FEATURE EVENTS
Wednesday, May 7 | 6:30 - 7:30 PM | Downtown Library
Jewish American Poets of Color
Experience poetry by local poets Zilka Joseph and Isaac Pickell as they share their diverse and global experience as Jewish Americans — one a Bene Israel from India and one an African American.
Tuesday, May 27 | 6:30 - 7:30 PM | Downtown Library
Piano Concert Talk: The Best of Jewish Music and Composers
Join pianist David Rodgers on an uplifting musical journey through Jewish music as well as popular and Broadway music written by Jewish composers. Featuring solo piano performances of Yiddish, celebratory, dance, popular, Broadway, and more, Rodgers will offer historical background info and stories, musical trivia, and a question and answer session.
Wednesday, May 28 | 6:30 - 7:30 PM | Downtown Library
Obscure Yiddish Folk Songs, Both Humorous and Heartbreaking — with Mikhl Yashinsky
A green duck goes in search of noodles to chew on. A soldier leaving for the Russo-Japanese war bids a heartbreaking farewell to his mother, father, and sweetheart. A mysterious stranger enters the shtetl. These are just some of the strange scenarios found in the antiquated but wonderfully alive Yiddish songs that Mikhl Yashinsky, Detroit-born Yiddish performer, has learned this past year as an apprentice to the veteran folk singer Ethel Raim. His live renditions of the songs, done in the traditional, highly ornamented style of unaccompanied Yiddish singing, will be threaded together with colorful remarks on their meanings and origins. English translations to be projected.
MORE WAYS TO EXPLORE JEWISH AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH
Culinary Historians | Detroit's 1910 Kosher Meat Riot
Due to an ongoing national monopoly on beef, in May 1910 Detroit’s kosher meat prices jumped 250%. To feed their families amid rapid inflation, working-class Orthodox Jewish women fought back, organizing boycotts and even opening co-op markets to feed the community. Riots sometimes erupted when they targeted people breaking their boycott. In this lecture, historian Catherine Cangany recovers a forgotten moment in Michigan’s culinary past.
The Old Jewish Burial Ground
Go to the corner of E. Huron and Fletcher. This puts you between the glass front of the Power Center for the Performing Arts and the stone side of the University of Michigan’s Rackham Building. Cross to the Rackham side of the intersection, face the building, and look down. You’ll see this plaque, which is perhaps twice the size of a tombstone.