CHICAGO HUMANITIES FESTIVAL

Jewish music encompasses practically every imaginable genre, from the symphonies of Leonard Bernstein to the Hebraic works of Ernest Bloch to the classics of George Gershwin.

But perhaps none of these idioms conveys quite the poignancy of Jewish cabaret music, which sang out during the final weekend of the Chicago Humanities Festival.

Songs of joy and sorrow, pain and reflection, prayer and consolation unfolded Saturday afternoon at the standing-room-only Chicago Sinai Congregation, on West Delaware Street. Most of the repertoire spanned the first half of the 20th Century, and much of it dealt with the impending doom of World War II and, of course, the Holocaust.

Though listeners often identify cabaret music with light entertainment, this performance by the New Budapest Orpheum Society — a superb Chicago ensemble — dug deeply into the soul of a culture. A few whimsical songs briefly relieved the concert’s dark emotional tone but, for the most part, the repertoire by Kurt Weill, Bertolt Brecht, Hanns Eisler and others traced the near-destruction of European Jewry.

In “Three Yiddish Songs” by Viktor Ullmann, singer Julia Bentley hauntingly gave voice to the ethereal, transcendent music written months before the composer was killed in Auschwitz. One of the songs features a protagonist who offers a gentle prayer to a birch tree. At song’s end, the protagonist whispers: “Dear little birch tree, please pray also for me.”

But the most imposing performer of the evening was singer Stewart Figa, an uncommonly imaginative interpreter who articulated a broad range of Jewish musical expression.

In Eisler and Kurt Tucholsky’s “Civic Charity,” Figa captured the biting tone of age-old Jewish political commentary. And Figa turned in the most tender performance of the set as he sang “In the Cheder,” in which a Jewish elder teaches Hebrew to a child. Figa’s gestures and vocal inflections added subtext to the simple lyrics: In this little scene, a fragile culture was passing from one generation to the next.

With illuminating commentary from ensemble artistic director Philip V. Bohlman, the New Budapest Orpheum Society gave voice to music that’s heard all too rarely.

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Monday, Nov. 6

BEOWULF

Harold Washington Library Center

“Beowulf” is probably the least appreciated great work of Western literature, and not without reason.

The dragon-slayer hero is flat and full of himself. The writing is convoluted and confusing. The story, set down in A.D. 1000, moves at a glacial pace.

When we learned that the Metro Theater Company was going to present a theatrical version of “Beowulf” as part of the Children’s Humanities Festival, we had to go, just to see how badly it would bomb.

The audience, about 200 junior high and high school students at the Harold Washington Library, giggled when the four actors in monochrome costumes began by tapping out elaborate rhythms with small sticks. But by the time Beowulf had to face down his nemesis, Grendel the monster, the kids were hooked by this athletic, austere and (mercifully) fast-moving “Beowulf,” and so were we.

“It made me like Beowulf better,” Deanna Vaughn, 16, said after the performance.

And that’s no small feat.

— Nara Schoenberg

Friday, Nov. 10

AZAR NAFISI

Women and Culture lecture

Northwestern University School of Law, Thorne Auditorium

Hers wasn’t a smooth jaunt from the hotel to the auditorium. On top of the driving rain and slashing wind Friday night, Nafisi’s taxi driver had a fender bender and told her to get out of the cab. “Maybe the gods are against me being here tonight,” she said arriving a little late for her talk on curiosity and the imagination.

Curiosity helps us “gain empathy toward others,” said the Iranian-born Nafisi, author of the best-selling memoir “Reading Lolita in Tehran.”

Going on to lament the decline of humanities and liberal arts, Nafisi evoked the tale of Scheherazade, whose subversive imagination proved life saving. Imagination, she said, should be “a branch of knowledge” because it helps people interpret and relate to the world.

With time running down, Nafisi acknowledged her “captive audience,” then she asked, “How much time do I have?” “As much as you want,” they shouted back. She gave the rapt, rain-soaked crowd 20 minutes more.

— Cassandra West

Saturday, Nov. 11

PATRICIA NELSON LIMERICK

Baskes Lectureship in History

Newberry Library

In honor of Billy the Kid, races are held in New Mexico in which participants lug tombstones. In Pleasant Valley, Ariz., parades are held to commemorate the bloody Graham-Tewksbury feud. “How is it,” asked Nelson Limerick, “that some very brutal episodes of projectiles entering the bodies of humans get to be so fun?”

The University of Colorado professor and author observed our tendency to romanticize the depraved and homicidal.

As a scholar and as a recent widow, Limerick said she had no truck with trivializing death. Yet she enlivened her account of one deadly range war with witty asides. Her conclusion is that “a human population shaken by the prospect of death does what it can to get away from it, and popularizing feuds is one way.”

