From sunset to sunrise: Join us for an all-night celebration of music, film, comedy, and some not-so-traditional study. Artists, teachers, coffee and an endless supply of cheesecake will keep you going from dusk to dawn in the spirit of the age-old tradition, Tikkun Leil Shavuot.

Erev Shavuot, Sunday, June 8
Doors open at 9:00pm
92YTribeca, 200 Hudson Street
Admission is FREE

Programs include:

Memories of beloved filmmaker Sydney Pollack, who passed away yesterday, can be found in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Variety, Deadline Hollywood Daily and anywhere that covers entertainment news.

On September 26, 2006, Sydney Pollack appeared at Makor, the 92nd Street Y program formerly located on Manhattan's Upper West Side and soon to be relaunched downtown as 92YTribeca, to discuss his first documentary, Sketches of Frank Gehry, about the famed architect. The audio clip above is a 17-minute excerpt from the evening. Before the talk, he answered questions about living in Los Angeles for the 92Y Blog.

You can also download the MP3. [8 MB]
[Right-click and select "Save Target As:" or equivalent to download.]

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The Shushan Channel’s Purim Party is back for its sixth year and will be the first big event in our new downtown space, 92YTribeca! Created by Daily Show writer Rob Kutner and now in collaboration with writers from The Simpsons, Dennis Miller Live and more, The Shushan Channel is a comedic retelling of the story of Esther, as seen through the lens of current TV hits like Lost, American Idol and Ugly Betty. This year the spoofs include House-man, MD, DeadVood, Grogger of Love, To Catch a Jewhater and Imperial Gladiators, scripted by professional comedy writers and performed by hilarious comedians and actors, including The Daily Show‘s Aasif Mandvi. All this, PLUS an exclusive video monologue rant “The 5 Things I Hate About Purim” by everyone’s favorite “pissed-off optimist"—Lewis Black.

Join us March 22. Free beer & wine bar and hamentaschen, too! Ticket info here. This event is co-presented with Hazon.

Roundup of New York real estate blogs:

One of the recent additions to the 92nd Street Y Cookbook is an entry from Tahl Raz, president and editor in chief of Jewcy.com, an “online magazine and community for New Jews and other riffraff” covering faith, pop culture, politics and public affairs. (Where else are you going to find comic strips on American Jewry?) Tahl, also co-author of the bestseller Never Eat Alone, is pictured above with his girlfriend, photographer Gillian Laub. In August 2007, he was a featured panelist at the Y with some of New York’s biggest names in Jewish-focused online media. In keeping with the long tradition of Jews and food, Jewcy recently launched a food blog called Pickled.

Tahl Raz’s Israeli Salad

“I am an Israeli salad guy—we’re taught to transform cucumbers into 7,000 different meals before the age of 4.”
—Tahl Raz

Construction at Makor’s new home at 200 Hudson Street in Tribeca is chugging along with impressive results. Check out a recently updated tour of the facilities on our www.makor.org/move page. The floor plan is complemented with stylish architectural renderings and raw photos of the work in progress. Of course, Makor programming continues to grow in the meantime with an expanding roster of events around town. Among the highlights is Eddie Friedfeld, hot on the heels of hosting the Y’s Robert Altman tribute, with a talk on the “The Biz”: a look behind the scenes of the Great White Way with Stewart Lane, Phyllis Newman, Victoria Clark and Michael Riedel. Go to www.makor.org for the latest in talks, theater, music, recreation and community service for New Yorkers in their 20s and 30s.

Novelist, short story writer, critic, and professor, Leonard Michaels was born to Polish immigrants and raised on New York’s Lower East Side. Like contemporaries Philip Roth and Woody Allen, he wrote brilliant stories about young, sex-crazed, bookish New Yorkers until his death in 2003. Though not as known to the public as Roth or Allen, he was praised as an original by his fellow writers. On October 22, Makor co-presents a tribute in his honor at the New York Public Library. His legacy and influence will be discussed by Deborah Treisman (fiction editor of The New Yorker), writer/filmmaker David Bezmozgis, award-winning translator Wyatt Mason, former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky and Wendy Lesser, editor of the Threepenny Review. You can read an interview on Harper’s with Wyatt Mason about Leonard Michaels. Below is an extended excerpt from LEONARD MICHAELS: The Collected Stories by Leonard Michaels.

