Scorpio 2017

Oh, about October 21 or 22, the vast majority of the populace's focus start to look at year end. In a little more than two months come the holidays of Christmas and the New Year. In most years Hanukah is also a part of this. For a subset of the populace, however, the focus has a little closer time frame and this focus is much more intense: it's the time of the year for Scorpios. In this montage of pictures we have several found on the internet. This includes a very negative comment about who scorpios should socialize with which is not very nice although possibly accurate. The first of the pictures shows the star alignment that is the basis of all this. Notice that the up and down movement of the stars is represented by an type of capital M in the astrology charts and and this evolved into an image of the scorpion, which is a spider relative.

Of course for one individual, this time of year means one thing. It's about time to run the homage to scorpios events that take place around the various venues of the Philadelphia regional Israeli dance sessions. For several years one of our editors, Marc Rauer, has been doing this. Around the middle of October he takes a look at the calendar, especially when Thanksgiving is set to arrive, and decides which session(s) to run these annual events. For this year he selected the Germantown Sunday morning class and the Monday night Beth Sholom class. The question then involved dates. Beth Sholom generally runs its monthly birthday on the third Monday of the month - this would be Nov 20th in 2017. Germantown would be a bit more difficult to resolve as explaned next. The pictures here show a homage to scorpios event in November 2011 at Beth Sholom.

In late October Grant had indicated to Marc that Grant might not be available for the Nov 12th class. Generally, Marc handles the Germantown session when Grant is not available. In addition, Sharon Schanzer was preparing another lecture delving into the lyrics of some popular Israeli dances. This also involves Marc as he sets up the powerpoint presentation for Sharon's lecture. Throw in the fact that over the last year Germantown had instituted a new policy that any event requiring food which is not officially catered would have to be held in the canteen room which is in the basement of the facility. An added feature of the canteen room is that it contains a screen and the necessary hookups for a projector/audio display. It turned out that the canteen room was only available on the 12th for the month of November. We have been told that Marc decided to stage these three events that day: handling the class, setting up the homage to scorpio event and preparing the projector for Sharon's lecture to be run directly after the class. This montage shows Sharon as she was preparing for her lecture at home earlier in November.

Let's stay on the subject of Sharon's preparation for her lecture. This would be the second time she would be doing this at Germantown. The previous May Sharon picked two compositions of Shaike Paikov, a prolific Israeli song writer. The dances in question that day had underlying patriotic themes. For this lecture, Sharon decided to delve into two other dances with what she thought would be religious themes. To this end she chose Kol Nederai and Ani Ma'amim. These two dances, choreographed by Avner Naim and Shmulik Gov Ari repectively (shown in this montage), are Israeli dance staples having been choreographed 25 and 30 years ago and still frequently played. Similar to what happened in May - to get this to a presentation level - Sharon huddles with the aforementioned Marc Rauer to create a powerpoint slide show. Marc has some experience in powerpoint having taught this and the other Microsoft apps in various colleges over the last few years. Eventually this slide show would be put on this web site as well as presented by Sharon during the afternoon of Nov 12, after the morning dance session.

In preping for Nov 12th, Marc has some other things to do. Generally, whenever he arranges the food for the homage to scorpio event at a venue, he brings some documentation. Last year the scorpio documentation included various poems and essays about scorpios and their personalities. For this year, as we understand it, Marc decided to provide some bios of scorpios either famous in society or somewhat famous in the world of Israeli dance in the Philadelphia region. This personage includes both Sharon and Marc who are scorpios. Two other scorpios in this dance world are Ellen Weber and Eli Surkis. Marc prepares a scorpio questionaire, shown in this montage, for all four.

With the answers to his questionaire in hand, as is his research on the internet, Marc creates the document that you can see by [clicking here]

Robert F. Kennedy born Nov 20, 1925

RFK was the brother of John F Kennedy who was president of the United States from Jan 20,1961 until Nov 22, 1963.

RFK had followed his brother into government work during the 1950’s after serving in the Navy during World War II. He served as assistant counsel on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations chaired by Joseph McCarthy.

