Eye on People
Arnon Goldfinger's directing talents and creativeness is getting the attention of many experts and admirers of the Yiddish culture in America, thanks to his new successful film: The Komediant. Today, Goldfinger is also a lecturer at the Film Department of Tel Aviv University. The Komediant, a documentary of the legendary Yiddish Theater family, 'The Burstein Family', came from Israel to the U.S.A. to be screened all over the country, thanks to New Yorker Films (212-247-6110) and its PR and promoter, Susan Norget. The film was already screened in New York City and was a success, as it should be. It is an excellent production and touching acting. Indeed, it mobilized love and admiration to the family and to the Yiddish popular theater of the past.
Arnon Goldfinger is a film director/screenwriter, lecturer of film directing and script writing at Tel Aviv University, "Maa'le" Film School, and the Sam Spiegel Film School in Jerusalem.
Goldfinger studied Cinema and Philosophy at the Tel-Aviv University and graduated with special merit. In 1990 he was selected to be one out of 12 European students who participated in the European Summer Film School in Belgrade. Since then he directed several short films, both fiction and documentaries, together with dozen reportages for the various Israeli TV channels. He was also the director of the 3rd Tel Aviv International Student Film Festival.
His fiction film The Benny Zinger Show was shown as many film festivals, such as Chicago, Edinburgh, Montpelier, Munich, Jerusalem, etc., and received numerous prizes and special mentions.
Goldfinger worked four years on The Komediant which received the 1999 Israeli Academy Award for Best Documentary, the Best Documentary award at the Haifa International Film Festival and some other major awards.
The Komediant became the first Israeli documentary in 14 years to have a theatrical release in Israel, playing in the Israeli theaters for 22 weeks. It is the first Israeli documentary to be shown commercially since Oma Ben-Dor's film Because of That War 13 years ago. For his achievement, Arnon Goldfinger was chosen to be one of the five "Men of the Year 2000" in the Israeli cinema.
Israel's ambassador of songs, Ron Eliran, has contributed many songs and lyrics to the world of Israeli music. In this country, he is a popular standing ovation kind of a singer inside the American Jewish community. He always managed by his songs to bridge between Israel and the U.S. For example, he wrote a special song in order to express the trauma of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. The late widow of Rabin, Lea Rabin, expressed her thanks to Eliran, a modest person and a great entertainer. Eliran, who just came back from concerts in Miami, told me that he works on a song which will express his feelings as to the trauma of September 11, 2001. Certainly, Eliran being an Israeli in America, probably will bridge a link to the Israeli experience of victimized by Muslim or Arab terror, its barbarianism, its blind assaults on innocent civilians with the new American traumatic experience, a new kind of victimization of innocent Americans.
Ron Eliran, who also produced a musical on Broadway, is not a politician but as a great singer and performer he will express the sadness and the hope of this human tragedy.
The September 11 Seder: What do September 11 and the story of Pesach have in common? Author Deborah Finkelstein answers this question in her new book, The 9-11 Seder, where she takes the traditional Pesach Seder, and adds passages and symbols of September 11.
The traditional Pesach Seder encourages people to feel as if they were the slaves that G-d took out of Egypt. Many people have trouble relating to the feeling of being a slave in Egypt, says Finkelstein, but most of us can recall the feelings of sadness and helplessness that we felt on September 11. In this way, we will better relate to the slaves, and the true story of Pesach.
Finkelstein shares the parallels of the experience, for example the salt water is used to represent the tears of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt, Finkelstein adds that it also represents the world's tears on September 11. The haroset, used to represent the mortar that the Hebrew slaves used to build the pyramids, is additionally used to represent the physical rebuilding of the Pentagon and area where the World Trade Center stood, as well as the spiritual rebuilding of people's trust an faith. The Haggadah is Finkelstein's first book. She is an active member of the Jewish and secular community. She has taught Hebrew, drama, English, and science to youth from pre-school up to high school, as well as taught drama and business classes to adults.
he 9-11 Seder will be available to the press on February 20, 2002 and to the public on February 26, 2002. Finkelstein is available for interviews. For more information, please contact Deborah Finkelstein at (505) 992-2776 or 911Seder@18cards.com.
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