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Friday June 8, 2007

Shorts: The Arts

Santa Rosa music fest adds Jewish component

Harmony Festival will for the first time feature some Jewish speakers, performers and interfaith events.

The music, arts and culture festival, which begins today and runs through Sunday, June 10, has drawn thousands to the Sonoma County Fairgrounds in Santa Rosa for 29 years.

Sunday morning will feature several Jewish entertainers and thinkers. Chabad Rabbis Yisrael Rice and Yosef Langer will teach a Jewish meditation workshop at 10:45 a.m. Afterward, RebbeSoul will perform during an interfaith presentation. Tikkun’s Rabbi Michael Lerner will speak at 12:45 p.m.

Langer, of San Francisco’s Chabad, will also lead a kosher Shabbat dinner and prayer session Friday night on the campgrounds. A kosher food booth will be available throughout the weekend.

Tickets are available online through Ticketmaster, at the festival gates and at dozens of Bay Area businesses. Tickets cost $80 for all three days, $32 for one day. Camping is additional. For more information and a complete musical lineup, visit www.harmonyfestival.com.

Jewish hip-hop artist to play Stern Grove

Oakland Jewish hip-hop artist Hyim and his band, the Fat Foakland Orchestra, will perform 2 p.m. Sunday, June 24 at Stern Grove in San Francisco, sharing the bill with acclaimed Israeli pop performer Idan Raichel. The rapper recently returned from Poland, where he gave a pair of concerts for Memory and Tolerance Weekend.

For more information, visit www.sterngrove.org or Hyim’s Web site, www.hyimvibe.com.

The Marsh, Varon in theater grant

Bay Area playwright, comedian and actor Charlie Varon and the Marsh, a San Francisco theater, have won a $3,000 grant from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture to develop Varon’s new play “Rabbi Sam.”

“Rabbi Sam” was one of several winners of the 2007 New Jewish Theater Projects Grant from the NFJC. The comic play centers on a congregation’s search for a new rabbi, which leads them to Sam, a charismatic ex-tax attorney who asks the question, “What if religion was like jazz?”

Established in 1994, the New Jewish Theater Projects Grant has commissioned 43 plays that explore the Jewish experience, all produced by professional companies across the country. The National Foundation for Jewish Culture is the leading advocate for Jewish cultural creativity and preservation in America.

Spielberg film archive expanded

The online Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive has been expanded.

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which administers the archive, announced this week that it now contains more than 400 films that can be viewed on its Web site, www.spielbergfilmarchive.org.il. The selection includes “The Price of Peace,” a film about the Six-Day War.

The project, funded by the American Friends of the Hebrew University in Los Angeles in honor of Motion Picture Association of America Chairman Jack Valenti, began in 2002. — jta

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