Salem Jazz & Soul Fest Volunteers Walk the Walk

Posted by Shelley A. Sackett

The ninth annual Salem Jazz and Soul Festival last weekend served up more than just two days of back-to-back sizzling performances from the likes of Krewe De Groove, The North Shore Jazz Project All Stars and Dwayne Dopsie and the Zydeco Hellraisers. The non-profit SJSF, with its mission of supporting musicians and music education, is entirely run by volunteers, and for the 80 or so who ran the two-day event, the festival also served up an opportunity to give back and do something meaningful on a personal level.

“People volunteer because they love the music and they love supporting music education for kids,” said Linda Goldstein, SJSF 2015 Volunteer Coordinator, who lives in Swampscott.

They also volunteer because they have benefited from the good work SJSF does and want others to have the same opportunity.

Alex Wang, 17 years old and a 2015 Salem High School graduate, attended jazz and recording camp at Salem State University thanks to a scholarship from SJSF. “I learned so much. The best way to get better at jazz is to surround yourself with people who are better than you. That’s what I did and I improved greatly,” he said.

He also learned about the power that music has to entertain and to bring people together. “If you’ve ever played in a band, you know how that feels. It’s an activity that you can’t compare to anything else,” he said.

Wang, who has played jazz piano for the Salem High School Jazz Band for three years, volunteered at the festival last year and this year. “This is me giving back,” he said with a smile.

As a University of Massachusetts freshman in Amherst next year, he will study music education and classical clarinet. He offered this advice to incoming high school freshmen who wonder whether to get involved in jazz band: “Jump in with both feet. Don’t test the water; just go in. Have fun!”

Mayri Ross and Alexander Wang worked their shifts in the merchandise tent.

Mayri Ross, 14, couldn’t agree more. When she moved from her hometown Salem to Portland, Oregon, in 2011, she didn’t know too much about jazz, although she had a background in music since her father was “big on music” and her mother was a vocalist.

Mayri Ross

She took a beginning concert band class with no idea how to play an instrument, although she had a little knowledge of how to read simple notes. She picked up the tenor sax and learned to play well enough to join the school’s intermediate band and participate in the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival in Moscow, Idaho.

“I met so many new friends. It was a really interesting experience that cemented my interest in jazz,” she said.

Knowing she would be visiting family in Salem and determined to devote her summer to learning more about jazz, she began researching how to combine the two. When she found that her hometown had a jazz festival, she looked at the volunteer shifts and signed up for the pre-shows and both days of the festival, where she sold festival clothing and souvenirs in the Merchandise Tent.

“I wanted to learn more so I could grow in my art,” she said, clearly delighted that the tent’s location was right next to stage.

View from the Merchandise Tent.

As a jazz and blues singer, Volunteer Coordinator Goldstein likes the ideas of bringing free concerts to people and of supporting music education programs for area students. She came to SJSF through her volunteer coordination activities at North Shore Jazz Project, an organization that works to create an environment on the North Shore where music education, performance and appreciation can flourish. Many NSJP members she knew were also involved in the Jazz & Soul Fest, and they solicited Goldstein to help with the festival. This is her third year and she loves it.

“It’s not real hard to get people to volunteer, which is nice,” Goldstein said. Her duties include managing the online site where people sign up to volunteer and figuring out ways to drive traffic to the site. She makes sure that she has coverage in all the spots she needs it and that people know where to go and what to do when they arrive.

She also makes sure volunteers know how much they appreciated. “At other concerts, volunteers get [the benefit of] free admission, but because this is a free concert, festival volunteers do it out of the goodness of their hearts,” she said. In return, they are treated to a cruise around Salem Harbor and the chance to win a gift card donated generously by local vendors Finz, Flying Saucer Pizza, Fran & Diane’s Kitchen, Front Street Coffeehouse, Longboards, Seafood Shanty and the Ugly Mug Diner.

Jackie Kinney, also from Swampscott, is another huge jazz fan who wanted to volunteer her time to a cause that was personal. As project manager for Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Massachusetts, she has organizational skills built over a career-long period. “I’d love to be able to take those kinds of skills and move them into more of an arts and culture space,” she said.

Instead of a boxy, red volunteer T-shirt, Kinney’s was stylish, cropped and sleeveless. “I have done this for my youngest daughter. It’s a beautiful day, but it’s a hot day. I wanted to air things out so I grabbed my scissors and started to snip, snip,” she said with a laugh.

