The Kislev Calendar

The Kislev Calendar counts down the twenty-four days that lead to the Jewish holiday of Chanukah and gives you a little surprise on each of the eight nights of the Jewish Festival of Lights.  Based on the Christian Advent calendar, The Kislev Calendar begins on the first of Kislev, the Jewish month in which Chanukah falls.  This year (2014), Kislev begins on the evening of Saturday, November 22.  To use The Kislev Calendar, click on the appropriate day and enjoy! 

 


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Andy Samberg, Kiss My Mezuzah!

During the Hebrew month of Cheshvan, or MarCheshvan, [Bitter Cheshvan] there are no Jewish holidays. Jvillage Network, therefore, will be printing articles relating to Jewish Arts.

Rachel Bloom is going to be funny, no matter what you think of her and her lewd, Jewy, borderline-offensive brand of comedy

By Batya Ungar-Sargonfor Tablet Magazine

In Rachel Bloom’s animated music video “Historically Accurate Disney Princess Song,“ the princess in question wanders through her medieval town in search of love. Everyone seems to have found their prince but her, she laments in song, passing “the blacksmith with his daughter-wife, 10 years old and pregnant with her brother-son” and “a statue of Christ adorned with thief’s hands.” The princess dances and sings her way into the forest, where she encounters her friends, the Jews.

“Hello, Jews!” she cries with delight, addressing a group of two-foot-tall rounded creatures with egg-heads, who don’t speak so much as chirp. One has a monocle in one eye and a diamond in his hand, while another has beady black eyes. A third wears glasses. They have big hook-noses and wear yarmulkes. “You know, I never did ask you: Why do you live in the forest?” the princess coos, in the tone every Disney princess takes with her little creaturely friends. The Jews answer her with their chirping. “Oh, I see,” she says, “to hide from people trying to kill you. Well, that’s very resourceful, my beaky little friends!” The princess drops gold coins on the floor as Cinderella dropped corn, and the Jews dutifully bend to nibble. “Tell me: Have you ever had a dream that wouldn’t come true?” she trills. “Oh, I see, your dream is that people won’t want to kill you. Well, that’s definitely a dream that won’t come true!” she says, as characters in armor start to shoot arrows at the Jews and chase them off screen. “Oh, goodbye, goodbye!” she calls. Then, scrunching up her little cartoon nose and slitting her eyes, she grunts: “Jews.”

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Is Chaim Soutine the Great Overlooked Jewish Painter of Modernity?

During the Hebrew month of Cheshvan, or MarCheshvan, [Bitter Cheshvan] there are no Jewish holidays. Jvillage Network, therefore, will be printing articles relating to Jewish Arts.

A new gallery show helps reassess the Lithuanian-born artist’s important work—and reveals it as anything but tragic

By Abby Margulies for Tablet Magazine

On a quiet block in Chelsea, nestled among dozens of contemporary art exhibitions, a small but ambitious show has just opened seeking to give one of the great modern masters his due. Life in Death: Still Lifes and Select Masterworks of Chaim Soutine, is the first in a series of exhibitions the gallery will present meant to re-contextualize the work of Lithuanian-born artist Chaim Soutine.

Soutine’s work was first introduced to American audiences in 1950 in his eponymous retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In his seminal essay, exhibition curator Monroe Wheeler wrote of Soutine, “from an early age he used his hardship, pessimism, and truculence to set a tragic tone for his painting, irrespective of its subject matter.” Looking at Soutine’s body of work, it does in fact emanate tragedy, from his flaccid blue chickens nailed to a wall, to his gaunt women whose twisted hands seem to contain the sadness of the world. Though further exhibitions, catalogs, and scholarship have emerged in the past half century—notably significant exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1968 and at the Jewish Museum in New York in 1998 that have contributed tremendous scholarship to his legacy—the vision of Soutine as a tragedian has nonetheless prevailed.

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Farewell to Avraham Hefner, the Forgotten Genius of Israeli Cinema

During the Hebrew month of Cheshvan, or MarCheshvan, [Bitter Cheshvan] there are no Jewish holidays. Jvillage Network, therefore, will be printing articles relating to Jewish Arts.

He was the poet of normal life in a culture still beholden to its foundational myths

By Liel Leibovitz for Tablet Magazine

On my first morning in Tel Aviv University’s film school, a short gentleman with a shiny bald head and a neatly trimmed white beard walked into the classroom and told us that he was very sorry to announce that our professor, Avraham Hefner, had fallen ill, and that class was therefore canceled until further notice. Disappointed, we got up and collected our notebooks; we’d all heard much about the legendary Hefner, the director of some of the most influential films in Israeli cinema history, and were looking forward to meeting him. As we began filing out of the classroom, however, the bearded man eased into a chair and started laughing. We stopped at the doorway, baffled, then walked back in and took our seats. Hefner, still laughing, never bothered introducing himself formally. He’d already taught us an important lesson: If you have to make art—and not everybody does—remember not only to question conventions but, most important, to have fun. The rest of the semester wasn’t always as playful, but it was never less than profound. And when it was over, it wasn’t difficult to understand why so many of the directors and the screenwriters responsible for so many recent and excellent Israeli films and television shows considered themselves Hefner’s ardent students.

Hefner passed away last week at age 79. He’d been declining for some time. In 2005, while standing at a bus stop in Jerusalem, a speeding bus swerved into his path, forcing him to leap away. He hit his head against a pole and broke his glasses. He paid it to no mind at the time, but soon, he started forgetting words. A visit to the doctor revealed serious brain trauma, and his condition steadily deteriorated. His influence, however, seems to grow with each year: A recent survey selected his 1972 masterpiece But Where Is Daniel Wax? as the second-most-influential Israeli film ever made, second only to the cult hit Metzitzim.

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