Ruthie Abeliovich | Tel Aviv University (original) (raw)
Papers by Ruthie Abeliovich
Judaic-Slavic Journal, 2022
This article focuses on Louis Zwiebel, a prompter and playbroker that mediated and transported Y... more This article focuses on Louis Zwiebel, a prompter and playbroker that mediated and transported Yiddish theatre plays across the Atlantic Ocean. Within the annals of Yiddish theatre, Zwiebel is considered a marginal figure: he was neither a star actor or singer, nor an innovator of the Yiddish stage. Zooming into Zweibel’s practice, this article depicts the backstage work of a theatre agent and mediator. Considering the logic and business of theatre, its backstage practices and working modes as essential components of the stage, thе article aims to understand Zwiebel’s act of mediation, and his role in the ‘global’ spatial circulation and transformation of Yiddish theatre during the first decade of the 20th century. I begin by depicting the Yiddish theatre transatlantic network during the first decade of the 20th century and the context under which Zwiebel operated. I then turn to explore Zwiebel’s act of mediation as an example of the modus operendi of the Yiddish theatre network, and discuss his transformative impact upon the theatre he mediated. I conclude the article by pointing at the implications of the mediation practice on the concept of authorship as conceived in the early years of the popular Yiddish theatre culture.
The Oxford handbook of Jewish music studies, 2023
This chapter focuses on modes of listening generated by the Yiddish theater during the outset of ... more This chapter focuses on modes of listening generated by the Yiddish theater during the outset of the twentieth century. Departing from Moyshe Hurwitz’s four-act opera Yetsies mitsraim (The Exodus from Egypt), it examines the ways whereby listening in and to the Yiddish theater evolved against the backdrop of two simultaneous processes: the invention of sound technology and the Jewish mass migration movement from eastern Europe to the United States. Aiming to understand sound as recorded, aired, and actively listened to by audiences in historically and culturally specific formations, three central performances of listening are traced that reflect perceptual facets of the experience of displacement: theatrical listening, acousmatic listening, and peripatetic listening. These sensory and emotive formations translated, intervened in, and altered the ruptured migratory experience into audiovisual modes of attention, enabling its listeners to practice and negotiate their shifting social reality. Thus, listening in and to Yiddish theater functioned as a cornerstone in the actual and imaginative configurations of the Jewish migratory collective after the turn of the century.
European Journal of Jewish Studies, 2024
A close examination of early twentieth-century literature written in Hebrew and Yiddish reveals t... more A close examination of early twentieth-century literature written in Hebrew and Yiddish reveals that many of its first representations of Christianity put a central emphasis on Mary. This fact has been overlooked in previous scholarship fixated on the role of Jesus. Our article aims to fill this lacuna by focusing on Mary's appearance in a short, controversial story published in 1909 by Sholem Asch. Through a close reading of Mary's encounter with the matriarch Rachel, we define Asch's 'maternal model,' an alternative paradigm for Jewish-Christian relations. We argue that the marginalization of Mary from the scholarly conversation is not a slipup. Rather, it is part of a gendered scheme that prioritized Jesus over his mother and narratives of persecution and victimhood over care and obligation. We show how Asch's artfully constructed fictional formation offers a political position founded on empathy and interconnectivity.
In geveb, 2023
This article examines the ways in which shund theatre reflected and propagated the new social ord... more This article examines the ways in which shund theatre reflected and propagated the new social orders and the changes in cultural categories that took place in Jewish culture at the turn of the twentieth century. Focusing on Abraham M. Sharkansky's 1896 play Kol nidre, oder di geheyme yidn in madrid (Kol Nidre, or the Secret Jews of Madrid), the article shows how "lowbrow" Yiddish theatre both reflected and fostered the blurring of boundaries between the synagogue performance of Kol Nidre and the theatre. In this theatrical performance, the Kol Nidre prayer was part of the staged fiction; however, the sounds, meanings, and affect of this prayer were familiar to its listeners from the synagogue. The Kol Nidre performed in the theatre thus transcended the illusionary threshold of the fictional realm, pointing to the current social realm of its audience.