Jackie Kinney (right) and Linda Goldstein used scissors and ingenuity to create their one-of-a-kind volunteer T-shirts.

Sitting at the volunteer check-in booth, Kinney was jubilant. “I’ve been here for two hours and heard a terrific high school band. It’s fun and something I’d like to do more of,” she said, adding, “I want to get to know the people who organize this event, raise my hand, and ask, ‘What do you need?’ and ‘How can I help?’”

For more information, visit http://www.salemjazzsoul.org.

Rosh Chodesh, Elul and Me

Posted by Shelley A. Sackett

Every month, I look forward to Rosh Chodesh. This started in September 2001, soon after moving to Swampscott from Denver, when I was invited by some new acquaintances to join them at a Hadassah evening of study and community. The focus of the evening was Rosh Chodesh, and we all received a copy of “Moonbeams,” a guide to Rosh Chodesh celebration and ceremony. The cover charmed me with its watercolor image of a woman in tallit, backlit by a pink sky filled with clouds, stars and moon. Fresh from Denver’s two-year Florence Melton Jewish studies program, I was thirsty for traditional knowledge and also contemporary customs. “Moonbeams” had both, with poetry and other writings as a bonus. And it was so pretty.

Then in 2002, my daughter was bat mitzvahed. On a Sunday morning. On Rosh Chodesh. On Mother’s Day. The stars and moon had aligned. I was like the mother of a bride who wants a barefoot potluck wedding in a pasture in Vermont instead of the sit-down, catered affair I had envisioned for her. My connection to this event eclipsed hers. My daughter soldiered through it all, and still shudders at the recollection of the process and the day itself. For me, it was another sign that Rosh Chodesh and I had some sort of a special bond.

All this rose to a new level when I started attending morning minyan on a regular basis and realized that my favorite ritual, the blowing of the shofar, occurred more often than during the High Holidays. In fact, it occurred monthly, on the first day of every Jewish lunar month. Hearing its ancient call more than compensated for the fact that services that morning, with the additions of Torah, Hallel and Musaf, were twice their usual length.

Next came my learning to chant the Rosh Chodesh parsha from the Torah (so far just parts 1, 2 and 3 but I will master 4 before long). My beloved and dearly missed spiritual guide and minyan companion, Cantor Emil Berkovitz, inspired and encouraged me to study trope at the classes he taught on Sunday mornings. As part of the study, we learned the Rosh Chodesh parsha. Makes a lot of sense if you’re only going to learn one: you get to do it 12 (sometimes 13!) times a year. That’s a lot of bang for the buck. I have read these three parts of the parsha at most Rosh Chodesh services this past year, always using the yod I had bought for my daughter to use at her bat mitzvah.

It was Rosh Chodesh Elul some years back when I discovered that, for the entire month, we blew the shofar every morning (except, of course, Shabbat and the day before Rosh Hashanah). That’s how special Elul is.

Preparing us for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Elul begins the month-long process of putting our spiritual homes in order to welcome the New Year, much as we clean our earthly homes to prepare for Passover. It is a sacred time of self-reflection and quiet, private assessment. It is a reminder that each of us matters and that tikkun olam (repairing the world) depends on each of us doing his best.

This morning, Rosh Chodesh Elul 5775, I stood at the torah. I chanted what others have chanted before me for thousands of years and what others will chant for thousands after. With my daughter’s yod lighting my way, I felt blessed by the feeling that in that one moment and by that one act, I was indeed being and doing my very best.

Lost in Place, Stuck in Time

Posted by Shelley A. Sackett

Pictured above: Clara (Marya Lowry) puts the finishing touches on Breda (Nancy E. Carroll) as Ada (Adrianne Krstansky) lends support. (Photo credit: Gary Ng)

“By their nature people are talkers,” declares Breda, one of three sisters who live their cloistered lives behind the closed door of a cottage on the rugged Irish seacoast. But for Breda and her sister Clara, who have withdrawn from the world and lassoed their younger sister, Ada, into joining them, talking is more than an innate trait: it is also the glue that fixes them to each other and to a shared adolescent moment forty years ago that was so painful and humiliating, it literally stopped their developmental clock.

In Gloucester Stage’s splendid production of Irish playwright Enda Walsh’s “The New Electric Ballroom,” playing through August 15, director Robert Walsh (no relation) casts a believable, macabre spell over a cramped room where memory reigns and lives are unlived.

