Meet Shirat Hayam's Cantor

Swampscott’s Elana Rozenfeld talks about her love of Yiddish folk songs and her role as Shirat Hayam’s newest cantor.

  For many people, music creates a path inward that welcomes a variety of experiences and emotions one would otherwise be able to block out—just think to the old song on the radio that plays and there you are, unexpectedly brought back to that point in time years ago, or that person you hadn’t thought about for ages. This is one reason music is a part of many religious and spiritual ceremonies, and Judaism is no exception. The role of music is integral to Jewish worship, and the role of cantor is pivotal because the cantor is the person who sings the service. For almost a year now, Elana Rozenfeld has held the cantor position at Swampscott’s Shirat Hayam, and she comes with a musical pedigree that goes back centuries. Growing up in New …

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Musings: A Column on Local Culture

On This Earth to Help Others

Local authors recollect Herman Liss, a man who reached out to others for each of his 94 years.

  By all accounts, Herman Liss was a great guy. Devout, kind, intelligent, a successful salesperson, he also knew how to have a good time, was a great dancer and a snappy dresser, as well as a loving and committed husband to his wife of 26 years, Betty. This warm but familiar story veers off course, though, into territory often hard to put into words, and even harder to explain. At the age of 92, within a week’s time, Betty passed away and Liss suffered a stroke that left him unable to continue to live on his own. After a series of hospital stays and rehab visits, Liss moved into the Jewish Rehabilitation Center (JRC), on Paradise Road in Swampscott. This combination of events would dampen the spirits of anyone and, optimistic and cheerful…

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Musings: A Column on Local Culture

Healthy Choices

Swampscott woman teams with local food bank.

  Gini Mazman explains why she is working to bring “Cooking Matters,” a program that offers culinary education to food bank recipients, to local food pantries. The “decisions people make about food is part of a maze of decisions people make that effect their whole life,” she says. So a healthy change in the kitchen can have a profound impact. Cooking Matters, sponsored in part by ConAgra and Walmart, is part of the national organization “Share Our Strength,” dedicated to ending childhood hunger. Cooking Matters will run a 6-week program in Lynn for food pantry participants. Each week will feature a guest chef who will demonstrate a healthy and tasty meal made with that week’s donated ingredients. Donated items are often random, says Mazman…

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Musings: A Column on Local Culture

You Are Braver Than You Believe

The JCC Book Month event celebrated a community of readers.

  Funny thing about reading a book—you do it alone, choosing to turn off all distractions and noise from the outside in order to focus yourself on what is unfolding silently on the page (paper or electronic it makes no difference) in front of you. Yet reading is also the most social of activities. The reader connects to the author’s view of the world, meeting characters and situations otherwise unknown or unknowable. And, as was evident at the JCC Book Month’s Girls Night Out in November, readers connect to each other. With the ease of electronic publishing, the book world is changing rapidly. According to this year’s Book Month co-chairs, Joan Finn and Sara Winer, half of the books chosen for the November Book Month festival came from …

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Musings: A Column on Local Culture

“Not Afraid to Put Someone in a Tree”

Alex Gerasev’s prints grace Gaga Gallery’s Holiday Exhibit

  Each of Alex Gerasev’s prints for sale in Gaga Gallery draws the viewer into a mini-world, complete unto itself. “I tell a story, but the story has its own life,” Gerasev explains. “After I’m done you can find many stories to it.” And although he says he “cannot compete with nature” which was “made beautiful by God” he is also drawn to the outdoors. Take, for example, High Grass. Two figures — a smaller boy in front, a mysterious hatted man behind — approach between rows of reeds. The sun hangs overhead; there are hills to the side. Who are the people? What is their relationship? Where are they going? The print immediately engages the viewer with questions, creating a back-and-forth process between viewer and picture, a connection that …

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Too Much Information

The novel that "explains a man's life, full of shameful secrets."

  When David Schmahmann, the final author of the JCC’s November Book Month series, spoke in the evening of Nov. 30 he took note of his audience, mostly women. In an apologetic manner, he explained the topic of his fourth and latest novel, The Double Life of Alfred Buber. The story is “about being a man misreading … situations regarding women, and the shame that follows.” More specifically, the story centers on a “Boston lawyer who falls in love with a sex worker” in Bangkok, Thailand. Bangkok is “a colorful place” where a person is “accosted and offered sexual favors everywhere … at the airport, at the hotel, waiting for a taxi.” For inspiration Schmahmann drew on the story of M. Butterfly—the French diplomat who carried on a love affair …

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Musings: A Column on Local Culture

Little House on the Prairie Grows Up

Local author Elizabeth (Betsy) Buechner Morris recreates the California Trail.

  Partway through Elizabeth Buechner Morris’s novel, Bitter Passage, the main character, Frida Reinhardt, is traveling in a boat taking her to Independence, Missouri, where she, her husband, two sons and toddler daughter will begin their trek along the California Trail, west toward the newly discovered gold on Sutter’s Farm. She is trying to explain to her teenage son why she puts up with her husband’s arrogance and bullying, why she agreed to the journey. Frida points to the rosy gold in her wedding ring, the same gold her grandmother wore, the grandmother who told loving stories of her grandfather. When Frida grew older, she learned that in fact her grandfather had died drunk by the side of the road on his way home from his mistress’s …

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Musings: A Column on Local Culture

“My Stories Unnerve People. They’re Supposed To.”

JCC Book Month Picks a Winner

Those who braved the torrential rains last Thursday evening to attend the JCC Book Month event showcasing short story writer Stuart Nadler were richly rewarded. Nadler’s recently published short story collection, The Book of Life, has been critically acclaimed. The New Yorker wrote: “Betrayal and forgiveness infuse this impressive début collection … Nadler skillfully creates characters whose failures and faults make them comically, endearingly human.” Nadler, who was hoarse from fighting off a cold, was a funny and candid speaker. A 2008 graduate of the prestigious Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Nadler admitted that his “characters do behave very badly [they] lie, cheat, steal, make bad decisions.” He likes to look at “moments of crises in people…

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Musings: A Column on Local Culture

Always Brando

Filmmaker Ziad Hamzeh launches his newest movie.

The first of two pieces about local filmmaker Ziad Hamzeh  A few years ago Swampscott filmmaker Ziad Hamzeh was in Tunisia as a member of a panel on the Arab film industry, and he was asked his opinion of the state of Arab films. Arab movies, he replied, were “in a dismal state.” They were making movies about “what the West has done to us” rather than “stories that come from within.” The best stories, he emphasized, are the ones that tell the world about what a people care about, what they value and yearn for. His words caught the ear of the well known Tunisian director, Ridha Behi. Behi was also in a dismal state. He had been working with Marlon Brando, living and filming in the actor’s house in LA for several months, when Brando died. …

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Musings: A Column on Local Culture

“Do Right and Fear Not”

A Visit to the Mary Baker Eddy House

Mary Baker Eddy, who lived from 1821 until 1910, was a formidable character by all accounts. During a time not known for its enlightened views about the capabilities of women, she devised a method of healing disease, taught that method to others and founded a church, which continues to this day, Christian Science. And, the critical event of her life occurred while she was living at 23 Paradise Road, in Swampscott. This last bit of information I learned from Mary and Ron Beerman and Joan Eaton, the friendly and informative employees of the Longyear Museum, which owns and runs the Swampscott property. The Paradise Road house is one of 8 Longyear properties that trace Mary Baker Eddy’s life from her childhood in New Hampshire, to her death in…

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