Tough women, bad boys and theater cocktails to be featured in Jerusalem events

The Times of Israel’s 2018 summer season of events for English speakers features new books and their authors, television, theater and film – and the British-born survivor of a brutal terror attack.

On Monday, June 18, we are proud to present the Israel launch of Sarah Tuttle-Singer’s debut book “Jerusalem Drawn and Quartered” in partnership with the Jerusalem Press Club at Mishkenot Sha’ananim.

A Los Angeles native who moved to Israel a decade ago and is now The Times of Israel’s new media editor, Tuttle-Singer has won worldwide admiration for her incisive and lyrical writing about her life in Israel. Her first book takes readers on a personal and spiritual journey based on a year spent living in the four quarters of Jerusalem’s historic Old City.

“If you love Jerusalem, you will love this book,” says Peter Lerner, former Israeli army spokesperson. “Sarah Tuttle-Singer, in her life-long love affair with the city, new and old, people from across the political and religious divide, brings it all together like only Sarah could. ‘Jerusalem Drawn and Quartered’ is a rollercoaster of culture, senses, emotions, and experiences. It reads like a diary, a very personal diary with dark secrets, but reflects the holy city that is so much for so many and has so many secrets of its own.”

“Beautiful, intense, mad, exhilarating: Sarah Tuttle-Singer hasn’t just written a terrific book about Jerusalem, she’s written a book that is now a part of Jerusalem,” says Yossi Klein Halevi, author of “Like Dreamers” and “Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor.”

“Taking us through the back alleys of the Old City, she introduces us to its world-class characters, their dreams and fears and most of all daily lives. In Sarah Tuttle-Singer, earthy Jerusalem has found its lover,” says Klein Halevi.

Discount advance tickets for Times of Israel readers available HERE.

‘Shababnikim’ encore

Our premiere English screening of Israeli TV’s hit comedy “Shababnikim” was so popular that the audience asked us for more. On Wednesday, June 27, at the Jerusalem Cinematheque, we’ll screen episodes 3, 4 and 5 – and repeat episodes 1 and 2 for those who missed them the first time around.

“Shababnikim” explores the very modern ambitions, adventures, loves and lives of young people pushing the envelope of the ultra-orthodox yeshiva world. The show swept the comedy prizes at the 2018 Israeli TV and Film Awards.

Creator Eliran Malka grew up in a religious family in northern Israel, but it wasn’t until he moved to Jerusalem to study at the Ma’aleh Film School that he first encountered the shababnikim, the bad boys of the yeshiva world, roaming the streets of the capital.

“I started to see all kinds of people that I’d never seen,” Malka told The Times of Israel’s Jessica Steinberg. “Yeshiva boys involved in Western life, dressed well and with cigarettes. I’d never seen that anywhere else.”

Writing in The Forward, Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt notes that Malka’s “portrait of the yeshiva world’s social hierarchy, in all of its complexity” is “something rarely if ever portrayed on the Israeli screen… Gone are the monastic apartments, the harsh lighting, the dirty streets of Mea Shearim, the ratty suits, the terrible wigs.”

Discount advance tickets for TOI readers available HERE.

You gotta eat sometime

Jerusalem’s Khan Theatre is one of the city’s hidden jewels. Housed in an ancient wayfarers’ inn whose foundations date back to the Crusaders, the Khan is an independent repertory theater presenting the very best of the Israeli stage in an intimate setting.

On Tuesday, July 3, Times of Israel readers are invited to a special English performance of “Eating” — a powerful satire by Yaakov Shabtai featuring the biblical King Ahab and his wife Jezebel who arranges the murder of Naboth the Jezreelite so Ahab can seize his vineyard.

“A strong black comedy showing that government corruption becomes the norm until we almost accept it,” said Yedioth Ahronoth, praising the “precise and sophisticated performance.”

The play will be performed in Hebrew with English supertitles, followed by “The Old Testament – Then and Now,” a short talk in English by actor Yohoyachin Friedlander. The evening will end with free summer cocktails in the magical Khan courtyard.

Special reduced-price tickets for Times Of Israel readers are available HERE (with promo code 2028).

‘Black Forest’ premiere

In 2010, Kay Wilson survived a horrific terror attack in which her friend Kristine Luken was murdered in cold blood as they walked through a beauty spot in the Judean Hills near Beit Shemesh. Wilson was stabbed multiple times and left for dead, but even as her lungs filled with blood she managed to struggle a mile to a car park to summon help.

“We were held for 30 minutes at knife point then gagged and bound before being butchered with machetes,” Wilson recalls. “I watched my friend chopped up before my eyes, and only survived because I played dead, despite being stabbed 13 times and having over 30 bones broken by the sheer force of the blows.”

On Monday, July 9, together with Beit Avi Chai, we are proud to present the English premiere of “Black Forest,” an Israeli TV documentary that follows the police hunt for Luken’s killers. The screening will be followed by a conversation with Wilson and attended by others involved in the investigation.

Tickets available HERE.

Melanie Phillips’s ‘The Legacy’

Melanie Phillips is one of Britain’s most outspoken commentators, appearing regularly on BBC’s “The Moral Maze” and sharing her views in bestselling books and columns in The Times of London and The Jerusalem Post.

On Tuesday, August 7, with Beit Avi Chai, we are proud to host the Israel launch of “The Legacy,” Phillips’s first work of fiction. It’s the gripping story of a conflicted Jewish identity, anti-Semitism and the irresistible force of history.

Does the mystery behind a recently discovered medieval manuscript hold the secret to the survival of the Jewish people? Phillips will talk about her book and her career, and copies will be available for sale and signing.

Tickets available HERE.

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