Breda, played with her usual spot-on gestures and intonation by the stellar Nancy E. Carroll, was the village “bad girl” in her youth. When a teen idol singer came to the local1950’s dance hall, the New Electric Ballroom, she, along with all the other young girls trapped in the fishing village, dreamed of escaping their dismal fate by latching onto his coattails. Her younger and more innocent sister Clara (an equally convincing Marya Lowry) fell under the same spell. The two, however, did more than just dream; they acted.

Both went to his dressing room after the performance, believing his sweet talk and promises. Both suffered unspeakable grief and mortification when they were rejected. However, rather than picking themselves up and carrying on, something in them snapped, tethering them to that moment for the rest of their lives.

Now in their sixties, the sisters spend their day as they have everyday for the last forty years: by reenacting every anguished moment of that encounter. Their younger sister, Ada (Adrianne Krstansky, heartbreakingly understated), who is in her forties and works at the local fish-packing plant, is stage manager and costume and sound designer for their play within a play.

Above: Clara (Marya Lowry) and Breda (Nancy E. Carroll) square off over tea time. (Photo Credit: Gary Ng)

Each day, Breda and Clara ceremonially don the clothes and make up they wore that fateful night in a ghoulish reminder of Bette Davis in “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” In what feels like a cross between the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party and a sadistic sacred sacrament, they take turns describing in painful detail the events of that night and then relive the shame and disappointment that followed. They exist in a snow globe, hermetically sealed in a blizzard of debilitating emotion. When Breda declares to the exhausted Clara, “It’s time for you to rest and then we’ll start over,” all hope for a different path leeches away.

At right: L to R: Patsy (Derry Woodhouse) the fishmonger makes a point with Ada (Adrianne Krstansky) as Clara (Marya Lowry) and Breda (Nancy E. Carroll) look on. (Photo credit: Gary Ng)

Patsy (Derry Woodhouse), a fishmonger and the only visitor the sisters have, is a pivotal character in the play, coming to the sisters out of loneliness and a yearning to connect to another human being, however flawed and weird. “In a town of this size, we all have our place and mine was to have no purpose,” he states matter-of-factly. He is both endearing and pathetic as he withstands Breda’s abuse on the faintest possibility that she might invite him in.

When she and Clara finally do just that, the audience and Ada eagerly await Ada’s release from her sisters’ weird spell. This reviewer will not risk being branded a “spoiler” by revealing what happens, but the crucial moments showcase Mr. Woodhouse’s acting chops and bond the four characters in a surprising and indelible way.

The play is not as dreary as it might sound. The strong cast ably keeps the play grounded, despite its tendency to drift into farce and allegory. Under Robert Walsh’s direction and with Jenna McFarland Lord’s economical yet complete set, the characters are alive despite their suspension in time. And once again, Gloucester Stage rises above its summer theater peers, staging the sponge bath scene with real soap and water (and a nearly naked Patsy).

Enda Walsh has penned a smart, funny and lyrical work that subtly reveals its deeper message in a way that lingers and intensifies long after the curtain has come down. Highly stylized, the language at times evokes a dream world, where reality and fantasy merge.

Walsh, who authored the musical Once, garnered the OBIE Playwriting Award, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe First Award and the Irish Times Best New Play Award for “The New Electric Ballroom.” With its New England premiere, the Gloucester Stage celebrates yet another home run in its superlative 36^th season.

“The New Electric Ballroom” runs through August 15 at Gloucester Stage Company, 267 E. Main St., Gloucester, Wednesday through Sunday. For tickets go to gloucesterstage.com or call 978-281-4433.

Soldiering On: A Father’s Legacy

Posted by Shelley A. Sackett

Hale Bradt, 84, was 14 years old on August 14, 1945 – the day the White House announced the end of World War II. His father, Wilber Bradt, had shipped out to the Western Pacific on October 1, 1942, with New England’s 43rd Infantry Division.

Wilber had left an Army soldier—a captain—in the field artillery and would return as a lieutenant colonel and regimental commander of the 172nd Infantry Regiment, the famed Green Mountain Boys of Vermont. He had been wounded twice and was awarded three Silver Stars for personal bravery. Hale couldn’t wait to see his dad.

On December 1 – 108 days after VJ Day – Wilber took his own life. He was 45 years old.

Hale went on to serve in the Korean War in the U.S. Naval Reserve and became a Physics Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Although he remembered his dad, they were the memories of a 14-year-old that became more distant with each passing decade. All that would change on his 50^th birthday in 1980.

