, as well as a re-enactment of, the salon of the 19th century, it assembled a lively mix of people -- historians, curators and other museum professionals among them -- to think through the interpretive implications of remounting an infamous 1941 exhibition, Le Juif et la France, in which the Jews of that country were demonized.

Ms. Livesey not only fed our hunger for French wine and food, which we quaffed and consumed in abundance. She also nourished our appetite for intellectual exchange: talk was as plentiful as the dishes on the beautifully appointed, candlelit table.

A resounding success in every which way, a true capstone experience, this “curated dinner” attested both to Elizabeth Livesey’s many, many gifts and to what educators like to call ‘proof of concept.’

When we furnish our students with the right set of tools and sensibilities, encouraging their creative use, boy, can they take flight!

I mean that literally. It’s not just that I spent much of this semester exploring the ways in which sound --intonation, volume, accent, music and noise -- define the Jewish historical experience. I’ve also had the wonderful opportunity to take things even further by producing and hosting a concert this past week that featured one of my students, David Freeman, and his musical ensemble, Sha’ar.

It’s always a thrill to see one’s students perform outside the confines, and constraints, of the classroom. The thrill is greater still when their performance not only builds on their training but also extends, and enhances, its meaning.

And so it was last Tuesday evening, when an old-fashioned musicale with newfangled music unfolded amid the grand salon of a beautiful Dupont Circle home. Inspired by the compositions of Yedidia Admon, an Israeli composer whose work drew on both Western and Middle Eastern musical traditions, Sha’ar gives them a new spin -- and, correspondingly, a new lease on life -- introducing Admon to contemporary American audiences.

Sound filled the high-ceiled room, sweeping us up in its embrace. Some of us tapped our feet, others bobbed their heads and still others counted beats. It was hard to resist the pull of the music whose fusion of bass, clarinet, electric guitar and drums simultaneously put us in touch with the past and propelled us into the present.

I can’t imagine a better note on which to end the semester.

Tag: Jewish cultural arts at GW

Dinner party

The beat goes on…