World Renowned Jewish Cultural Entertainers to Discuss the Renaissance & Culture

The Michael Ann Russel Jewish Community Center (MAR-JCC) presents its first installment of the Yiddishkayt Entertainment Series: A Forum for the Celebration of Jewish Culture and Education with The Renaissance of Yiddishkayt and Jewish Culture. World renowned Jewish Cultural entertainers Jake Ehrenreich, Eleanor Reissa and Avi Hoffman will lead the discussion of Yiddishkayt and Jewish Culture.

The discussion will focus on Yiddishkayt identification, language and emotional attachments. This installment of the Yiddishkayt Entertainment Series is sponsored by JCAT-The J's Cultural Arts Theatre and The Joseph Papp Yiddish Theatre Michael-Ann Russell Jewish Community Center/Sanford L. Ziff Campus. The University of Miami's Sue and Leonard Miller Center for Contemporary Judaic Studies and George Feldenkreis Program in Judaic Studies are co-sponsors of this event.

Michael Ann Russell Jewish Community Center (MAR-JCC), 18900 NE 25th Avenue
North Miami Beach, Florida 33180. Monday, February 27, 2017 at 7:00p.m. Free / Open to the public

About the Michael-Ann Russell Jewish Community Center
MAR-JCC is dedicated to the enrichment of Jewish life and fosters the spiritual, emotional, and physical development of its individual members through all of life's stages and circumstances. The MAR-JCC represents a model of acceptance, understanding and diversity. As such, people look at the MAR-JCC as a center of excellence that epitomizes how shared Jewish values support a vibrant and evolving constituency. The MAR-JCC is a beneficiary agency of the Greater Miami Jewish Federation and the United Way of Miami-Dade County, and a member of the Jewish Community Center Association of North America.

About Avi Hoffman
Avi Hoffman was recently inducted into the Bronx Jewish Hall of Fame, was nominated for a NY Drama Desk Award for his Yiddish language portrayal of Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman and was invited to the Vatican to meet Pope Francis. He is known for his award-winning PBS one man shows Too Jewish, Too Jewish, Too! and Still Jewish After All These Years (Performer of the Year '95 - NY Press Magazine; L.A. OVATION award - Best Actor In a Musical 2001; NY Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle award nominations). On TV, he was featured as Sid Raskin in the Starz TV series Magic City, as well as on Netflix' Bloodline, A&E's The Glades and on the NBC series Law and Order. He starred in the motion picture - The Imported Bridegroom and was seen in the PBS documentary They Came For Good: A History of the Jews in the US. Avi has performed all over the world and has numerous acting and directing credits and has received multiple awards and nominations. For more information: http://www.josephpappyiddishtheatre.org

About Eleanor Reissa
Eleanor Reissa is a Tony nominated director, Israel Prize nominee, award-winning playwright, choreographer, actor, and singer. She was nominated for a Tony for Those Were The Days (also starring and choreographing). She received an honorary chair at Colgate University for directing/choreographing The Threepenny Opera. Off-Broadway director (partial list) of Cowgirls, How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, The Skin Game and Echoes Of The War (Mint Theater). She just completed directing and acting in the critically acclaimed, sold- out run of Sholem Asch's God Of Vengeance at La Mama in NYC. The anthology of her plays The Last Survivor And Other Modern Jewish Plays has just been published. She has received numerous commissions for adapting and directing plays including Yidl Mitn Fidl for Yiddishpiel in Israel, and Hershele Ostropolyer with Mike Burstyn for the Folksbiene, which she helmed from 1998-2003. Ms. Reissa is an actress on and off Broadway. She begins her latest stint in the upcoming Broadway show, Indecent by Paula Vogel. She has concertized all over the world. Her latest recording - Vilde Mikhaye (Wild Ecstasy) with Frank London and the Klezmer Brass Allstars. She is currently working on a new Yiddish opera - Isaac Bashevis Singer's Taibele And Her Demon with composer Judd Greenstein. www.eleanor/reissa.com

About Jake Ehrenreich
Ehrenreich is a musician, author and plawright, and world recognized expert on Comedy, the Catskills and the Holocaust. A Brooklyn born child of survivors, he is best known as star of his award winning show A Jew Grows in Brooklyn, which broke box office records at the historic Lambs Theater in the heart of Broadway. Jake is privileged to be among the 2016 inductees into the Brooklyn Jewish Hall of Fame. His writings appear in the Academic Anthology Summer Haven, The Catskills, The Holocaust and the Literary Imagination alongside Isaac Bashevis Singer and Art Spiegelman, and A Jew Grows in Brooklyn is now a best selling book by HCI (the Chicken Soup for the Soul publishers). Jake's expertise is on display in the documentaries Making Light in Terezin and most recently in The Last Laugh alongside Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner and Louis C.K. He is also Executive Producer of the award winning short film Welcome to Where You've Always Been. As a performer, Jake has appeared on Broadway in Dancin', Barnum, and They're Playing Our Song, and toured internationally as Ringo in Beatlemania. A native New Yorker, he starred for Joseph Papp at The Public Theater, and was featured performer at New York's famed Rainbow Room, as well as the iconic Bottom Line and Red Parrot Nightclubs. In addition to his numerous TV appearances, Jake has performed, recorded and toured with such diverse artists as with Richie Havens, Greg Allman, Whitney Houston, Jay Leno and Tito Puente. New York City honored Jake with a Dedicated Proclamation Day in 2012, and he received The Congressional Citation for Service to the Jewish Community in 2016

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