Prompted by an argument with one of his sisters, he went to his family home and rummaged through old documents in the basement that might shed light on her paternity. He found a cache of letters from his father – written before and during the war – that would alter the trajectory of his life and add an intimate layer to the story of America’s involvement in World War II and the effect it had on the soldiers who served and the families they left behind.

Those letters, plus additional context and interpretation by Hale, resulted in the handsome three-volume set, Wilber’s War, An American Family’s Journey through World War II, recently published to coincide with the 70^th anniversary of V-J Day on August 14.

Speaking to The Salem Gazette from his home in Salem, Hale described finding 12 letters addressed to him as the ‘a-ha!’ moment when he knew he had to share his family’s private story with the public.

“They were so fatherly and well-written and descriptive. I found a guy who could really write. As a 50-year-old, I knew what good writing was. As a 12-year-old, I didn’t,” he said.

Wilber’s wartime letters to his wife, children and other family members first and foremost provide a rare peek at the stark reality of WWII combat in the Pacific Theater. “His letters are special because they are contemporaneous,” Hale explained. “A lot of the war stories are reconstructed after it’s over. Some of these were written in the foxhole in pencil.”

They are also unique because they tell the story of an Army soldier. “Most of the stories of the Pacific War are about the Marines and the Navy,” Hale said.

He spent the next three decades interviewing relatives, academic and military colleagues. During his M.I.T. sabbatical in Japan in 1983, he visited the beach Wilber where Wilber would have landed had the war not ended when it did. He even met Col. Seishu Kinoshita, the Japanese battalion commander Wilber mentioned in his letters about combat in the Solomon Islands, a fascinating tale he recounts in detail.

However, it was not just the combat stories that propelled Hale to undertake a decades-long journey to learn more about his father and his family; he also uncovered the narrative of Norma, Wilber’s wife and Hale’s mother, that illustrated the serious challenges faced by the military spouse during a long deployment.

No stranger to the world of writing (he authored two textbooks on astrophysics), Hale learned first-hand how complicated the publishing side is when he decided to self-publish Wilber’s War after a couple of attempts to get an agent. He whittled down Wilber’s letters from 450,000 to 150,000 words and authored an equal amount of annotation and text. The fascinating book is chockfull of pictures, charts, maps and historical documents. “I’m a little embarrassed by the three volumes. I’ve constantly told my students, ‘You can always say things shorter,’” he said with a chuckle.

On a more serious note, Hale said that although soldiers today serve a different type of deployment than in his father’s day (three sequential deployments rather than one long one that lasted three years, for example), the story of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome is the same. “They’ve known about PTSD since the World War I and earlier. Everyone is vulnerable.”

Hale credits his older sister Valerie with encouraging him to write Wilber’s War even though she knew other family members might object. “She said, ‘Hale. You’ve got to tell this story. It’s everybody’s story.” The rest, as they say, is history.

For more information or to order “Wilber’s War”, go to wilberswar.com.

It’s Summertime, and the Addictions Flow Easy

Posted by Shelley A. Sackett

“My name is Shelley and I am a Words With Friends-aholic.”

Like most addicts, I was unaware that I was one. “Playing” was simply something I enjoyed. All the time. With up to ten people. Simultaneously. I checked the site first thing in the morning, last thing at night, and often in between. I kept my phone plugged in by my pillow, within easy reach in case insomnia struck.

My new best friend was a grammar school classmate who had tracked me down on facebook. Buddy and I would sometimes have five games going at once. We were constantly in cyber-contact. As soon as I played a word, he was right back. Thrust and parry. Not a moment in between until I would look at the clock, and cringe at how long I had been glued to the screen, lost in time and space.

I was a moth and this was my flame.

I started cursing others, out loud, when they racked up a high point word. I began bearing them ill will. These were no longer my friends. They were my adversaries. I checked the leaderboard after every play. Number two was not an option.

It was on a week internet-less vacation in Maine when my spousal equivalent first voiced his unhappiness with my behavior. As soon as we were within WiFi access, I whipped out my phone and checked out. Deprivation at the cabin resulted in unbridled binging. I was entitled. I ignored bucolic scenery. I preferred interactions with my fellow WWF-aholics to interacting with local lobstermen. He said I was rude, obsessed and unsociable. I said he was petty, selfish and needy. He said I spent more time with Buddy than I did with him. I said he was ridiculous and jealous.

Still, I didn’t stop. Instead, I began sneaking.

I stayed in the car at gas stations, lingered in the grocery store and “rested” at rest stops. I thought about WiFi. All the time. And stewed with resentment.