דפים למחקר בספרות, 2022
מאמרי מתמקד במסיכה כמושג התייחסותי, המכונן מרחב של יחסים חברתיים תיאטרליים, בו נשברות תפישות בינא... more מאמרי מתמקד במסיכה כמושג התייחסותי, המכונן מרחב של יחסים חברתיים תיאטרליים, בו נשברות תפישות בינאריות של אמת ושקר, בדיון ומציאות, שחקן ודמות. במרכז המאמר סיפורו של האתנוגרף, הסופר והמחזאי היהודי ש. אנ-סקי (שלמה זנוויל רפופורט) "מאחורי המסיכה" (1909). בסיפורו של אנ-סקי המסיכה מהווה רכיב מרכזי במארג החיים הציבוריים; כאופן של משחק ונוכחות במרחב הקהילתי. באמצעות קריאה תיאטרונית של יצירותו של אנ-סקי, המאמר מתבונן על "נשף המסיכות" החברתי שמוצג בסיפור כמאפיין המכונן את המפגש של החברה היהודית במזרח אירופה עם עידן המודרנה. במרכז המאמר שלושה מפגשים המתקיימים בעולם הבדיוני שמתואר בסיפור של אנ-סקי, ודרכם נבחנים תפקידיה החברתיים של המסיכה: המפגש הראשון מתמקד בכניסה של אדם זר אל תוך הקהילה ובמסיכה כתחבולה שבמרכזה פעולה של התחפשות והעמדת פנים; המפגש השני, מתמקד במסיכה כדרישה קהילתית לאימוץ דפוסי התנהגות מקובלים על מנת להיטמע בחברה; לבסוף, המפגש השלישי, מתמקד במסיכה כאביזר המגן על האדם ובפונקציה שלה כאובייקט המפצל בין הנראה למוכחש. הדיון בתפקידים השונים שאנ-סקי מייחס למסיכה, כמחוללת דינאמיקה חברתית, מאפשרים התבוננות ביחסי הכוחות ובמימדים התיאטרליים של המרחב התרבותי היהודי המזרח האירופאי, לנוכח תהליכי השינוי שהתחוללו בו.
This article focuses on the mask as an interpersonal term that shapes theatrical social relationships grounded on role-playing and masquerade. It focuses on the short story “Behind the Mask” (1909), written by ethnographer, publicist and playwright Sh. An-sky )Shloyme Zanvl Rappoport). In An-sky’s story the mask functions as a constitutive element in the fabric of the everyday Jewish life, and as a mode of playful participation in the community, in the face of modernist transformation processes. The article analyses three central social and cultural functions of the mask depicted in An-sky’s story: the entrance of a stranger into a community as a scheme of pretense and disguise, the demand to adopt communal norms of living and behavior, and finally, the mask as a shield protecting the individual from what one wishes to conceal from the public. The article concludes by discussing the theatrical power-relations the mask construes.
New Media & Society , 2022
This article explores body–voice entanglements in TikTok through the prism of ventriloquism. It s... more This article explores body–voice entanglements in TikTok through the prism of ventriloquism. It suggests that TikTok is an app of network ventriloquism, that is, an audiovisual technology–based web of dissociations and reconfigurations of users’ bodies and voices. Yiddish serves as a case study for how TikTok’s features build an infrastructure for language, heritage, and cultural activism. We analyze YiddishToks as an instantiation of the ways TikTokers embody actual technolinguistic and ventriloquistic interconnections as well as bond with past generations. YiddishTokers interlace times and spaces and recontextualize Yiddish media history. TikTok’s algorithm participates in this reanimation of Yiddish’s past; it is a transparent, audible director that prompts the network off-stage. TikTok is an algorithmic network ventriloquism app that mediates between human and non-human voices.
Theatre Research International
Theatre Research International, 2020
This paper probes into the 1964 Israeli performance of Rolf Hochhuth's controversial drama The Re... more This paper probes into the 1964 Israeli performance of Rolf Hochhuth's controversial drama The Representative. Staged by Habima National Theatre under the direction of Avraham Ninio, the majority of the cast engaged in this production comprised European-born Jewish refugees and Holocaust survivors. In its cultural context, the theatrical image of Jewish refugees dressed in Nazi uniforms or, conversely, staging visual, gestural or aural markers of Auschwitz prisoners imbued the drama with political meanings, triggering a debate about agency and forms of social and material participation in the aftermath of calamity. Examining the subterranean world of artists and craftsmen and women whose labour is deliberately obscured from view, I argue that the work of theatre emerges as a creative and generative energy that filters from the staged fiction into the ‘real’ world.
