Jewish Family & Children’s Service is pleased to announce its April Memory Café will feature an interactive sing-along with the JFCS Senior Chorus, The Sunshine Singers, at Beth El Congregation, 1118 W. Glendale Avenue in Phoenix on Thursday, April 5, 2018 from 10 to 11:30 am.
The Sunshine Singers, who are part of the Creative Aging program of JFCS, have been rehearsing together for several months, led by the talented Daniel Kurek.
The Café is a meeting place for those with changes in their thinking or memory, mild cognitive impairment or dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease or a related disorder, along with their care partners. Offered on the first Thursday of the month, each Café has a new theme and includes meaningful, fun activities to engage the participants and stimulate their minds and bodies. Socialization is a key component to the cafés, as they are meant to be a place to relax, meet others and have fun in a nurturing and accepting environment.
The Center for Holocaust Education and Human Dignity of the East Valley JCC presents “Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi: The Gray Zone of Holocaust Survival” 6 p.m. Monday, Nov. 18, at Chandler Center for the Arts.
Professor Nancy Harrowitz of Boston University’s Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies will read written works by two Auschwitz survivors, Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel, and discuss how they started a new life after the Holocaust.
Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi are the two most widely read authors on the subject of the Holocaust. They share their harrowing and deeply moving stories in very different ways, but are tied together through a deeply philosophical perspective, an emphasis on social justice, and the meaningful legacies they have left behind. How do they create an approach to the Holocaust that brings readers to appreciate its importance in today’s world? How can looking at their stories and how they tell them help us understand their relevance? What can we learn from these two writers/survivors? The program is the debut of a partnership with Boston University’s Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies.
Nancy Harrowitz is a professor of Italian and Jewish studies at Boston University. She has published widely on anti-Semitism and gender in the modern period. Her most recent work includes the book “Primo Levi and the Identity of a Survivor.” At Boston University, she teaches courses on modern Italian literature, film and literature produced under fascism, and representations of the Holocaust in literature and film. She also directs the school’s new minor in Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Studies.