On that tense ride home, I realized I had better at least pretend to see the light. I admitted that I needed to stop, or at least to moderate my consumption. I acknowledged that my hobby was becoming an “issue” in our relationship. I would be more sensitive and less obsessed. I could do this. I would do this.

Not so easy, I discovered. Especially when my buddy Buddy-the-enabler was not on the same page. I finally conceded I couldn’t beat this alone.

Fate was on my side. WWF Anonymous had just started weekly meetings at my local Unitarian church. I saw the ads in the paper and began circling them, first in pencil and then in red pen. At last, one day I went.

The group was small and sat in a circle. I recognized a few faces and tried not to register surprise or relief. I took a seat and listened.

“Welcome to Words With Friends Anonymous.”

To be continued.

One Handful of Mud at a Time

Posted by Shelley A. Sackett

Pictured above: Professor Mohammed Khallouk

When is the last time you read the same two articles in a Jewish newspaper and an Islamic e-magazine?

This is a story about a Muslim professor and e-magazine publisher and a Jewish writer and editor who saw in each other’s writing an opportunity to broaden the horizons of their readerships. It is a story about hope and possibility. It does not dwell on the challenges that politics, culture and religion pose. Instead, it focuses on common human ground and the way each of us can build a better future, one relationship at a time.

As editor of the bi-weekly Jewish Journal, I received scores of unsolicited articles and opinion pieces. A small percentage of the ones I actually read were appropriate for our publication and of those, I only had room for a handful in every issue.

Every now and then, however, an article would reach out and grab me in a way that I knew I had to publish it. Professor Mohammed Khallouk’s “Can Sworn Enemies Ever Become Friends?” was one.

This is how it began:

“In my youth in Morocco I was taught to hate Jews, and especially Israelis. I was convinced that Jews and Muslims could never become friends and that the relationship between Israelis and Arabs was based on hostility. The reality of cultural and religious pluralism in my new home country of Germany and an examination of Moroccan history, which shows that Jews and Muslims have lived in harmony for centuries, have convinced me that differences in religion cannot be the true reason for the animosity between them in the Middle East today.

I recently traveled to Jerusalem and wrote a travelogue about the experience. My meeting with one Jewish shopkeeper in the Western part of Jerusalem was especially unforgettable. My experience with this friendly and open-minded man named Abraham motivated me to write him a letter, which I included at the end of my book. This letter is a mirror of my experiences in the Holy City on the whole and my experiences meeting Abraham in particular.”

In his letter to Abraham, Professor Khallouk’s describes his revelations while in Israel, the gist of which are reprinted here:

“Even more than at the Holy Sites, I experienced this sense of brotherhood in Jerusalem’s everyday life. There were Jews like you who approached me as a fellow human with neither awkwardness nor fear. Appearance, origin and religious belief were unimportant. You saw me as a person who needed your assistance, and you spontaneously offered your help.

This human interaction has shaped my view of Jerusalem ever since. Jews are henceforth in my consciousness no longer my sworn enemies. I was able to experience them as my friends, soul-mates and spiritual brothers. While I continue to disagree in many key points with the State of Israel’s political stand on the Middle East conflict, Jews in West Jerusalem now matter to me as much as do Arabs and Muslims in the east of the Holy City. You have shown that you understand the importance of humanity essential to both Islam and Judaism.

The experience of seeing people of different cultures and religions coexisting so closely makes me long to return one day to the Holy City. The warmth with which we dealt with each other makes me hopeful that it might also inspire the political and social leaders. This is how political conflict can be overcome. Brotherhood and solidarity need to be the dominant image that Jews and Muslims have of each other.

I recognize your human kindness as a model for the rest of the world as well. This applies not least to German society, in which despite its cultural and political pluralism sometimes indifference and self-centeredness prevail. In Jerusalem I met a Judaism that reaches out to others. The guiding principle can be expressed thus: Only in dealing with the You, can the I find its identity.”

I emailed Professor Khallouk, telling him how much his message moved me and that, while I would have to edit it due to print space constraints, I wanted to publish it. I wanted our Jewish readers to hear a reasoned and reasonable Muslim voice, one that advocated human kindness and empathy, one that, these days and especially recently in the Journal’s pages, is too often ignored.

We exchanged several increasingly friendly emails. His article appeared at the top of the Jewish Journal May 28 Opinion page. Mine appeared at the bottom, an article entitled “Baccalaureate: Not Your Average Graduation Ceremony” that praised the interfaith Tufts University Baccalaureate ceremony for being a powerful reminder that we are members of a common community that embraces, rather than fears, the differences of our separate identities.

