The Circus, Kosher for Passover
On Thursday, lions and tigers performed alongside the Yeshiva Boys Choir for 20,000 Jews at the Barclays Center
(Photoillustration Tablet Magazine; original photo Bjørn Giesenbauer/Flickr)
From: tabletmag.com
By Jillian Scheinfeld
March 29, 2013
“Shalom! Ma Nishma? Welcome to the Barclays Center.” That’s how a courteous usher greeted me yesterday at the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus—a sign of what was to come over the next four and a half hours. Thanks to the Yeshiva Birchas Shmuel, a special-education school located in Midwood, Brooklyn, 20,000 giddy Jews, almost all Orthodox, got to enjoy the “Greatest Show on Earth!”—kosher style. Clowns, animals, dancers, Uncle Moishy, and the Yeshiva Boys Choir put on a high-energy spectacle, which brought two unlikely themes, Judaism and carnies, under the same roof.
“This is our first time to the Ringling and Yeshiva circus. We haven’t had many opportunities to come before!” said Jaylee Stein, an Orthodox mother from Brooklyn, who brought her young son to the show.
The pairing is the brainchild of Rabbi Raphael Wallerstein, the principal at the Yeshiva Birchas Shmuel, who first contacted Ringling producer Nicole Feld at the beginning of the millennium in hopes of merging the two entities. What was at first met with hesitation from Feld transformed into a circus fused with Passover spirit and halachic accommodations at Madison Square Garden in March 2004. Nine years later, they decided to bring it back, this time in Brooklyn.
On Thursday, lions and tigers performed alongside the Yeshiva Boys Choir for 20,000 Jews at the Barclays Center
(Photoillustration Tablet Magazine; original photo Bjørn Giesenbauer/Flickr)
From: tabletmag.com
By Jillian Scheinfeld
March 29, 2013
“Shalom! Ma Nishma? Welcome to the Barclays Center.” That’s how a courteous usher greeted me yesterday at the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus—a sign of what was to come over the next four and a half hours. Thanks to the Yeshiva Birchas Shmuel, a special-education school located in Midwood, Brooklyn, 20,000 giddy Jews, almost all Orthodox, got to enjoy the “Greatest Show on Earth!”—kosher style. Clowns, animals, dancers, Uncle Moishy, and the Yeshiva Boys Choir put on a high-energy spectacle, which brought two unlikely themes, Judaism and carnies, under the same roof.
“This is our first time to the Ringling and Yeshiva circus. We haven’t had many opportunities to come before!” said Jaylee Stein, an Orthodox mother from Brooklyn, who brought her young son to the show.
The pairing is the brainchild of Rabbi Raphael Wallerstein, the principal at the Yeshiva Birchas Shmuel, who first contacted Ringling producer Nicole Feld at the beginning of the millennium in hopes of merging the two entities. What was at first met with hesitation from Feld transformed into a circus fused with Passover spirit and halachic accommodations at Madison Square Garden in March 2004. Nine years later, they decided to bring it back, this time in Brooklyn.
“Ringling asked us what must be done, and we went over the entire script together so the show would be nice for the whole community. Today’s entertainment is not clean, so we wanted to have some clean entertainment for our children,” said Rabbi Wallerstein.
The most significant accommodation of all was removing every female performer from the show, with the exception of the lady elephants. Feld held rehearsals to find more men for the show and cooperated with Wallerstein to eliminate certain phrases that may have been controversial. A big part of the classic Ringling Brothers circus includes a rivalry between boys and girls, which was completely altered for Thursday’s show. Otherwise, Ringling was able to present most acts in their entirety, with the addition of the Yeshiva Boys Choir and the crowd’s favorite, Uncle Moishy.
read more:
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/128186/the-circus-kosher-for-passover
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