Theatre Research International, 2020
The Methuen Drama Handbook of Theatre History and Historiography, 2019
This paper focuses on the feedback between the social sciences and the arts as generated by Van G... more This paper focuses on the feedback between the social sciences and the arts as generated by Van Gennep’s ideas, and on the artistic and performative models following the attempt to bridge between artistic and social modes of performances and rituals. Focusing on the tripartite structure of Van Gennep's ritual scheme, I argue that its current reigning interpretations underestimate what “performance studies,” heightens: not the ritual and its outcome, but the passage—the durational process—delineates the affiliation of the individual to society and outlines the actions that enable the formation of a community. Thus, rather than focusing on liminality as the pivot of rites of passage, this paper addresses the agentive processuality of the passage between the three phases of the Van Gennep’s ritual model. I offer three central dimensions essential to performance studies, through which theatricality in Van Gennep’s Les Rites de Passage is re-examined: the incursion of the social fictional into the social sphere, the compulsive repetition, and the agency of the acting body as inextricable interrelated dimensions in the processual formation of a tightly-knit community through social rituals.
Israeli choreographer Arkadi Zaides’s solo dance performance Archive investigates the choreograph... more Israeli choreographer Arkadi Zaides’s solo dance performance Archive investigates the choreography of transgressions performed daily in the West Bank by Israeli fundamentalist settlers against Palestinians. Screening fragments from a video archive documenting human rights violations in the occupied territories, this work invites the Israeli spectators to sense the somatic impact of such actions and to consider the corporal resonance of this ongoing violence happening in near proximity.
Theatre Journal Volume 67 Number 1 (March 2015)
European Stages Vol.1 2013
Performance Research Vol.19, Issue 6, Dec 9, 2014
This essay examines three performances which were the outcome of personal dialogues between Israe... more This essay examines three performances which were the outcome of personal dialogues between Israeli performance artists and Palestinian women, and that critically engage the complexity of this (non-)encounter. The three performances I discuss are Umm Muhammad (2011) by Smadar Yaaron; She Has a Headache in Her Stomach (2002), by Tamar Raban; and You Are Not Here—A dislocative tourism agency (2006), an audio-walk created by Mushon Zer-Aviv, an Israeli open-source designer, and Laila El-Haddad, a blogger and journalist from Gaza. Although created in different historical contexts and deal with different phases of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, these performances share the rendering of the Palestinian woman as a presence that is confined to her aural performance; in these performances, the voices of the Palestinian women are imprisoned within the technological apparatus and subjected to operation by the mediation of the Israeli spatial presence. This essay traces the trajectory of the Palestinian voice from the speaker’s body, through its channeling via the mediation of the Israeli performer, to its embodiment by the Israeli spectators. In each of these phases I analyse the separation of the Palestinian feminine voice from the spatial performance as a manifestation of territorial and cultural notions of discontinuity and disruption. I identify the audio-spatial dissociation as a strategy by which these artists imagine and conceptualize the possibility of a shared space. The notion of ‘rupture’ therefore operates as a mode of representation applied to negotiate the imaginative perception of the Israeli–Palestinian encounters. I argue that by centring on the personal experiences of the performers, these works challenge the disturbing imaginings that such spatial separations elicit, and offer the possibility of re-experiencing the Palestinian voice as an integral part of the Israeli public sphere.
Theatre Research International, Jan 1, 2009
Edited Books by Ruthie Abeliovich
Borderlines innovatively explores the ways artistic interventions construct social, cultural, and... more Borderlines innovatively explores the ways artistic interventions construct social, cultural, and mental spaces. The fifteen essays bring a broad multidisciplinary approach to the concept of borderlines and its markings through artistic manifestations. Rejecting older “normative” understandings of the word border lines as signifying semantic irreversibility, this work gives prominence to the plasticity of the combined single word “borderlines.”
Borderlines is a collection of essays that address the cultural, artistic, conceptual, and performative mapping of places. The essays in this collection “write” borderlines from a wide variety of perspectives, representing diverse disciplines, cultural backgrounds, countries, and generations. It presents the pervasiveness of borderlines as an intellectual, artistic and political concept, across media, theories, and places.
Borderlines is intended for academic specialists and students in cultural studies, theatre and performance, media and sound studies.