When I sent Professor Khallouk the pdf of the Opinion page, he replied with this email:

Dear Shelley,

Thank you very much for the publishing of my article. It was a great pleasure for me to find it on the same page with your nice literary report about diversity and the baccalaureate service.

If you do not mind I would like to translate your piece into German and publish the translation on the website of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany

I also wish you a beautiful day and would be happy for another opportunity to work together with you.

Mohammed

The article appeared recently at http://islam.de/26575.php.

The point of the story is quite simple. We can recognize and seize opportunities to shape the future with a foundation of coexistence and compromise, or we can construct it from a place of separation, hostility and stereotyping. Either is possible and both require the same action: human hands, building together, one handful of mud at a time.

Prof. Mohammed Khallouk is a political and Islamic scientist with German and Moroccan roots. He is an expert in Islamic Thought and Politics, Political Islam and is skilled in intercultural dialogue between the West and the Islamic World.

Prof. Khallouk received his Ph.D. in 2007 in Political Science at the Philipps-University of Marburg, Germany. His doctoral thesis dealt with Political Islam in his country of origin, Morocco. His M.A. degree in Political Science at Marburg University in 2003, based on his thesis about the possibility of peace between Israelis and Palestinians, was honored with the German Academic Exchange Prize. He also received a M.A. degree in Arab and Islamic Thought at Mohammed V – University of Rabat, Morocco, in 1997.

Khallouk served as a lecturer in Political Science from 2008 to 2012 at Philipps-University of Marburg and from 2010 to 2012 at the University of German Federal Armed Forces Munich. Since 2014 he has served as Professor for Islamic Studies at Qatar University, Doha.

To read Professor Khallouk’s complete article, go to http://boston.forward.com/articles/187449/can-sworn-enemies-ever-become-friends/#ixzz3fGMBw3Yy

Baccalaureate: Not Your Average Graduation Ceremony

Posted by Shelley A. Sackett

My youngest recently graduated from Tufts University, marking a rite de passage and the turning of a page for both us. The day before Commencement, we attended his Baccalaureate Service. In the sea of caps and gowns, he was nearly indistinguishable from his 1,250 colleagues. In the audience, among the dewy-eyed adults, so was I. It was hard work to catch each other’s eye as the processional sped past. This was not a personal, private setting to mark a journey from one stage of life to the next. This was the Gantcher Family Sports and Convocation Center, and it was overflowing at its seams.

Yet, unlike the Commencement ceremony the next day, the Baccalaureate Service somehow spun a magic web that connected every individual in the building to each other. Despite the cavernous, detached environment, the substance of the service touched me in a way that was unexpectedly intimate, spiritual and bonding. This was no small feat for an arcane Christian tradition from medieval times.

The original purpose of the Baccalaureate was literally to honor graduates with “laurels of oration” as they cross the threshold into their lives beyond their college years. The ceremony, a religious graduation custom that originated in 1432 at the University of Oxford, was a religious service of worship in celebration of, and thanksgiving for, lives dedicated to learning and wisdom.

At Tufts, the Baccalaureate was coordinated by the University Chaplaincy and the Interfaith Student Council. It marked the last time for the senior class to be alone together as a class. As a parent focused on trying to figure out where 21 years went, it was a helpful reminder that this day was bittersweet for my son too.

It was also a multi-faith celebration that spotlighted the students’ (and their parents’) shared heritage of diversity and common values of learning, service and teamwork. The program emphasized prayer, meditation and contemplation. And live music: jazz, a traditional Gaelic song and a traditional African American spiritual.

Even the brochure felt more like a global prayer book than a graduation agenda. Instead of pages listing individual winners of competitive awards and prizes, the program was chockfull of readings and blessings. The title page pictured the 15 religious and philosophical symbols of the traditions practiced by the Tufts community.

Five “Lessons of Inspiration” illustrated the different ways students from 37 nations and 47 states acknowledged what is sacred to them. The selections came from Hindu, Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Humanist sacred texts. Reading the English translations, it was impossible not to admit and admire their similarities.

Hearing the Upanishad (Sanskrit), the Bible (Hebrew) and the Qu’an (Arabic) in their original tongues was even richer. The languages “felt” holy, both melodious and hymnal. Each prayer spoke of peace, the beauty of life and the dignity of endurance. It was a powerful reminder that, while we are a diverse people that honor and take fierce pride in our separate identities, we are also members of a common community that embraces, rather than fears, those differences.

