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86
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1988
Efrat Schecter
Rina Dokshinsky
4
Zvi Plesser
Hagai Shaham
The Immigrant' Presents
New View Of Coming To U.S.
MICHAEL ELKIN
Includes Tossed Garden Salad,
Anna Potatoes & Vegetable du Jour
12 Mile and Orchard Lake Road • Farm. Hills
America-Israel
The
Cultural Foundation in
cooperation with the Jewish
Community Center will pre-
sent four young artists from
Israel in a concert on Dec. 20
at 8 p.m. at the Maple/Drake
Building. Israeli A.I.C.F.
scholarship alumni include
Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas
Zuckerman, Daniel Baren-
boim and Miriam Fried.
The concert will feature,
following their Carnegie Hall
debut, Hagai Shaham, violin;
Efrat Schecter, flute; Zvi
Plesser, cello; and Rina
Dokshinsky, piano. They have
participated in international
music festivals, performed as
soloists with major symphony
orchestras and have been in
recitals throughout the world.
They have received numerous
scholarships and awards.
The program will include
pieces by Bach, Handel-
Halvorsen, Faure, Haydn,
Bartok, Kreisler and Gliere.
The public is invited. There
is an admission fee. For infor-
mation, call the Center,
661-1000, ext. 348.
T
he Immigrant: A
Hamilton County Al-
bum is filled with
Polaroids of persecution and
pogroms.
Turn the page and find
young Haskell Harelik fram-
ed in the dim light of an im-
migrant who faces uncertain-
ties as a new arrival in this
country from turn-of-the-
century Russia.
Flash forward to another
photo, this one depicting the
arrival of his wife, Leah, who
has left behind the anxiety of
anti-Semitism and security of
family for what she hopes is
a more accepting new land,
tolerant of her old-fashioned
ways.
And now, flip to the end of
the album for a composite pic-
ture, that of an America both
negative and positive, a coun-
try that has developed thanks
to the efforts and struggles of
such people as the Hareliks.
But don't close the book yet.
The story's just beginning.
The Immigrant is a compell-
ing and successfully staged
piece of history, the history
being that of playwright
Mark Harelik's family. In his
work, Harelik takes au-
diences on a journey to the
wild West of turn-of-the-
century Texas, where his
grandparents arrived, spur-
red on for a need for a new
life.
But The Immigrant is no
rIbvye with a Ibxas twang.
And Haskell and Leah are
not intended as ghetto
greenhorns. What playwright
Harelik has done is imbued a
play about his grandparents
with grand splashes of color,
Southwestern style.
Let Harelik spin a tale or
two for you now. "When The
Immigrant was playing in-
Washington, D.C., last sum-
mer, a lot of friends and ac-
quaintances I've made in the
Jewish community visited me
the same time I had relatives
in from Texas," says the
Hamilton County native.
he
was,
There
acknowledges, a palpable dif-
ference between the two
groups. The Easterners, he
recalls, marveled at how
relaxed and comfortable his
Texas kin were, "where those
from the East tend to be bred
toward conflict, anticipating
anti-Semitism and yet sur-
prised to encounter it."
What Harelick encountered
as a native of Hamilton Coun-
ty was a town of catholic
beliefs and tolerance. "I grew
up in an environment of non-
conflict," says Harelik. "I
never had a reason to feel
ashamed of being Jewish. In
fact, it surprised me when I
encountered friends from the
East who hid the fact that
they were Jews:'
their
shoved
They
Jewishness in a closet, lock-
ing away their heritage. Some
of those friends, recalls
Harelik, came to see The Im-
migrant and felt like
strangers in a strange land.
"They were surprised at
seeing davening on stage,"
says the playwright. "They
found themselves getting red
in the face from- embarrass-
ment."
Harelik faces facts in talk-
ing about his play. He knows
he is part of a new trend in
American theater, one stress-
ing ethnicity. "What this
means is that the American
Jewish experience has
become less dark for out-
41
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