Judaic-Slavic Journal, 2022
This article focuses on Louis Zwiebel, a prompter and playbroker that mediated and transported Y... more This article focuses on Louis Zwiebel, a prompter and playbroker that mediated and transported Yiddish theatre plays across the Atlantic Ocean. Within the annals of Yiddish theatre, Zwiebel is considered a marginal figure: he was neither a star actor or singer, nor an innovator of the Yiddish stage. Zooming into Zweibel’s practice, this article depicts the backstage work of a theatre agent and mediator. Considering the logic and business of theatre, its backstage practices and working modes as essential components of the stage, thе article aims to understand Zwiebel’s act of mediation, and his role in the ‘global’ spatial circulation and transformation of Yiddish theatre during the first decade of the 20th century. I begin by depicting the Yiddish theatre transatlantic network during the first decade of the 20th century and the context under which Zwiebel operated. I then turn to explore Zwiebel’s act of mediation as an example of the modus operendi of the Yiddish theatre network, and discuss his transformative impact upon the theatre he mediated. I conclude the article by pointing at the implications of the mediation practice on the concept of authorship as conceived in the early years of the popular Yiddish theatre culture.
The Oxford handbook of Jewish music studies, 2023
This chapter focuses on modes of listening generated by the Yiddish theater during the outset of ... more This chapter focuses on modes of listening generated by the Yiddish theater during the outset of the twentieth century. Departing from Moyshe Hurwitz’s four-act opera Yetsies mitsraim (The Exodus from Egypt), it examines the ways whereby listening in and to the Yiddish theater evolved against the backdrop of two simultaneous processes: the invention of sound technology and the Jewish mass migration movement from eastern Europe to the United States. Aiming to understand sound as recorded, aired, and actively listened to by audiences in historically and culturally specific formations, three central performances of listening are traced that reflect perceptual facets of the experience of displacement: theatrical listening, acousmatic listening, and peripatetic listening. These sensory and emotive formations translated, intervened in, and altered the ruptured migratory experience into audiovisual modes of attention, enabling its listeners to practice and negotiate their shifting social reality. Thus, listening in and to Yiddish theater functioned as a cornerstone in the actual and imaginative configurations of the Jewish migratory collective after the turn of the century.
European Journal of Jewish Studies, 2024
A close examination of early twentieth-century literature written in Hebrew and Yiddish reveals t... more A close examination of early twentieth-century literature written in Hebrew and Yiddish reveals that many of its first representations of Christianity put a central emphasis on Mary. This fact has been overlooked in previous scholarship fixated on the role of Jesus. Our article aims to fill this lacuna by focusing on Mary's appearance in a short, controversial story published in 1909 by Sholem Asch. Through a close reading of Mary's encounter with the matriarch Rachel, we define Asch's 'maternal model,' an alternative paradigm for Jewish-Christian relations. We argue that the marginalization of Mary from the scholarly conversation is not a slipup. Rather, it is part of a gendered scheme that prioritized Jesus over his mother and narratives of persecution and victimhood over care and obligation. We show how Asch's artfully constructed fictional formation offers a political position founded on empathy and interconnectivity.
In geveb, 2023
This article examines the ways in which shund theatre reflected and propagated the new social ord... more This article examines the ways in which shund theatre reflected and propagated the new social orders and the changes in cultural categories that took place in Jewish culture at the turn of the twentieth century. Focusing on Abraham M. Sharkansky's 1896 play Kol nidre, oder di geheyme yidn in madrid (Kol Nidre, or the Secret Jews of Madrid), the article shows how "lowbrow" Yiddish theatre both reflected and fostered the blurring of boundaries between the synagogue performance of Kol Nidre and the theatre. In this theatrical performance, the Kol Nidre prayer was part of the staged fiction; however, the sounds, meanings, and affect of this prayer were familiar to its listeners from the synagogue. The Kol Nidre performed in the theatre thus transcended the illusionary threshold of the fictional realm, pointing to the current social realm of its audience.