Anthropologists define rite de passage as marking the passage of a person through the life cycle, from one stage to another over time. What a persuasive and nurturing capstone the Baccalaureate was for these fledgling adults. And for their parents, too.

Finding the OM in ShalOM: Trekking Through India

Posted by Shelley A. Sackett

View from the Agra Fort with the Taj Mahal barely visible through the smog.

When I went to India, I was braced for the traffic, the garbage, and the almost unbearable density of humanity. I accepted that cows had a divine right of way over everyone everywhere, including Mack trucks on highways. I knew I would brush my teeth with bottled water and forgo my dietary staple, lettuce, for three weeks.

I thought I had done my homework.

Preparation for encountering Stars of David on Muslim mosques was not even remotely on my radar screen.

While I easily coped with the unrelenting assault on all my senses that is the joy and intensity of traveling in India, I was much less graceful at weathering the perceived assault on the icon of my Jewish identity.

On my first day in Delhi, at the first site we visited, I spotted the familiar six-pointed star in an unfamiliar place: at the Muslim Tomb of Humayun, burial spot of the second Mughal emperor. Jewish stars inexplicably adorned entryways, ironwork windows, inlaid floors, and painted ceilings. Was this some kind of a jet-lag joke?

At right: Entrance to Humayun’s Tomb in Old Delhi.

Our guide told us that Humayun’s Tomb was the first Mughal (a Muslim dynasty) tomb. Built in 1565 by the Persian architect Mirak Mirza Ghiya, it became the template for all future tombs, including the Taj Mahal. Had Ghiya deliberately blasphemed our sacred Hebraic symbol by splashing it all over his Mughal garden and tomb? Given our millenia of dogged persecution, this was hardly a far-fetched possibility. But here, in India, the cradle of yoga, compassion and meditation?

I vowed to get to the bottom of this.

What India lacks in traffic etiquette and control, it more than makes up for in Wi-Fi access, and I was no sooner through the hotel front door than my Google search yielded fruit. There were many explanations for why hexagrams adorn Humayun’s Tomb; not one pointed to bearing the Jews ill will.

Long before 1565, the hexagram was recognized as a potent symbol of planetary alignment in India. It signified perfection, good fortune, stability, calm and harmony. Akbar, Humayun’s son, wanted to pay homage to his father’s infatuation with astrology, and instructed Ghiya to incorporate the symbol in the tomb design.

Below: Palace of the Winds in Jaipur.

Akbar may have had additional, more practical and political, reasons. The Muslim Mughals ruled over vast areas of Hindu-majority India. Ancient Hindus revered the hexagram as divine representation of perfect union. Akbar may have cleverly bought his Muslim dynasty some popularity and legitimacy among the Hindus he ruled by prominently including their religious symbol on his first public work.

Whether or not I bought any of these explanations, there was no way to conclude that the Muslim hexagram was intended to insult us Jews or steal what was rightfully ours.

But was it really rightfully “ours?” Who had prior use claim over this six-pointed star?

As with all questions grounded in anything Judaic, there were scores of explanations. All agreed on one fact: that the symbol’s identification with the Jewish community dated no earlier than to the 17th century in Vienna, when the Jewish quarter was formally distinguished from the rest of the city. Akbar’s 1565 public use would seem to trump.

However, that had suddenly become less the point, and therein lay the real lesson. I had been searching for evidence that, once again, we Jews had been dissed and ripped off. Instead, I uncovered proof of my own knee-jerk pride and prejudice. India had given me the opportunity to appreciate the possibility of amicable common ground unrooted in anything negative, and I had nearly missed it. I was so focused on what I was looking for that I almost didn’t see what I had found.

I had booked a tour of India because I wanted to experience the sights, smells, sounds, and tastes the glossy brochure promised. The softening of a hard edge and recalibration of an inner lens was an add-on bonus.

I’d say I got way more than I paid for.

All photos by Shelley A. Sackett

Gloucester Stage Company Hits It Out of the Park with “Out of Sterno”

Posted by Shelley A. Sackett

Gloucester Stage Company is on a roll this summer. On the heels of its stunning “Sweet and Sad,” the North Shore venue offers up “Out of Sterno,” a dazzling production about female empowerment that is impossible not to like. This is one you will not want to miss.

