L ifestyles /C ulture
MAE Explores Jewish Heritage Through Art
her personal jour-
ney with Judaism.

SELAH MAYA ZIGHELBOIM | JE STAFF
The show, put on
in partnership with
THE MULTICULTURAL ARTS-N Y,
was Arts Exchange (MAE), an scheduled to kick off
organization that puts on fam- the season on March
ily-friendly and affordable arts 3 but was postponed
programming in Northeast because of weather.

Philadelphia, has chosen The show will now
Jewish heritage as its theme for run on March 17
this year.

at 1 p.m. at Shaare
Previous years’ themes Shamayim.

have included opera and
Later that same
multiculturalism. day at 4 p.m. and also
“It was a natural evolu- at Shaare Shamayim,
Barry: Mamaloshen in Dance
tion,” said Project Director MAE will present
Bicking Photography Studio
Michael Zorich, who is Jewish the second event of
and originally from Ukraine. the season, Barry:
He noted that MAE has held Mamaloshen
in the majority of its programs Dance, a performance by Asya out of an experi-
at Congregations of Shaare Zlatina and Dancers, which ence Karpel had
when she started
Shamayim since 2016. “We’ve celebrates Yiddish culture.

been contacted by many inter-
The two shows share simi- performing as the
esting artists. Our thing is that lar themes of discovering roots lead singer in a
we strive to present original and connecting to ancestors, klezmer band. It
programming that nobody else Zorich said.

wasn’t a role she
is doing, and do it in seasons.”
“It has so many universal had sought, but as
This season will start on themes that speak not just to a singer she was
March 17, with a production the Jewish people, but to pretty always happy to take on roles
of two shows that explore much everybody,” Zorich said. when they were offered to her,
Jewish heritage.

“We had people of different so she learned Yiddish.

The first is The Midwood nationalities, different reli-
Around the same time, she
Miracle, a one-woman musi- gious backgrounds, being at had to move into her father’s
cal memoir by singer/actress/ the shows and enjoying them.” old apartment in the Midwood
writer Deborah Karpel about
The Midwood Miracle came neighborhood of Brooklyn,
where Karpel was surrounded
by elements of Yiddish life.

Through these series of events,
NAME: BRISTOL RIVERSIDE THEATRE; WIDTH:
she found herself connecting to
3.625 IN; DEPTH: 3.62 IN; COLOR: BLACK; AD
her heritage.

NUMBER: 00083602
The Midwood Miracle pre-
miered in 2017 at the Emerging
Artists Theater & New Works
Festival. This performance at
Shaare Shamayim is the first
time Karpel has performed
The Midwood Miracle outside
of New York, where she lives.

The show weaves together
original music, Americana,
Western swing, operatic arias
and Yiddish songs.

“What is the ultimate in the
story is that I had a connection
to my father’s father,” Karpel
said. “I had a connection to
my father that I didn’t expect.

I had a connection to what
CULTURE 18
MARCH 7, 2019
JEWISH EXPONENT
Asya Zlatina
Deborah Karpel
Photos courtesy of Multicultural Arts Exchange
feels like home via Yiddish,
and that all these pieces came
without going after them. They
came for me.”
Zlatina, who works as the
program coordinator for The
Chevra in addition to being
a dancer, created Mamaloshen
for the Fringe Festival in 2016.

Since then, she and her
troupe have toured with the
show around Philadelphia,
New York and even at an inter-
national Yiddish festival in
Romania. For Zlatina, it was
particularly special to perform
at the Millennium Stage at
the John F. Kennedy Center
for the Performing Arts in
Washington, D.C. She grew up
nearby, so her family was able
to attend, and people around
the world watched through the
center’s livestream.

The show is about shtetl life,
with different pieces represent-
ing different elements of that
life, such as the children of
the shtetl or its older women.

Zlatina performs Mamaloshen,
which means “Mother tongue”
in Yiddish, with seven to
nine dancers.

After her grandparents
died, Zlatina
created Mamaloshen in dedication to
them, as they “went through
horrible pogroms, lost many
family members, were stripped
of their heritage by the Soviet
Union and finally wound up
in America, where we came as
refugees,” Zlatina said.

“My grandfather was finally
able to publicly hold a siddur
again,” she continued. “That
was the most important thing
for them — to be able to come
back to their heritage. I was
always amazed that, through
all of the persecution since
they were born — to watch
your loved ones be killed and
having to migrate and hav-
ing to run away — that they
were always so happy and they
taught me to be happy.” l
szighelboim@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0729
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM