Oh, my stars!!! What a performance!

Yom shlishi, 24 Kislev 5775, Erev Hanukkah.

I recently learned an expression in Hebrew:
".רק משוגעים סופרים את הכוכבים" (Rak meshuga'im sofrim et hakochavim.)

Only madmen count the stars.

I love this expression. Probably because it sounds beautiful in Hebrew. And because I think it would make a great title for a book. And perhaps because it makes me think of my dear "father," Avraham Avinu -- surely not a madman -- who was told by God that his children would be more numerous than the stars. The very idea to the childless prophet must have been perplexing and exhilarating. I know that when the part of this awe-inspiring character is played very well, I am transported to another dimension of possibilities. Care to be transported? Time to see Count the Stars!

Photo credit: Rebecca Flash Kowalsky

The Raise Your Spirits acting troupe has never disappointed me. This talented local group, based in Gush Etzion, gives me so much personal pride. These are my friends and neighbors, teachers and fellow writers. Some I know to be very shy people off-stage -- but when they are onstage, they blossom to life, as if there were something about those colored lights that enhances the flower inside each woman's soul. I have been blessed to see six of their eight productions. Count the Stars: The Journey of Avraham and Sara, is an original musical written by Sharon Katz and Avital Macales, with able musical and choral arrangement by Amit Ben Atar and Gayle Berman, respectively. The play is directed by Toby Klein Greenwald, and choreographed by Sara Orenstein.

Whether Avital Macales is playing a Jackie-Kennedy-esque Queen Esther or a spiritually connected Avraham Avinu, I believe her absolutely. She totally becomes her character. Her vocal command and range have always held me in thrall.

Photo credit: Natan Epstein

And who knew that my fellow blogger (Ima 2 Eight) and neighbor, Rachel Moore, also has such a believable stage presence, and such a wonderful voice?! Her Sarah complemented Avital's Avraham so completely, I felt myself crying with them over their childlessness, and laughing joyfully with them when the promise was finally fulfilled. It didn't matter that I know how the story comes out. Their heartfelt singing and acting made it real and fresh for me.

A real surprise was Chana Singer as Lot. I had fun with her, because even at intermission and immediately after the play, she stayed in character, sparkling with the fun of "being Lot." It was easy to believe she was a young prince of a famous desert family. This is her first performance with Raise Your Spirits, and I anticipate seeing her with the troupe in the future. She also created the poetically-drawn logo for the Count the Stars poster and tee shirt.

L-R: Eliezer, Lot, Sarai, Avram

Photo credit: Bati Katz

Some of the hallmarks of Raise Your Spirits productions are the graceful blend of pathos and humor, and of impossible but totally fun time warps. The irrepressible Sharon Katz as Avraham's servant Eliezer leads the talented pack in just the right amount of comic relief throughout the suspense and drama of the play.

Egyptian border guards take custody of Sarai

As our hearts are gripped by the fear the caftan-clad Israelites feel during desert famine, we are shifted to a comical scene of Western US sheriffs (complete with swaggers and cowboy hats and Texas accents) who crack us up as their Egyptian border guards spirit off Sarai to Pharoah.

The "Mesopotamian Idol" live TV show!

 The show is kicked off with a game show atmosphere that involves the play's audience in a typically silly game show audience warm-up... and later in the play, we are brought to hushed and emotional tension as Avraham bargains very believably and very humbly with Hashem over the lives of the people of Sdom.

How I wish I could tell you about the individual performances of each of these talented women and girls! There is so much to praise -- the direction, musical arrangement, dance choreography, costuming and makeup -- and so many individuals worthy of mention... Rather than risking leaving out a friend's name or failing to mention a particular person, I'll take the chicken's way out, and tell you that there was not a person on stage who let the audience down. All of these very talented ladies, young and older, worked together to make our spirits soar.

If you -- ladies only, of course -- have yet to treat yourself to a Raise Your Spirits production, I welcome you to make this the one. You deserve a special night out -- and the price of the ticket goes toward the very worthy cause of raising the spirits not only of those who have suffered from terrorist attacks, but for all of us -- in the audience and on the stage -- who need to focus on the joy of being part of Jewish history rather than on the headlines, if even for a short time.

Go to the website -- Raise Your Spirits -- to look into upcoming performances, and to buy tickets.

You can count on it: your evening or afternoon with these stars will be time well spent.

All photos not otherwise credited by Debra and Orlee Kodish.

Play synopsis (from the site):

A world of idol worship, cruelty, human sacrifice. A world of falsity and frightening superstition. A world saved by the goodness and beliefs of one man – Avraham.

Together with his life’s partner, Sara, Avraham introduced thoughts that shook the foundation of mankind – only One G-d ruled the universe, and He desired a world of goodness.

Ridiculed and threatened by those around them, Avraham and Sara never stopped providing the example of kindness, caring for others, hospitality and gratitude to the Creator.

The reward for their valiant willingness to go against the crowd in order to live lives of holiness – a son, Yitzchak, who would carry on the family’s tradition of loving-kindness; descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky; and a country, Eretz Yisrael, from which a future people will grow and serve as a Light Unto the Nations of the world.

In today’s turbulent times, we find strength and guidance from Avraham and Sara, as their lives give us the spiritual DNA we need to confront the trials of life and soar like stars to the heavens.

Ulpan Drama: Playing's the thing.

Yom chamishi, 1 Iyar 5771.

Two of my Raise Your Spirits heroines, Avital Macales and Yael Valier, are the talented Ulpan Drama instructors.

Let's see now...  A chance to work closely with two of my "stage idols"...  An opportunity to learn Hebrew in the form of play...   A once-a-week requirement to hang out with ladies I like.  That sounded like a great plan.  So I signed up for eight weeks of Ulpan Drama, yet another brainchild of Dena Lehrman of Efrat.