Deborah Zoe Laufer’s play features Dotty, a 23-year-old who has spent the last seven years of marriage sequestered in her apartment, occupying her days in ways that would make Pee Wee Herman feel right at home. Dotty’s “playhouse” includes toys, gadgets and puppet characters (although her appliances and furniture don’t talk, which is too bad since Dotty believes everything she is told, and even a chair would have better advice to offer than her mother’s).

Amanda Collins as Dotty replays the first time she met her husband.

She has a crafts table where she constructs kindergarten art projects based on domesticity and a VCR where she watches re-enactments of her first meeting with Hamel, her perfect husband who has forbidden her to leave the apartment or answer the phone. The rest of her day is spent doing laundry and preparing the same dinner for Hamel — a smiley-faced hamburger. Although this is Sterno, not Puppetland, Dotty and Pee Wee are two peas in an infantile pod, their exaggerated cheer at times bordering on hysteria.

Dotty’s hermetic world is unsealed the day she receives a mysterious phone call and finds a nude girlie picture in Hamel’s grease monkey overalls. Her ordered world is suddenly topsy-turvey. She decides to disobey Hamel and track down the truth.

Once she leaves her apartment, our modern-day Dorothy discovers she is not in Kansas anymore. “Life was so much simpler when I never left the apartment,” she rues.

Her yellow brick road leads her first to Zena (a force to be reckoned with as played by Jennifer Ellis), the she-devil beautician who gives Dotty a primer in what womanhood can look like. The textbook is “Beautiful or Bust” magazine and the uniform includes false boobs, a wig and stilettos guaranteed to lead to debilitating foot problems. It also includes tutelage in Zena’s tried-and-true method to make it as a woman in a man’s world: steal another woman’s husband.
By way of illustration, Zena tells Dotty she has sunk her razor-sharp claws into potential husband number six. Before Dotty realizes that it is her own Hamel whom Zena is prattling on and on about snatching, she too falls under Zena’s foul-mouthed spell, finding womanly self-worth and identity by wearing Zena’s animal print jumpsuits and scrubbing her salon’s toilets with a toothbrush.

Amanda Collins (Dotty) finds female fulfillment scrubbing Zena’s toilets with a toothbrush.

Dotty meets many characters no less colorful than Conky, Cowboy Curtis and Miss Yvonne while on her quest for the meaning of womanhood. Richard Snee plays each of these cameo roles with relish and panache. These include a cabbie, a professor, other beauty shop clients, and Dotty’s new “bus buddies” — a militant feminist, a pregnant Southern lady and a geeky salesman.

Each offers her a manifesto, a code of ethics and a dress code. Like the blind men feeling the elephant in the Indian parable, each has his or her narrow, subjective perspective based on a single experience that fails to account for other possible truths or for a totality of truth.

Little by little, Dotty starts to realize that, while each of these guides can help her learn something about herself, only she holds the key that can unlock the mystery of her authentic self.

The extraordinary Amanda Collins as Dotty is reason enough to see the show. She effortlessly brings to the role an openness of curiosity and naïvité (think the un-raunchy elements of Lena Dunham); a slapstick wacky physicality (think Lucille Ball) and an exceptionally expressive face (think pre-plastic surgery Meg Ryan). Her delivery is flawless and she radiates an inner light that draws the audience’s attention like a moth to a flame.

Paula Plum’s direction is full of surprises, such as props falling from the ceiling, and jaw-dropping brilliance, such as the staging of the final scene. The music has the breeziness of “The Pink Panther” and “Mad Men” and the set designs make creative use of overhead projectors, billowing curtains and backlit shadows.

“Out of Sterno” is particularly relevant in the wake of such “news” as Caitlyn Jenner’s Vanity Fair cover that shows her authentic female self. As Plum notes in the playbill, “I found it intriguing that Jenner displayed herself through the lens of Beauty Culture: corseted, provocative and heavily made-up. The transformation of this former Olympic athlete to femme fatale poses the question: what makes a ‘real woman’? Is it the sum of our exterior parts?”

Sounds like Jenner should make a trip to Gloucester; Dotty could teach her a thing or two.

Pictured at top: Jennifer Ellis (as Zena), Richard Snee (as beauty shop patron) and Amanda Collins (as Dotty)

“Out of Sterno” runs through July 18 at Gloucester Stage Company, 267 E. Main St., Gloucester. For tickets go to gloucesterstage.com or call 978-281-4433.

InSights Update

Posted by Shelley A. Sackett

All articles on InSights were written by Shelley A. Sackett.