Can a postcard begin a revolution?
If you’re Vavi Toran, who directs the Israel Center’s cultural and educational resource department, the answer is simply, yes.
During the frenzy of the dot-com days, the S.F.-based center decided to throw a party celebrating Israeli Independence Day at the hip (and now defunct) Paradise Lounge on San Francisco’s Folsom Street. The organizers created a postcard for the event with an uber-cool, cutting-edge design. Before the event, they surveyed the club, figuring out how to make it seem like a smaller, more intimate space — not realizing that 1,300 young people would show up for the event.
“It was a revolution. Nobody in the Jewish community [at the time] presented events in a modern and contemporary way,” recalls Toran.
For nine years, Toran has been soliciting Israeli talent — from actress Naomi Ackerman to hip-hop group Hadag Nahash to professor and poet Zali Gurevitch — to pay the Bay Area a visit while planning social events, educational awareness and exhibitions.
Born into a bohemian Tel Aviv family, Toran had a background as a Jewish educator and education in the arts and graphic design. Those skills landed her in the dual role of both directing programming at the Israel Center and designing eye-catching promotional materials to engage the diverse interests of the Jewish community.
“We were not afraid to embrace the complexity of Israel,” explains Toran about her approach in assembling programs. “Embracement of complexity is a gateway to explore and enjoy and understand what Israel has to offer.”
Toran says the Israel Center does not shy away from controversy in its art programming, and it often receives angry phone calls and e-mails from “both sides of the political spectrum.”
“I come from a position that if you do not raise eyebrows, then you’re not doing your job,” she said.
When preparing a program, quality is Toran’s foremost priority. “First of all they have to be good, regardless whether they are the right ambassadors. They have to have substance and integrity.”
And then Toran and her colleagues think carefully about who is the target audience, from college students who might connect with the musical language of a Israeli hip-hop band like Subliminal and the Shadow to an elder audience who might enjoy the sentimentality of traditional music or the perspective of an academic, such as Larry Abramson.
With the second intifada, which began in 2000, the center began to pick up on what Toran calls a “crisis of Israeli education” in the Bay Area.
“The lack of travel to Israel, teen travel to Israel, had stopped. No trips were going from Bay Area.”
Center officials realized that a whole generation was developing who had never been to Israel, one of many factors that brought education about the Jewish state to the forefront of the agenda. “As a community, we had to do something,” she said.
One of many solutions was to create coalitions with other organizations such as the S.F.-based Bureau of Jewish Education and the Jewish Agency for Israel. The center brought in another staff member to assist Toran with the “culture” part of her job, in order for her to focus on education. They also began to provide professional development for teachers.
The goal, Toran explains, is to bring a “lifelong learning of Israel” to the Bay Area.
Upcoming events co-sponsored by the Israel Center include:
Yisrael Borochov’s East-West Ensemble perform “Hidden Spirituals: Sacred Songs from Jewish Mystic Sources” at 8 p.m. Wednesday, March 16, at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, 3200 California St. Information: (415) 292-1233.
Classical pianists Emanuel Ax and Yefim Bronfman perform at 8 p.m., Saturday, March 26 at Zellerbach Hall, U.C. Berkeley campus. Information: (510) 642-9988.
“Coexistence,” a traveling exhibit of posters from Jerusalem’s Museum on the Seam, will be on display May 1 through June 1 at Osher Marin Jewish Community Center, 200 N. San Pedro Road, San Rafael. Information (415) 444-8000.