“Murderers”

When my uncle Moe dropped dead of a heart attack I became expert in the subway system. With a nickel I’d get to Queens, twist and zoom to Coney Island, twist again toward the George Washington Bridge—beyond which was darkness. I wanted proximity to darkness, strangeness. Who doesn’t? The poor in spirit, the ignorant and frightened. My family came from Poland, then never went anyplace until they had heart attacks. The consummation of years in one neighborhood: a black Cadillac, corpse inside. We should have buried Uncle Moe where he shuffled away his life, in the kitchen or toilet, under the linoleum, near the coffeepot. Anyhow, they were dropping on Henry Street and Cherry Street. Blue lips. The previous winter it was cousin Charlie, forty-five years old. Moe, Charlie, Sam, Adele—family meant a punch in the chest, fire in the arm. I didn’t want to wait for it. I went to Harlem, the Polo Grounds, Far Rockaway, thousands of miles on nickels, mainly underground. Tenements watched me go, day after day, fingering nickels. One afternoon I stopped to grind my heel against the curb. Melvin and Arnold Bloom appeared, then Harold Cohen. Melvin said, “You step in dog shit?” Grinding was my answer. Harold Cohen said, “The rabbi is home. I saw him on Market Street. He was walking fast.” Oily Arnold, eleven years old, began to urge: “Let’s go up to our roof.” The decision waited for me. I considered the roof, the view of industrial Brooklyn, the Battery, ships in the river, bridges, towers, and the rabbi’s apartment. “All right,” I said. We didn’t giggle or look to one another for moral signals. We were running.

The music of Luminescent Orchestrii is described as “Romanian gypsy melodies, punk frenzy, salty tangos, hard-rocking klezmer, haunting Balkan harmony, hip-hop beats and Appalachian fiddle, all eaten and spit out by two violins, resophonic guitar, bullhorn harmonica and bass.” Watch the video above from Mehanata: Bulgarian Bar to see these words come to life. While technically acoustic, the vibe is positively electric and more than a little intoxicating. Don’t miss the band’s performance with Frank London’s Klezmer Brass Allstars and Curtis Eller (NYC’s angriest yodelling banjo player) at Mo Pitkins House of Satisfaction this Friday, October 19 in a show called “Brass & Strings Attack!” presented by Makor Music.

Related: Oyhoo New York Jewish Music and Heritage Festival: Fiddlin’ with the Roof: 10/20/07
Previously: Luminescent Orchestrii featured in “One Night at Makor” video

Adam B. Ellick, a video journalist at the New York Times, will talk Monday, October 15 about the evolution of integrated journalism. Learn how one journalist simultaneously reports a story for print and video, and find out how this will affect how you will consume news in the future. The lecture, an enlightening multimedia presentation, explains the current trend of one-man-band journalism. As the fly-on-the-wall styled video above demonstrates, “crusty old newspapers” have created a new style of broadcast journalism that is rarely seen on TV.

Related: Ellick’s recent multimedia feature for the New York Times, “Dumplings for the Lord.” More info at his website.

By Mark S. Young, Community Service Coordinator at Makor

Why do I volunteer? Well, Y not? It’s fun, it’s important, you meet people, you help people and most importantly, you help yourself! Let me explain.

Last week, fifty people from their 20s to 40s—singles and couples, Jews and non-Jews—met up at Mo Pitkins in the East Village for Makor’s Community Service Fall Info Session and Social for prospective and returning volunteers. I am the coordinator for the Makor Community Service program, and part of my job is to run these events. They are great! Free food, good music and the opportunity to hear about cool volunteer opportunities with young professionals who in their spare time give (or are looking to give) back to the community, meeting new and old friends in a comfortable social environment.

Makor volunteers come from all walks of life. We are teachers, businesspeople, social workers, doctors, lawyers and students alike; some are filmmakers and others are marine biologists. But we all share one thing in common: the desire to do something worthwhile with our time and the desire to meet people while giving back. At volunteer events, we don’t only help others, we enrich our own lives in the process, and create an inviting community.

At these social events we socialize and our volunteer team leaders share the dozens of opportunities we have. Many events are one-timers, meaning you don’t have to commit beyond volunteering once. We serve at the local soup kitchen, help paint schools with kids, clean up Central Park, and rebuild historic Synagogues on the Lower East Side. Some volunteer projects are ongoing, like reading to youth once a week in a homeless shelter or visiting a senior or Holocaust Survivor in their home.

