THURSDAY: Women Poets (FREE Online Class)
Who wrote "Give me your tired, your poor..." and what did she mean?
Emma Lazarus’s poem “The New Colossus” on the pedestal of The Statute of Liberty ("Give me your tired, your poor…”) has come to symbolize America’s embrace of immigrants. A close examination of her brief, 14-line poem shows it means that and so much more. On Monday, October 12 at Noon EDT, Jewish Culture 101’s FREE class on “Women Poets” will look at that classic poem as well as more recent work by Yiddishist and feminist poets. Register bitly.com/BenkofPoets.
Coming up: “Disney’s Jews” on Monday, October 19 at Noon EDT (FREE) will look at the Jewish Disney musicians behind the majority of the great Disney songs: The Sherman Brothers (“It’s a Small World,” “Feed the Birds”); Howard Ashman and Alan Menken (“Poor Unfortunate Souls,” “Be Our Guest”); and Stephen Schwartz (“Colors of the Wind,” “Out There”). We’ll also learn about lesser-known but still talented composers working for Disney recently on projects like High School Musical and Teen Beach Movie. Register: bitly.com/BenkofDisney.
That’s followed by “Rodgers & Hammerstein 101” on Monday, October 26 at Noon EDT (also FREE) and a FREE “Singer-Songwriter'“ series every Monday at Noon EDT in November:
• Bob Dylan 101 November 2
• Simon & Garfunkel 101 November 9
• Peter, Paul, & Mary 101 November 16
• Carole King 101 November 23
• Billy Joel 101 November 30
Subscribe to my YouTube Channel here: bitly.com/BenkofChannel. You’ll find dozens of American Jewish culture videos, including a countdown of Broadway’s 10 best Jewish shows and this video about whether Willy Loman from Death of a Salesman is Jewish (the latter grew out of our Arthur Miller 101 class).
And I’m booking Zoom talks for individual organizations, and eventually in-person classes. (In the next few weeks I’ll be presenting my classes to Jewish groups in Jerusalem, Long Island, and Honolulu.) Here’s a demonstration of my in-person teaching and this one-minute intro shows how Jewish Culture 101 works.