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May 15 • 2008

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inging in unintelligible gib-
berish as her hands strike the
darbuka drum with frantic
intensity, the short, pretty brunette
at center stage holds the audience
transfixed as she reaches the song's
crescendo.
When she sounds her final note,
the audience at the Museum of Jewish
Heritage rises for a standing ova-
tion. Though it is her New York debut
concert, Israeli singer-songwriter Din
Din Aviv is no stranger here. The per-
formance hall is packed with Israeli
fans of Aviv who live in New York and
American Jews clutching her CD.
It's the kind of scene that brings a
smile to the face of David Borowich,
the founder of the American-Israeli

248-661-4050 formington Hills

group that organized the concert, Dor
Chadash.
The point of staging Israeli musical
performances like these, he says, is
to bring Israelis and American Jews
in New York closer together — and
closer to Israel.
"Music is a natural bridge
Borowich says. "People are looking for
ways to connect to Israel. If you can't
bring them to Israel, then bring pieces
of Israel to them:"
Whether out of hunger for a con-
nection to Israel or mere interest in
the music, increasing numbers of Jews
in America — both Americans and
Israelis — are turning out for Israeli
music performances.
For Israel, cultural events like con-
certs are a way to showcase a "softer"
side of the Jewish state beyond the
political, religious and ideological
conflicts many American Jews — and
Israelis — find alienating. It's also

A Blossoming
Israeli Cinema

George Robinson
Special to the Jewish News

of the Film Society of Lincoln Center,
writes via e-mail that "the work of
Amos Gitai ... more and more looks
here have been films made
to have been a beacon for the new
in Eretz Yisrael since 1896,
generation. Gitai's films are more rig-
starting with
orous, more formally inventive
silent filmmakers, Jewish
and radical than the work of
and not, who continued
any other Israeli director before
to film the Holy Land.
him or alongside him, and it is
To speak, however, of an
only in the past decade or so
indigenous national Israeli
that anyone has emerged who
cinema with any accuracy,
is willing to take as many risks."
one must really wait until
One thing that set Gitai apart
the 1960s, albeit a period
from other Israeli directors
when would-be Israeli
was that he received most of
filmmakers — many with Amos Gitai:
his arts education in the U.S.
narrow, inward-looking
and Europe. Given that Israel
Beacon for a
interests — were ham-
didn't
really develop an indig-
new generation
pered by a small popula-
enous
theater tradition until
of Israeli film-
tion, an exclusive language makers.
the 1960s, Gitai wouldn't have
and an inherently limited
learned much about working
audience for their films.
with playwrights or actors in
Commenting on the more recent
Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, and other Israeli
resurgence in the Israeli film industry, filmmakers were as much newborns
Richard Pena, the program director
as he.

T