Over the past two years I have met so many amazing volunteers, and volunteered in so many different ways, that I am sure you can find a project here with Makor that suits your interests. For me, I just love being out there, meeting and working with all of you, and volunteering all over the city. So, looking for an extra hobby? A way to meet people? Think about volunteering with Makor. Instead of asking why, I say: Y not?

[Makor Community Service]

Soundwalking is the practice of walking with a special focus on deep listening, and sound artist Katie Down knows how to listen. She is a classically trained flutist who also plays guitar, ukulele, dumbek, frame drum, and various glass and homemade instruments when she isn’t developing sound designs and scores for theater and dance companies around town and around the world. In her upcoming Makor program, she’ll be leading the curious on an aural exploration of Manhattan. What exactly does that involve? It’s not just about closing your eyes and shutting your mouth, as Katie notes in her class description:

Igniting the senses through sight deprivation is one way to focus deep listening, but do we only listen with our ears? How does one listen with their ears as well as their feet, their skin, their touch? We provide a safe, nurturing environment based on trust, instinct, and of course, a sense of adventure. It will change the way you think and feel about sound and perhaps change how you “view” the city!

Canadian composer and music educator R. Murray Schafer is one of the originators of soundwalking, and the website for his World Soundscape Project offers a lot of interesting background material. See also this introductory article from radio artist Hildegard Westerkamp.

Katie’s workshop is one of hundreds of fall classes starting up now. Register before the first session of your favorite passes.

[New York Soundwalking Experience: 09/30/07]

Chris Serico of the LoHud.com Suburbarazzi blog, which tracks celebrity life in the Lower Hudson Valley, takes note of the Y’s tribute to Robert Altman scheduled for September 23:

Pound Ridge resident Tim Robbins will join fellow actor Bob Balaban on Sept. 23 at the 92nd Street Y for a discussion about the late Academy-Award winning director, Robert Altman.

Altman directed Robbins in 1992’s “The Player,” 1993’s “Short Cuts” and 1994’s “Prêt-à-Porter,” so the actor should have quite a few stories to tell about Altman, who died in November due to cancer complications.

The 7:30 p.m. event, which includes film clips, will be moderated by entertainment journalist and historian Eddy Friedfeld.

Has the 92nd Street Y usurped Nobu as the place for A-listers to be seen? Check out some of the other celebrities booked for the weeks ahead, according to The Apiary: Michael Palin, Larry David, Stephen Colbert and Steve Martin.

Robert Altman talked at Makor last fall with Garrison Keillor and we published a 19-minute audio clip from the evening soon after. Keillor returns to the Y in April 2008 for the Afternoon Night Table literary series.

How do you take Makor—until recently, housed in a four-story brownstone on a residential street on the Upper West Side—and create a street-level space for it in Tribeca, on a major thoroughfare (Hudson Street)? Well, you start by calling on architect Michael Kostow of Kostow Greenwood, which specializes in creating spaces for performing and visual arts organizations. The firm has designed or renovated such New York cultural landmarks as the Delacorte Theater, the Brooklyn Tabernacle and the International Center for Photography.

We recently spoke with Michael Kostow about the design for the new space.

What did you want to achieve with your design for the 200 Hudson space?
Creating spaces—especially multi-purpose spaces—that look good and work well is one of our specialties. In architecture-speak, we call it integrating design and functionality. Here our goal was to bring the liveliness of the street inside and to create a comfortable, public, open kind of place that people can easily wander into. We also wanted the look and feel of the space to reflect the activities going on inside so that once people do venture in, all the different programs taking place in this one shared space—performances, films, talks, exhibits—fit and flow perfectly, energizing one another. 

What other multi-purpose spaces has Kostow Greenwood worked on?
We’ve done several, but one local example would be the Brooklyn Tabernacle, which involved converting three buildings into interrelated spaces that would house a school, dining hall, offices, meeting rooms and lobbies. We adapted one of those buildings—what had been the historic Loews Metropolitan Theater, a landmark vaudeville house that had fallen into disrepair and had been divided into small movie theaters before being abandoned—into a sanctuary for the Brooklyn Tabernacle. Now the facility seats over 3,600 and includes state-of-the-art theatrical lighting and broadcast capabilities. 

