CUJF and CUJEF invite you to an evening of …
Purim Celebration!
Teen Musical Theater, Live Brazilian Music Concert and Group Line Dance!
Saturday, February 27 @ 7:00 pm
Add to the festive spirit of the event by wearing a costume, mask, fun hat or headdress. Prepare a glass of the Brazilian drink, Caipirinha, to enjoy during our celebration. Check out a Caipirinha recipe that uses vodka, and a non-alcoholic recipe that uses Ginger Ale.
Teen Purim Spiel
We will start our evening with the premiere of Purim, the Jewsical!, conceived, written, produced, and edited by four CU teenagers—Ilana and Leyla Cohen, Elise Ionin, and Maya Viswanathan—with support and guidance from musical theater director, instructor and owner of Class Act, Jacki Loewenstein. Through a series of Disney and American folk songs with adapted lyrics, a cast of 12 local teens will tell the story of Purim.
Live Brazilian Music Concert
We will continue our celebration with a live performance directly from the coastal town of Santos in Brazil by the band, Eu, Tu e Ela. Singer Letícia Caires and guitarist Gabriel Salgueiro will perform 6 songs by popular Brazilian music artists that talk about the people of the diaspora and immigrants around the world, the beauty and joy of life, hope, love, celebration and being free to be oneself. CUJF Program Coordinator and Brazilian native, Andréa Aguiar, will briefly introduce each song with a short biography of the song composer and a translation of the lyrics. See band video here.
Trio Eu, Tu & Ela, de Santos, SP — Foto: Divulgação
Group Line Dance
There is no Purim celebration without some joyful dancing. We will end our evening with a quick tutorial followed by a group performance of a fun (and easy to learn) line dance, Jerusalema (Jerusalem in the Zulu language), that has gone viral on the internet. It is the Macarena of the year of the pandemic, and groups of people across the world have joined the “Jerusalema Dance Challenge” by creating a video of their group performance and posting it on YouTube. Click here to see the dance video made by residents of Jerusalem, including the mayor of the city. Click here to see the song being performed by the creators Master KG and his sister, the singer Nomcebo.