Dena opened her home for our Ulpan Drama session.

Dena is an occupational therapist who for the past five years has worked with teachers, students and their parents to improve organizational and learning skills.

 I was privileged to encounter Dena shortly after my family's aliyah.  She arranged for the talented Yaron Shane to teach our children a thing or two about film-making.  It was a great introduction for then-15-year-old Stunt Man to the world of Hebrew, and a pretty good outlet for his creative talents.

I asked Dena what inspired her to come up with the Ulpan Drama concept.

"The past two years I've been running a workshop getting students ready for high school," she said.  "We noticed that even [many of] the kids who had been in Israel for a while and 'spoke Hebrew'...had a weak vocabulary and had a hard time expressing themselves."

I asked her how she came up with the idea.  "I try to be an out-of-the-box thinker and approach students with my 'hands on' style as an OT. Ulpan Drama seemed like a natural offshoot.

"We started brainstorming about how we could use drama and role playing to facilitate Hebrew development. I thought of 'playback theater,' which really forces the participants to reinact real life situations. From all the research on language development, it seems that there is a greater chance to remember and file away new words more efficiently if they are learned in a real, experiential way. It also helps to decrease some of the stress and tension when learning by acting, as opposed to more traditional frontal learning."

 This sounded like a perfect venue for me to try to improve my Hebrew.  Even though I am terrified to be "on stage," I found this technique to be much more fun than it was threatening, mostly due to the small group size, the warmth and patience of the instructors, and the support of my fellow players.

Did we have fun, or what?!  Avital and Yael gave us many and varied opportunities to practice thinking on our feet in Hebrew during each session.

They would give us a tzena -- a scene -- to play out, with some key word or phrase that must be incorporated.  For example, two of us played trainees to a third's surgeon.  We learned many new words, and practiced inserting those we already knew into unlikely moments.  (How many times could one say "I've never done that before" in an inappropriate place during an autopsy to elicit laughter, especially when her partner kept asking "When do we eat?")

Another scene should have been perfectly ordinary: how to ask an exterminator to help rid the house of cockroaches and ants.  We learned many useful words -- but we also learned of a creative approach to natural extermination, as Heather had us doing a "La Kukarača" tap-dance to help her crush the little buggers...

Our teachers would give us objects to describe -- and none of us could resist offering completely new uses for household items.

Try describing your unique use for disposable plastic gloves in Hebrew.

Some of the ideas for using a towel were pretty creative -- and funny.

What you see as a rug beater became a fly-swatter for mutant flies, or a piece of jewelry, or...

If we didn't know the word for "fly-swatter" in Hebrew, our fearless leaders did, and taught us.  They gave us characters to portray, sometimes in scenes with others, sometimes with secret character traits for the others to guess at.

I didn't get pictures, but one of my favorite exercises caused me to end up doing a Broadway musical with Sandra.  We were quite smashing.  And ridiculous.  :-)

What an actress!  When Hannah Sara is sad, the whole world cries with her.

One of my deepest and most annoying roles was as "kinim" -- lice -- which were invited (?) to a Pesach Seder.  "Yecch!" was the classic review of my performance.  Score!!!

The body language delighted me as much as the dialog.

Yael and Avital asked us to describe objects or events so that the supportive audience -- hey, they were going to be "on stage" next! -- could guess.

Each time we learned new words, Avital or Yael would dutifully mark them on a whiteboard; and we would get an email with all of our new words, and their translations.

My pile of flashcards grew...

...and GREW...

...and GREW!  By the time the eight weeks ended, I really had learned a lot of words...  because I lived them.

These ladies were so talented, it did not surprise me to learn that most of them involve themselves in Raise Your Spirits, or in Dames of the Dance.  By the time our classes ended, I wanted everyone's autograph!

Dena sums up Ulpan Drama:  "Baruch Hashem it's been a wonderful experience both for the participants as well as for the three of us running the project. It's been great to see how the participants gained confidence and started to integrate new words into their everyday lives. As you know, it was also a lot of fun!"

Thanks Dena, Yael, and Avital.  Thanks Sandra and Heather and Meira and Hannah Sara and Shimona and Zahava.  I had a great time!

More sessions of Ulpan Drama are coming up or are in progress.  Contact Dena at 054 942 5600 or at tfosdena@gmail.com  for more information about classes with Yael and Avital for women and girls, or to register.

Yael Valier received her BA in Psychology from YU, and her MSW from Bryn Mawr's Clinical Social Work program. She has further professional training in grief counseling through Nechama Counseling. Yael has experience teaching stage skills, interview skills and public speaking to teenagers and adults. She acts with the Raise Your Spirits Theater, for whom she has also written, and has also acted with two Playback theater companies – the Hebrew-speaking Dance-Playback group Na'na for women, and the English-speaking Playback Hamra. Yael has enjoyed the challenge of translating songs from Hebrew to English for bilingual movies. She currently works in voice-overs and sells her educational science album on her website Tremendous Earth when she isn't working at her day-job doing background searches in patents. Yael has six sons who keep her amused.


Avital Macales studied Hebrew Language at Bar Ilan University and is currently completing an advanced editing course at Efrata College. She is an experienced actress and singer, including playing the lead role in Sandcastles, a feature film which was screened all over Israel in 2009. A resident of Efrat, Avital recently appeared in her third Raise Your Spirits production, Judge!, as the bold heroine Yael. Avital did her national service in Tehilla, the aliyah organization, helping English-speaking children acquire Hebrew in fun and creative ways. Avital made aliya from California when she was two years old. She has six sisters and therefore has a soft-spot for young girls, enjoying having fun with them and teaching them important skills painlessly through the things she does best.