דפים למחקר בספרות, 2022
מאמרי מתמקד במסיכה כמושג התייחסותי, המכונן מרחב של יחסים חברתיים תיאטרליים, בו נשברות תפישות בינא... more מאמרי מתמקד במסיכה כמושג התייחסותי, המכונן מרחב של יחסים חברתיים תיאטרליים, בו נשברות תפישות בינאריות של אמת ושקר, בדיון ומציאות, שחקן ודמות. במרכז המאמר סיפורו של האתנוגרף, הסופר והמחזאי היהודי ש. אנ-סקי (שלמה זנוויל רפופורט) "מאחורי המסיכה" (1909). בסיפורו של אנ-סקי המסיכה מהווה רכיב מרכזי במארג החיים הציבוריים; כאופן של משחק ונוכחות במרחב הקהילתי. באמצעות קריאה תיאטרונית של יצירותו של אנ-סקי, המאמר מתבונן על "נשף המסיכות" החברתי שמוצג בסיפור כמאפיין המכונן את המפגש של החברה היהודית במזרח אירופה עם עידן המודרנה. במרכז המאמר שלושה מפגשים המתקיימים בעולם הבדיוני שמתואר בסיפור של אנ-סקי, ודרכם נבחנים תפקידיה החברתיים של המסיכה: המפגש הראשון מתמקד בכניסה של אדם זר אל תוך הקהילה ובמסיכה כתחבולה שבמרכזה פעולה של התחפשות והעמדת פנים; המפגש השני, מתמקד במסיכה כדרישה קהילתית לאימוץ דפוסי התנהגות מקובלים על מנת להיטמע בחברה; לבסוף, המפגש השלישי, מתמקד במסיכה כאביזר המגן על האדם ובפונקציה שלה כאובייקט המפצל בין הנראה למוכחש. הדיון בתפקידים השונים שאנ-סקי מייחס למסיכה, כמחוללת דינאמיקה חברתית, מאפשרים התבוננות ביחסי הכוחות ובמימדים התיאטרליים של המרחב התרבותי היהודי המזרח האירופאי, לנוכח תהליכי השינוי שהתחוללו בו.
This article focuses on the mask as an interpersonal term that shapes theatrical social relationships grounded on role-playing and masquerade. It focuses on the short story “Behind the Mask” (1909), written by ethnographer, publicist and playwright Sh. An-sky )Shloyme Zanvl Rappoport). In An-sky’s story the mask functions as a constitutive element in the fabric of the everyday Jewish life, and as a mode of playful participation in the community, in the face of modernist transformation processes. The article analyses three central social and cultural functions of the mask depicted in An-sky’s story: the entrance of a stranger into a community as a scheme of pretense and disguise, the demand to adopt communal norms of living and behavior, and finally, the mask as a shield protecting the individual from what one wishes to conceal from the public. The article concludes by discussing the theatrical power-relations the mask construes.
New Media & Society , 2022
This article explores body–voice entanglements in TikTok through the prism of ventriloquism. It s... more This article explores body–voice entanglements in TikTok through the prism of ventriloquism. It suggests that TikTok is an app of network ventriloquism, that is, an audiovisual technology–based web of dissociations and reconfigurations of users’ bodies and voices. Yiddish serves as a case study for how TikTok’s features build an infrastructure for language, heritage, and cultural activism. We analyze YiddishToks as an instantiation of the ways TikTokers embody actual technolinguistic and ventriloquistic interconnections as well as bond with past generations. YiddishTokers interlace times and spaces and recontextualize Yiddish media history. TikTok’s algorithm participates in this reanimation of Yiddish’s past; it is a transparent, audible director that prompts the network off-stage. TikTok is an algorithmic network ventriloquism app that mediates between human and non-human voices.
Theatre Research International
Theatre Research International, 2020
This paper probes into the 1964 Israeli performance of Rolf Hochhuth's controversial drama The Re... more This paper probes into the 1964 Israeli performance of Rolf Hochhuth's controversial drama The Representative. Staged by Habima National Theatre under the direction of Avraham Ninio, the majority of the cast engaged in this production comprised European-born Jewish refugees and Holocaust survivors. In its cultural context, the theatrical image of Jewish refugees dressed in Nazi uniforms or, conversely, staging visual, gestural or aural markers of Auschwitz prisoners imbued the drama with political meanings, triggering a debate about agency and forms of social and material participation in the aftermath of calamity. Examining the subterranean world of artists and craftsmen and women whose labour is deliberately obscured from view, I argue that the work of theatre emerges as a creative and generative energy that filters from the staged fiction into the ‘real’ world.
