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Cincinnati Hillel Recreates European Jewish Cabaret
April 10, 2006Comments (0) | Add | E-mail this to a friend  The music and melodies of the 1930s and '40s filled the Hillel Jewish Student Center of Cincinnati last week as students brought the spirit of Jewish life in World War II-era Poland back for a new generation to enjoy. Twelve students at the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) came together for two very special performances of "Cabaret in the Warsaw Ghetto," a presentation of song and dance that was reminiscent of those written and performed by Jewish artists in the cities, ghettos and concentration camps of Europe.
The cabaret program not only gave aspiring musicians the chance to showcase their talents, but it also allowed them to highlight the work of Jaroslaw Abramov-Newerly, a Holocaust survivor and former collaborator with Wladyslaw Szpilman, familiar to many as the subject of the movie "The Pianist." Abramov-Newerly joined the students for the second-night performance to play some of his original compositions for the audience.
In addition to Abramov-Newerly's music, the cabaret featured the songs of many famous composers of the era, arranged by CCM alumna Claire Lee and graduate student Jonathan Lazerus, and a tango performed by ballet student Laura Derubeis. Two local cantors also joined the students to perform several Yiddish songs. Between songs, recent UC graduate Adam Delson gave the audience the larger picture of life in the Warsaw Ghetto by reading excerpts of the diary of Chaim Kaplan, a school principal who lived in the ghetto before perishing in Treblinka.
"Not only was the evening entertaining, but people were learning firsthand what was going on," said Jessica Segal, the program associate at Cincinnati Hillel.
The program wasn't completely created from scratch – Cincinnati Hillel had organized a cabaret in 1994 – but for most of the performers and audience members, the experience was entirely new. Cincinnati Hillel professionals were also thrilled that the project enabled them to reach out to many new students – vocalists, instrumentalists and theater technicians, both Jewish and not-Jewish – who hadn't had much exposure to Hillel before.
"It was a really great program to get community members here and meet students at CCM," Segal said. "[The students] are very into anything different that they can learn, so they like anything they don't perform at school."
"Hillel Center is such a neat place. I feel like I'm in someone's living room when I'm here," Danielle Steele, a CCM graduate student told the News Record student newspaper. Steele is not Jewish, but said she was warmly welcomed by Cincinnati Hillel Executive Director Rabbi Abie Ingber and his colleagues.
"Cabaret at the Warsaw Ghetto" was funded by a grant from the Estate of Frank and Claire Darmstaedter through the UJA-Federation of New York. Several Hillels in the former Soviet Union have used similar grants to stage cabarets on their campuses, and Tufts University Hillel will also present a cabaret as part of an academic course on theater and the Holocaust, taught by the chairman of Tufts drama department, in the fall.
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