The celebration was as innovative as its name.
To mark its 13th year, the Storahtelling education-theater project founded by Amichai Lau-Lavie held a “b mitzvah” ceremony recently at City Winery.
A “b mitzvah,” Lau-Lavie explained, is a “bar mitzvah, a bat mitzvah, a b mitzvah celebration for all genders.”
The night featured Jackie Hoffman (Broadway’s “The Addams Family”) doing a performance inspired by the biblical story of the rape of Dinah; a “Fright of Passion” comedy show; a silent auction; an interactive art project and the presentation of a century-old Torah scroll to Lau-Lavie. The sefer Torah, from Poland, survived the Holocaust and was repaired by a Lower East Side scribe.
“Just as this Torah scroll was reclaimed from the ashes and restored for use, so too will Storahtelling continue to reclaim and restore the words and stories of the Torah for a new generation,” said Lau-Lavie, a native of Israel who established Storahtelling in 1999 to make “ancient stories and traditions accessible for new generations.”
More than 400 people attended the event, which raised $150,000 for Storahtelling.
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