–Charles Storch

MAY BARENBAUM

Six-Legged Chemists

Loyola University, Rubloff Auditorium

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“It still amazes me that people want to hear about bugs,” said Berenbaum, head of the Department of Entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, when she stepped before a packed audience. But with the charming and funny Berenbaum at the podium, it was pure entertainment to hear how insects, “who can’t really rely on their keen intellects,” make a go of life here on Earth because “they believe in better living through chemistry.” Which is to say: They sting, stink and burn in order to stay alive.

Even when she was relaying material a bit too esoterically entomological for the layman, Berenbaum managed to blend colloquial language and comic timing worthy of Woody Allen during his stand-up days to get her message across: Her spiel about the downside of Spanish Fly as an aphrodisiac absolutely killed .

— Emily Nunn

BRIAN SCASSELLATI

Meet “Nico”

Loyola University, Rubloff Auditorium

What’s going on in the world of robotics? Yale computer science professor Scassellati gave the audience a taste, with trade-show videos of one humanoid robot playing “When You Wish Upon a Star” on the trumpet and another running gracefully across a room. Very impressive.

“But how smart are they?” he asked.”Not so smart.” But while you probably won’t be hiring a robot nanny anytime soon, Scasselatti pointed out how humanoid robots can be used to examine the way real people grow and learn. Especially his bot Kismet, which recognizes social cues and makes a face that will break your heart if you yell at it in a harsh manner. (“It’s hard to get people to be mean to a robot” after that, he added.)

— E.N.

Sunday, Nov. 12

ALMA GUILLERMOPRIETO

On Pointe

Loyola University, Rubloff Auditorium

Dance and war have much in common, said Guillermoprieto, a professional dancer who went on to make her name as a journalist covering civil wars. “Both are extremely intense experiences,” she said. “You can’t be sort of a dancer, and you can’t sort of be in a war. You can’t say I’ll just take a little bit of this bomb.”

Now a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, Guillermoprieto said, “I’ve spent a good deal of my life trying to understand violence, and aware always that violence is something that happens to a body. My experience was of [seeing] a shattered body. It’s very hard to forget that when you see how fragile and vulnerable the human body is.”

–Patrick T. Reardon

ROBERT EDSEL

Is Art Worth a Life?

Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies

In what Edsel described as “the greatest treasure hunt ever in history,” a small but select crew of art historians and archivists spent World War II working to recover great art stolen by Adolf Hitler and his Nazis.

These art detectives were “soldiers for beauty” who, in the midst of the fighting, sought to track down “more than a trillion dollars in art and cultural items,” said Edsel whose recently published book “Rescuing Da Vinci” chronicles the story. Two of them lost their lives in the effort, which recovered such masterworks as “La Primavera” by Botticelli and “Lady with the Ermine” by Da Vinci.

–P.T.R.

GEN. WESLEY CLARK and SAMANTHA POWER

Northwestern University School of Law, Thorne Auditorium

Following the Democratic Party victory in last week’s midterm elections, hearing Pulitzer Prize-winning author Power and retired Gen. Clark (above) felt more like a political rally than a dialogue on issues.

“You should be president,” a man shouted shortly after Clark, a candidate in the 2004 Democratic presidential primary, walked on the stage.

Power’s interview of Clark was a showcase for the views of the former NATO commander on topics ranging from the Democratic Party’s new power to U.S. policy in Iraq.

Power, a Harvard professor and author of “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide,” graciously ceded the spotlight to Clark, whom she first interviewed during the Balkan Conflict.

The Democrats can do but so much about Iraq and other issues without control of the executive branch, Clark cautioned.

“It’s got to be finished in 2008 at the [presidential] election,” he said. He then added, “I don’t mean to sound partisan.”

— Susan Richardson

CHICAGOANS IN CONFLICT

Chicago History Museum

Is “Chicago” another word for “conflict”? Perhaps.

Historian James Green told the crowd of 200 that he called his book about the Haymarket bomb — which killed eight policemen in 1886 and resulted in the execution of four anarchists — “A Story of Chicago” because “there’s something about Chicago that means conflict.”

The session, featuring other historians as well, dealt with three major battles in the city’s history: Haymarket, the 1919 Race Riot and “Council Wars” when whites on the City Council blocked Harold Washington, the first black mayor, from carrying out his programs.

Loyola history professor Christopher Manning argued that the 1919 race riot paralleled battles then being waged between white ethnic groups, such as Jews and Poles in the Douglas Park neighborhood. By the 1980s, however, whites tended to identify themselves by race first and then by ethnicity.

Manning also noted a historical irony: Although it was whites who rioted in 1919, authorities identified African Americans as the problem, spending years preparing a 600-page report on “The Negro in Chicago.”

–P.T.R.