Sephardic Stories with Elizabeth Graver, Michael Frank, Maira Kalman, and Shoshana Bean - In Person

Elizabeth Graver and Michael Frank come together for a special conversation about two books that capture the stories of two shapeshifting Sephardic women who lived many lives over many decades. Graver’s novel Kantika (“song” in Ladino) draws a fictionalized portrait of her grandmother Rebecca Cohen, daughter of the Sephardic elite of early twentieth-century Istanbul, whose journey took her to Cuba, Spain, and New York. Michael Frank’s One Hundred Saturdays: Stella Levi and the Search for a Lost World depicts Frank’s six-year-long encounter with Stella Levi, who was born and came of age in the Juderia of Rhodes, Greece. Levi was deported to Auschwitz, along with the rest of her community, in July of 1944. Both Rebecca and Stella—fierce, creative, and vibrant—came to create new lives for themselves in America.   

Maira Kalman, who illustrated One Hundred Saturdays, will join in the conversation. The evening will also include a performance of Sephardic music by singer Shoshana Bean with guitarist Dan Nadel. 

Doors open at 6:30 PM. The Museum is free and open to all on Thursdays from 4:00 to 8:00 PM with Jewish and Russian fare on offer from LOX Cafe. Currently on view: The Holocaust: What Hate Can Do, Survivors: Faces of Life After the Holocaust, and Andy Goldsworthy’s Garden of Stones.