Theatre Research International, 2020
The Methuen Drama Handbook of Theatre History and Historiography, 2019
This paper focuses on the feedback between the social sciences and the arts as generated by Van G... more This paper focuses on the feedback between the social sciences and the arts as generated by Van Gennep’s ideas, and on the artistic and performative models following the attempt to bridge between artistic and social modes of performances and rituals. Focusing on the tripartite structure of Van Gennep's ritual scheme, I argue that its current reigning interpretations underestimate what “performance studies,” heightens: not the ritual and its outcome, but the passage—the durational process—delineates the affiliation of the individual to society and outlines the actions that enable the formation of a community. Thus, rather than focusing on liminality as the pivot of rites of passage, this paper addresses the agentive processuality of the passage between the three phases of the Van Gennep’s ritual model. I offer three central dimensions essential to performance studies, through which theatricality in Van Gennep’s Les Rites de Passage is re-examined: the incursion of the social fictional into the social sphere, the compulsive repetition, and the agency of the acting body as inextricable interrelated dimensions in the processual formation of a tightly-knit community through social rituals.
Israeli choreographer Arkadi Zaides’s solo dance performance Archive investigates the choreograph... more Israeli choreographer Arkadi Zaides’s solo dance performance Archive investigates the choreography of transgressions performed daily in the West Bank by Israeli fundamentalist settlers against Palestinians. Screening fragments from a video archive documenting human rights violations in the occupied territories, this work invites the Israeli spectators to sense the somatic impact of such actions and to consider the corporal resonance of this ongoing violence happening in near proximity.
Theatre Journal Volume 67 Number 1 (March 2015)
European Stages Vol.1 2013
Performance Research Vol.19, Issue 6, Dec 9, 2014
This essay examines three performances which were the outcome of personal dialogues between Israe... more This essay examines three performances which were the outcome of personal dialogues between Israeli performance artists and Palestinian women, and that critically engage the complexity of this (non-)encounter. The three performances I discuss are Umm Muhammad (2011) by Smadar Yaaron; She Has a Headache in Her Stomach (2002), by Tamar Raban; and You Are Not Here—A dislocative tourism agency (2006), an audio-walk created by Mushon Zer-Aviv, an Israeli open-source designer, and Laila El-Haddad, a blogger and journalist from Gaza. Although created in different historical contexts and deal with different phases of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, these performances share the rendering of the Palestinian woman as a presence that is confined to her aural performance; in these performances, the voices of the Palestinian women are imprisoned within the technological apparatus and subjected to operation by the mediation of the Israeli spatial presence. This essay traces the trajectory of the Palestinian voice from the speaker’s body, through its channeling via the mediation of the Israeli performer, to its embodiment by the Israeli spectators. In each of these phases I analyse the separation of the Palestinian feminine voice from the spatial performance as a manifestation of territorial and cultural notions of discontinuity and disruption. I identify the audio-spatial dissociation as a strategy by which these artists imagine and conceptualize the possibility of a shared space. The notion of ‘rupture’ therefore operates as a mode of representation applied to negotiate the imaginative perception of the Israeli–Palestinian encounters. I argue that by centring on the personal experiences of the performers, these works challenge the disturbing imaginings that such spatial separations elicit, and offer the possibility of re-experiencing the Palestinian voice as an integral part of the Israeli public sphere.
Theatre Research International, Jan 1, 2009
Borderlines innovatively explores the ways artistic interventions construct social, cultural, and... more Borderlines innovatively explores the ways artistic interventions construct social, cultural, and mental spaces. The fifteen essays bring a broad multidisciplinary approach to the concept of borderlines and its markings through artistic manifestations. Rejecting older “normative” understandings of the word border lines as signifying semantic irreversibility, this work gives prominence to the plasticity of the combined single word “borderlines.”
Borderlines is a collection of essays that address the cultural, artistic, conceptual, and performative mapping of places. The essays in this collection “write” borderlines from a wide variety of perspectives, representing diverse disciplines, cultural backgrounds, countries, and generations. It presents the pervasiveness of borderlines as an intellectual, artistic and political concept, across media, theories, and places.
Borderlines is intended for academic specialists and students in cultural studies, theatre and performance, media and sound studies.
