Arts & Culture | Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle

Arts & Culture

Cantor Nancy Abramson, shaped by Wisconsin, led cantorial school  

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Just this past spring, Cantor Nancy Abramson, a Milwaukee native, retired from her role as director of the H. L. Miller Cantorial School and College of Jewish Music of The Jewish Theological Seminary, New York. On May 1, The Jewish Theological Seminary held a ceremony in her honor. At the beginning of her speech, Abramson showed the audience a retirement gift she received: a necklace that shows a woman gracefully diving off a cliff. “The gift made me realize I have had a career of metaphorically jumping off cliffs, mostly with grace and success,” Abramson said. Indeed, venturing into...

My Uncle Jake: The Jewish Fruit Peddler  

My Uncle Jake: The Jewish Fruit Peddler  

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My grandma Bessie Wolkenstein had three brothers: Max, Charlie, and Jake Katz. Max was married and he and Ida had a house on the north side of Milwaukee. Charlie and his wife Ruth lived on the west side, but I didn’t know where Jake lived. Max owned a heating and sheet metal shop, Charlie worked […]

Jewish Artists’ Exhibition was held at The Shul Center in Bayside

Jewish Artists’ Exhibition was held at The Shul Center in Bayside

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Jewish artists stood beside their art and chatted with one another and with art fans. It was a Sunday afternoon devoted to art, and some respite from the troubling news facing the Jewish people in recent months.  The Jewish Artists’ Exhibition was held Feb. 18, 2024, at The Shul Center in Bayside. The theme was […]

IN PICTURES: ‘The Chosen” in production 

IN PICTURES: ‘The Chosen” in production 

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“The Chosen” will be performed at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, March 5-31, 2024 , at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater. The show is presented by the Milwaukee Jewish Federation. Above are Hillel Rosenshine and Eli Mayer in rehearsal for “The Chosen.” The photo below is a set model, in preparation for the show.  

Wisconsin-born playwright brings “The Chosen” to Milwaukee  

Wisconsin-born playwright brings “The Chosen” to Milwaukee  

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“The Chosen,” the story of a pair of Jewish boys growing up in Brooklyn in the 1940s, began life as a novel by Chaim Potok, first published in 1967. It was adapted into a movie in 1981 and then, in 1999, Aaron Posner worked with Potok to turn it into a stage play.   That play […]

Coping through art 

Coping through art 

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Fei (Brenner) Skinkis, like many of us, was overwhelmed with emotion in the weeks after Oct. 7.  When she woke up in the middle of the night, distressed, she realized she needed an outlet. Having set painting aside a year earlier, because life had gotten busy, she picked it back up and started putting images […]

‘Book Smugglers’ exhibit at Jewish Museum Milwaukee 

‘Book Smugglers’ exhibit at Jewish Museum Milwaukee 

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In 1942, in Vilna in what is now Lithuania, a group of Jews worked to hide books, art, and other cultural artifacts from the Nazis. Led by poets Abraham Sutzkever and Shmerke Kaczerginskithe group was known as the Paper Brigade of Vilna, and it took and hid the items that had been part of the […]

Menorah at veterans hospital  

Menorah at veterans hospital  

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Wisconsin native Adam McKinney at Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre

Wisconsin native Adam McKinney at Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre

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Adam McKinney was born in Milwaukee and raised in Whitefish Bay as gay, native, Black and a Jewish man — intersecting identities that he has long explored in his work. An accomplished dancer, choreographer and teacher, McKinney became artistic director of the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre earlier this year.   The Chronicle spoke to McKinney in late […]