Another multi-purpose project we worked on in New York was the design of CNN’s New York Broadcast Center at the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle. We created recording and broadcast studios, a newsroom and office space, but we also had to make sure there was a route through the various spaces for public tours. For a project in Dallas, a film/video post-production house called Mad River Post, we converted a factory into a state-of-the-art facility with video editing and audio post-production suites as well as offices, a comfortable lounge and meeting areas.

How did you find a way to make 200 Hudson Street a space where many things could be happening simultaneously in close proximity to each other?
We knew we needed to create a screening room, a performance space for music and theater, a lecture hall and classroom space. The trick was to make the spaces flexible. We were able to do that by using modular walls, so that the areas can be divided into a combination of smaller and larger units. The space can also be opened up to allow for big events. 

What are the challenges and benefits of this sort of space?
The main challenge is that with all the activity on one level—not the case uptown—everything is closer together. So you need to keep traffic moving and contain the sound where it needs to be. The plus side is that the proximity of the various spaces makes it easier for people attending one event to be aware of is the other things going on, which channels energy from one area into another.

People who come to Makor like to hang out and meet friends. How do you design a performance and event space that’s also conducive to socializing?
We did a couple of things to provide space for socializing. We separated the café from the bar/music venue and made it a very open space that you can get to right from the entrance, even if you’re not attending an event. We also designed the space with wide hallways along with smaller nooks off the main thoroughfares. That gives visitors lots of areas where they can mingle and chat without “blocking traffic” for folks headed to events. We’re hoping that these people-friendly elements of the design help to make 200 Hudson a downtown destination.

You can take an online tour of Makor’s new location at www.makor.org/move.

Last Sunday, August 5 we held a free panel discussion in the Y’s Warburg Lounge with emerging voices in New York’s Jewish media scene. Moderated by Ami Eden (pictured on the far right above) of the JTA news service, it included (L to R): Daniel Sieradski (Jewschool), Rebecca Wiener (Heeb), Sara Ivry (Nextbook), Tahl Raz (Jewcy) and Esther Kustanowitz (PresenTense). It was a casual but lively conversation that covered perceptions of mainstream media, blogs, Jewish federations, independent voices and how all of it comes together. Ben Baruch of Shabot6000 attended and wrote on his blog:

Eden played the devil’s advocate with his questions, asking the panel if blogs really have an impact in the world of legitimate Jewish journalism. He expressed a common sentiment: he could read about the same topic in a hundred blogs, but he won’t take it seriously until he reads it in a reputable printed publication like the Jewish Daily Forward (where he used to work). Tahl argued that blogs must be having an impact, because now all these reputable print publications are rushing to create their own blogs.

Check out pictures on Ben’s blog and more after the jump.

Makor offers a variety of ways for New Yorkers in their 20s and 30s to personally connect and build community. Through an exciting and diverse range of professional and personal networks, programs, events and festivals, Makor constituents experience a rich sense of connection and community. Judios Latinos is a warm, vibrant community of young professional Spanish-speaking Jews from Latin America and around the globe. Here’s their entry in the Y’s cookbook.

Judios Latinos Easy Gazpacho

1 large can of whole peeled tomatoes (or 5 large tomatoes, blanched and cut into chunks)

2 cloves of garlic

1 small cucumber, or half of a large English cucumber, peeled & cut into chunks

1 large, seeded, cut green bell pepper

1/2 small onion

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon cumin

3 cups water
Optional: 1 small red pepper, seeded

Blend all ingredients above until they are pureed. Then, with the blender running, add the following:

5 tablespoons red vinegar

2 tablespoons Spanish extra virgin olive oil

Continue blending for another minute or two.

Chill before serving. This gazpacho can be served as either a soup or a refreshing summer drink. If you are going to serve it as a drink, add between 2 and 4 extra cups of water while blending or, if the blender is too small, you can stir it in by hand. If serving as a soup, you can garnish in typical Spanish fashion by adding small croutons, finely chopped onions/tomatoes or chopped eggs.

This fall, the Y debuts a Jewish Latin America series led by Edna Aizenberg, PhD, a professor of Spanish and Latin American literature at Marymount Manhattan College. Learn about Latin American Ground Zeros and Latin American Jewish Literature.