![Research paper thumbnail of Haifa Workshop for Performance Studies [3]: 08.09.2020](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/64268236/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](![Research paper thumbnail of Haifa Workshop for Performance Studies [2]: 20.06.2019](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/59680413/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](סדנת חיפה לפרפורמנס היא ארוע אקדמי שמטרתו לעודד דיון בין ענפיהם המגוונים של מדעי החברה לבין חקר א... more סדנת חיפה לפרפורמנס היא ארוע אקדמי שמטרתו לעודד דיון בין ענפיהם המגוונים של מדעי החברה לבין חקר אמנויות המופע, באמצעות בחינת נתיבי ואופני הנדידה והפעולה של המושג "פרפורמנס". אנו מזמינות חוקרים וחוקרות מתחומי ידע שונים, לרבות תלמידי תואר שני ושלישי, לשיח על אודות "פרפורמנס" כקונספט מארגן וככלי אנליטי, על האתגרים התיאורטיים שמציע המושג "פרפורמנס", על ביטוייו וגילויו האסתטיים, האתנוגרפיים, המגדריים, החברתיים והפוליטיים.
החיבור התיאורטי בין אנתרופולוגיה לאמנויות המופע, הגיע לשיאו בארצות הברית בפרק הזמן שבין סוף שנות השבעים לראשית שנות השמונים. מתוך חיבור זה התגבשו "לימודי פרפורמנס" (Performance Studies) כשדה ידע שמתמקד בתופעות תרבותיות ומופעים אמנותיים תחת אותו ארסנל של כלים תיאורטיים. באמצעות המושג "פרפורמנס" הפך החיבור בין אסתטיקה למדעי החברה למודל ללימוד גילומים מגוונים של מבנים סימבוליים ובתוך כך, נטוותה רשת של מושגים, כמו למשל: נרטיב, תיאטרליות, משחקיות, שחקנים חברתיים ודרמה חברתית, אשר התייצבו כעקרונות מובילים בחשיבה על תרבות. חשיבותה של ג'סטה, תנועה במרחב, קול, מופעים תלויי מקום והקשר, הן רק כמה דוגמאות בודדות למגמה זו.
סדנת המחקר "פרפורמנס כיצרן ידע" תאפשר לנו לשאול אילו סוגי ידע מיוצרים דרך "פרפורמנס"? מתוך דיון רב-תחומי, נבקש לבחון מחדש את המרחב הדיסציפלינרי הרחב והלא תחום של "לימודי פרפורמנס", כמו גם להתמודד עם יצירתיות ומופע, בהקשר אמנותי או חברתי, כתופעות תרבותיות המתממשות במרחב. כמפגש בין-תחומי, הסדנה מבקשת לעודד דיאלוג בין תחומי ידע המסווגים במערכת האקדמית כנפרדים—תחת הקטגוריות של מדעי החברה ומדעי הרוח—באמצעות בחינה ביקורתית של ארגז הכלים התיאורטי והאתנוגרפי לחקר פרפורמנס.
חוקרים וחוקרות, לרבות תלמידים לתארים מתקדמים, מוזמנים להגיש הצעות להצגת מחקרים אשר בוחנים היבטים אמנותיים, תרבותיים וחברתיים של המושג "פרפורמנס" על הקשריו הרחבים והרב תחומיים. הצעות (בהיקף של עד 250 מילים בעברית או באנגלית) יש לשלוח עד לתאריך 1.04.2019 לדוא"ל performanceknowledge@gmail.com נא לציין את כותרת המחקר ואת פרטי ההתקשרות של המציע/ה.
Possessed Voices probes into the vocal world of the Hebrew language articulated on the modernist ... more Possessed Voices probes into the vocal world of the Hebrew language articulated on the modernist stages in Europe during the interwar period and examines its resonance in commercial sound recordings produced during the first decades of the State of Israel. Looking at a wide array of archival materials and literary sources, this book examines the shaping of the Hebrew language— how the enactment of the Hebrew plays communicated the emotive dimension of the drama, and the manner in which the vocal rendering of the language bound its listeners together.
This book traces the spoken language in the Modernist Hebrew theatre as grounded on multiple modalities of expressive practices, such as spoken Hebrew, Jewish liturgical sensibilities supplemented by Yiddish intonation and other vernacular accents, and in relation to prevalent theatrical forms. The study apprehends the audible traces from this complex sonority, perpetuated and transmitted through acoustic mechanical reproduction, as a treasure repository providing Jewish immigrants from Europe with a venue for lamenting the decline of their home communities, and for connecting their memories with their present.
