Art festival connects U.S. Jews to Israel

Galilee festival brings artists together around theme of 'Yitzhak,' the biblical one and others

TEL AVIV - Jewish, Muslim and Christian artists from Israel and the U.S. took part in a festival this week focused on works about the character of Yitzhak, the biblical character, and others with that name.

 

The Yitzhak International Arts Gathering involves painting, environmental sculpture, singing and dance performances.

 

Artists were invited to interpret the theme as they pleased; among the subject choices were Yitzhak Rabin, the biblical Yitzhak (Isaac), and the Hebrew verb "yitzhak," which means "to laugh."

 

Festival spokeswoman Dana Harel said the subject of Yitzhak was chosen to connect Jewish congregations in the U.S. and Israel. The project is part of Partnership 2000, an offshoot of the Jewish Agency for Israel and the United Jewish Communities, whose goal is to promote the relationship between the two communities.

 

A group of about 50 visitors from the U.S. came to attend the festival, including several leaders of Jewish congregations.

 

'I wanted to bring the Torah to a personal level'

 

One of the opening acts on June 18 in Akko (Acre) was a show called "Hasidic Convention," performed by a band named "Shirat Ha'el" ("God's Song"), headed by Eliad Eliyahu.

 

The subject Eliyahu chose was the stories of Rabbi Yitzhak Luria, also known as Ha-Ari, who influenced the spreading of Hasidism in the 16th century.

 

The show, during which the performers and audience acted as if they, too, were Hasidim, involved prayer, singing, dancing, and sounding of the shofar.

 

"It was a happy performance," Eliyahu said. "Everyone got up and danced in circles."

 

Eliyahu, 23, a religious performer, said he took a lot of material for the show from Jewish prayers and the Jewish world in general.

 

"I wanted to bring the Torah to a personal level," he said. "Everyone could connect."

 

Eliyahu heard about the Yitzhak project about two years ago during one of his own concerts, a few months after he was discharged from the army. He decided to participate because he felt it was an important cause.

 

'We explored Jewish-Arab conflict in our homes'

 

Ifat Bar-Lev was another Yitzhak festival performer. Her show created a character named Yitzhak from six different people. The other performers were Jewish and Arab students from Western Galilee College.

 

"For me, Yitzhak symbolized the beginning of the Jewish-Arab conflict," Bar-Lev said. "We explored the subject in our houses, in our lives."

 

She documented the exploration with photographs, which the performers presented in an exhibition in the Western Galilee Campus Gallery, as part of the Yitzhak project.

 

During the unusual performance, the artists were bound together with a wagon and moved across an alley in Acre's old city.

 

Bar-Lev said the show received responses of excitement, pain and wonder.

 

"I have never performed in front of an American audience before," she said. "And they have never seen this sort of performance before, so they were very enthusiastic."

 

Other projects within Yitzhak include a pantomime show titled, "Waiting for Yitzhak," performed by Arab and Israeli teens from the group Mimic, a photography exhibition titled, "Name Mapping," by photographer Robin Sachs, and a dance segment by Prize-winning Israeli choreographer Yehudit Arnon.

 

The project, which began on June 17, closed Thursday with a yoga class called, "Laughter Yoga."