Born in Madison and raised in Milwaukee’s North Shore by parents who are very active in the Jewish community, Jake Goodman has been interested in theater and acting since he was 4.
Yet when he first saw a Storahtelling production — which uses theater and performance art techniques to interpret and modernize Jewish ritual and understanding of Jewish texts — he was unimpressed.
In fact, “I hated it. I walked out,” Goodman, 27, said during a telephone interview this past weekend.
But the hate didn’t last. He received a Steven Spielberg Fellowship (from the film director’s Righteous Persons Foundation) to work at the Camp Ramah in Georgia in a project seeking “to raise the quality of Jewish theater in Jewish camps.”
And there he met Amichai Lau-Lavie, the Israeli mythologist, storyteller and teacher who founded Storahtelling in 1998 and is now its artistic director.
“We hit it off,” said Goodman. “I liked what he was teaching. He liked the way I was working.”
Today, Goodman is a member of the Storahtelling company. “Now I think it is amazing.”
He and three other company members — another actor and two musicians — appeared at Congregation Sinai this past weekend, introducing members and Milwaukee to this innovative approach to liturgy and learning.
Three events
Goodman said the Storahtellers presented three typical programs this past weekend. At Friday night services, with parents Idy and William Goodman in attendance, they did a “Shultime” Torah reading service, presenting a dramatic and musical interpretation of the weekly Torah portion, in this case Yitro, named after Moses’ father-in-law.
It featured Goodman in the title role; Jessica Bay Blyweiss as Tzipporah, Moses’ wife; Ronen Itzik playing percussion; and Isaac Everett, a Christian musician and student, portraying Moses as well as playing piano and didgeridoo.
On Saturday afternoon, the Storahtellers led an adult study group in “Gained In Translation.” This program examines the Jewish texts “that we use in our process, that guide us along the tightrope between translation, interpretation, and going too far,” Goodman said.
Then on Sunday, Goodman worked with members of the religious school’s affirmation class, doing some of the same exercises that the adults did.
One of these is the “Shema” exercise. This is the one verse of the Bible and liturgy that “everybody knows in Hebrew,” and moreover, “everybody knows the same translation,” said Goodman. (“Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one,” Deuteronomy 6:4.)
Storahtellers like Goodman lead groups in going over that verse, breaking it down, word by word, and finding how its meaning can change when different people in different roles say it — a parent, a drill sergeant, a preacher — or different spins are put on the words.
The first word, literally “hear,” can have the force of “listen up,” “pay attention,” “hey there,” etc.
Goodman said the response to Storahtelling at Sinai “was amazing.” Congregants told him “how meaningful it was for them, that a service never before challenged them in this way.”
The students also were receptive, and Goodman said their translations of the Shema “were hilarious,” evoking the hip-hop artist Eminem at one point and a flight attendant at another.
But it was also particularly meaningful for Goodman, who had grown up at Sinai.
“To be able to bring back some of the learning I’ve done was very special,” he said, referring to his past and continuing study — acting at Emerson College, working in theater in Kentucky and now pursuing a master’s degree in informal Jewish education at the Jewish Theological Seminary.
“Everybody there was good at receiving it, and in making me feel I had something special to offer.”
Moreover, his experience at Sinai “made me realize how important Storahtelling is,” he said. “It revitalizes and translates a tradition that is often dull or doesn’t speak to us and helps people make meaning of it for themselves.”
For more information about Storahtelling, visit the Web site, www.storahtelling.org .
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