Possessed Voices provides its readers with unprecedented sonic material, analyzed against the backdrop of its artistic, cultural and ideological contexts. This study significantly broadens our consideration of the sonic and phonetic values of language expression as an aesthetic domain that shapes social and individual imaginaries. The methodological significance of this study lies in its developing the theatrical perspective of sound performances, and in promoting a critical framework that would uphold the study of sound as a discipline (in its own right) in theatre scholarship. Focusing on the sonority of theatre as a conduit for the transmission of cultural and ideological values, this book will be of interest to anyone with a broad interest in culture.
InGeveb, 2022
Yiddish researchers are training Transkribus, a cutting-edge digital platform for the transcripti... more Yiddish researchers are training Transkribus, a cutting-edge digital platform for the transcription, automatic text detection, and enrichment of handwritten archival documents, to decipher Yiddish-language handwriting, which will facilitate and boost research into hidden treasure troves, rich in Jewish cultural heritage.
An Interdisciplinary Conference Series on the Relationships Between Religion and the Arts This fo... more An Interdisciplinary Conference Series on the Relationships Between Religion and the Arts This four-part online conference aims to foster an interdisciplinary dialogue on the performance and creativity of Kol Nidre across historical periods, cultural contexts, and aesthetic forms and mediums. Focusing on its various artistic iterations, and its numerous adaptations, we aim to rethink the theatricality and musicality of the ritual, untie its affective qualities, explore its social performances, and analyze how its inherent dramaturgical structures configure.
DYBBUK will uncover and explore the popular theatre that made up the daily cultural reality of th... more DYBBUK will uncover and explore the popular theatre that made up the daily cultural reality of the Jewish masses at the turn of the 20 th century. It will crack-open the textual body of remaining musical and dramatic manuscripts, to the complete performances of this popular theatre. Amid a massive migration movement at the turn of the 20 th century, the Yiddish popular theatre prospered, producing a staggering volume of entertainment consumed by millions of Jews. Most of this mass-appealing output was delegitimized by Jewish intellectuals as Shund (trash), a term that encompasses primitive, plagiarized, vulgar, and worthless art. Consequently, a valuable component of modern popular culture has been overlooked. DYBBUK will restore this neglected yet highly influential corpus of Yiddish popular theatre and make it available for our appreciation. Revising canonical cultural paradigms, DYBBUK recognizes delegitimized artistic 'lowbrow' theatre as a vital component in the fashioning of modernist culture. Focusing on the unexplored theatrical corpus of the two most prolific Shund authors: Moyshe Hurwitz (1844-1910) and Joseph Lateiner (1853-1935), this project offers an integrative typological, embodied, and theoretical analysis of theatrical themes, forms, and practices. The Yiddish popular theatre played a crucial role in transporting cultural styles, ideas, and products. To untangle and understand the complexity and scope of this theatre, this project devises a groundbreaking analytical and embodied toolkit for studying theatre history. We will incorporate into our analysis resources of various media, and we will reenact a forgotten Shund performance in a practice-based research. In doing so, DYBBUK aims to contribute to our understanding of popular theatre, revealing it as a preeminent ethnographic and historical source for examining the sensual and experiential dimensions of theatre, and the theatrical and cultural exchange of minorities with mainstream culture.
Pamiętnik Teatralny, 69(4), s. 161-170. , 2021
This paper reviews Grzegorz Niziołek thought-provoking book The Polish Theatre of the Holocaust... more This paper reviews Grzegorz Niziołek thought-provoking book The Polish Theatre of the Holocaust(London: Methuen Drama Press, 2019), and the key questions and issues it addresses. Focusing on Polish perspectives, theatrical representations and performative reactions to the extermination of the Jews during WWII, the book analyzes six decades of theatrical creation. Within this scheme, the victims and perpetrators are casted in the role of actors, while the Polish people are allotted the role of passive specta-tors, witnesses to the atrocity. This review sheds light on the ethical and aesthetical impli-cations of Niziołek’s study, by attending to the material aspects of the catastrophe, and its theatrical representations. It seeks to recuperate and integrate the Jewish perspective into the theatrical analysis.
גלעד: לתולדות יהדות פולין ותרבותם, 2021