The Paula Lerner
Visiting Artist Program
Presents
The Afro-Semitic Experience
Beth El Temple Center
April 29 & 30
Join us for the first Paula Lerner Visiting Artist Program at BETC, The Afro-Semitic Experience. Co-founded by African-American jazz pianist Warren Byrd and Jewish-American jazz bassist David Chevan in 1998, the ensemble plays highly accessible ethnic world music – a tapestry of spiritual, world-beat, funk, jazz, cantorial, gospel, salsa, swing and other soul-driven styles.
Friday, April 29 at 7:00 pm – Shabbat Service
The Afro-Semitic Experience joins the BETC Tefillah Band
Saturday, April 30 at 4:00 pm – Workshop
The Afro-Semitic Experience will demonstrate a collaborative process of transforming sacred music into jazz and share their personal experiences with Black/Jewish relations. The ensemble merges their musical roots, Jewish and Afro-diasporic melodies and grooves, combining the core concepts of àse and shalom - power, action, unity, and peace.
Saturday, April 30 at 7:15 pm – Havdalah & Concert
The Afro-Semitic Experience concert is a celebration including music, stories and a core message: Unity in the Community. Their vibrant performance will have you up and dancing, not to mention whoopin’, hollerin’, and testifyin’!
The workshop and concert are free, but advance registration is required.
Donations to the Paula Lerner Visiting Artist Fund are encouraged in order to establish a strong base for many programs over the years to come. Please donate online (select the Paula Lerner Visiting Artist Fund from the campaign dropdown menu) or send your check made out to BETC and note “Paula Lerner Visiting Artist Fund” in the memo.
Come engage in this joyful weekend exploration
of music, cultures and unity in our community!
Remembering Paula. Paula Lerner, our dear friend and former Temple member, died of breast cancer on March 6, 2012 at the age of 52. In both her life and work, Paula was an inspiring human being. A gifted, award-winning photographer and journalist, Paula was ceaselessly curious about the world and people. She was brave and fiercely determined when it came to sharing stories that she felt needed to be told such as “Behind the Veil,” her Emmy award-winning photojournalism work about the women of Afghanistan. She was energetic, adventurous and fearless, whether rock climbing in Massachusetts or taking powerful, compelling photos in Kandahar. Always passionate about social justice, especially efforts to protect the rights of women and children around the world, Paula also was smart, funny, generous and wonderfully creative as an artist, musician, writer, and teacher. Most important of all, for many of us, she also was a beloved and cherished friend.
Paula deeply loved Beth El Temple Center and the community that she, her husband, Thomas Dunlap, and their daughters, Maia and Eliana found here. Whether singing and strumming her guitar around the fire on Temple camping trips, chanting Haftorah on the High Holy Days, taking part in a variety of adult learning programs, Shabbat services or Purim shpiels, sharing our work of social justice or simply laughing and celebrating with Temple friends, Paula was a lovely and treasured part of the fabric of our community for many years.
Because this community was so dear to Paula and because she meant so much to our shared life, the Lerner-Dunlap family and the Beth El Temple Board of Trustees have decided to establish “The Paula Lerner Visiting Artist Program” and the “Paula Lerner Visiting Artist Fund.”
Each year, Beth El Temple Center will invite an artist or group of artists whose work is significant for the Jewish community to come and share their art with us.