It was while Kennedy was on this committee that he was introduced to Roy Cohn, another lawyer. Cohn would later prove to be one of the most interesting personalities during the seventies and eighties (he died in 1986) where he represented a host of mafiosas, the publisher Rupert Murdoch and even the builder Donald Trump.

Kennedy successfully ran his brother’s campaign for the presidency in 1960 and became the Attorney General in the Kennedy administration. With his brother’s assassination, Kennedy ran for the Senate from New York in 1964, taking office early in January 1965.

In 1968, when Lyndon Johnson decided not to run for a second term, Kennedy jumped into the Presidential race. His fate was similar to his brother - being assassinated in Los Angeles, after winning the California democratic primary.

He is buried near his brother in Arlington National ceremony.

Marc Rauer Sign:Scorpio

Born in South Philadelphia

Occupation:The least successful consultant in the country

Most significant Achievement: There are two: (1) Being bitten by the owner’s dog while consulting for the owner in Atlantic City(2)Being called as both a plaintiff and defense witness on a project that never went to fruition. Luckily, the case was thrown out of court.

Most significant Israeli dance achievement: Bringing the Homage to Scorpio festivities to Israeli dance venues

Meg Ryan born Nov 19, 1961

For many baby boomers, Meg Ryan, born Margaret Mary Emily Anne Hyra, was America’s sweetheart, at least as far as film is concerned.

Starting in 1981, Ryan appeared in low level roles until 1987’s Inner Space where she had the female lead in the movie. This was also the movie that introduced her to Dennis Quaid whom she would later marry (and divorce).

Her breakout movie was the famous “When Harry met Sally” and she is still famous for her “orgasm” scene in a New York Deli.

Ryan starred in many chick lit adaptations during the 90’s including two with Tom Hanks – Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve got mail – and became associated in the public’s mind with Nora Ephron written and directed movies.

Now in her late 50’s Ryan is not as involved in acting as she was at the beginning of her career although in 2015 she starred in her own directed movie, Ithaca.

Eli Surkis sign:scorpio

Born in Haifa, Israel

Occupation: Self Employed

Most exciting achievement:Being able to attend Israeli dancing on a weekly basis

Claude Monet born Nov 14, 1840

It is rare where someone does something and that something creates the name of the act or art in this case. But, in the case of Claude Monet, his piece of artwork, Impression, soleil levant (Impression, Sunrise), displayed in 1874 and pictured here to the left, gave the term Impressionism to a genre of painting.

Given to art all during his lifetime, Monet served in the French army and was stationed in Algeria. It was there that he started his art career, awed by the color of Africa, although none of his paintings from that time survive.

Monet was mustered out of the army after a year because of illness and returned to Paris where he formally enrolled in an art curriculum where one of his fellow students was Renoir.

Around this time Monet met an art model, Camille Doncieux, who became the subject of many of his paintings and his wife until she died in 1879. In fact, his first famous work of art, the woman in the green dress, featured Camille.

At the time that he met this woman, Monet was getting a stipend from his family to survive as an artist. For some reason his family rejected her and their subsequent marriage – which included children - stopped the flow of this money. The result was extreme poverty and there were many times that they lacked food and even worse from Monet’s standpoint, paint. Being a part of a new style of painting certainly was not a financial plum and it is reported that Monet attempted suicide during this period of extreme poverty.

But an art exhibit in 1874, the first impressionist exhibit in the world, was the breakthrough that Monet, and the other impressionist painters, needed to secure their place in art history. The impressionist paintings, including Monet’s, began to sell and his financial position through his fame was secured from that point in time.

Ellen Weber sign Scorpio

Born in Philadelphia

Occupation: Retired Teacher

Most exciting achievement: Becoming president of my Hadassah group

Most exciting achievement pertaining to Israeli dance: Dancing with many of the famous Israeli dance choreographers and demonstrating dances with them

Grace Kelly born Nov 12, 1929

What can you say about Grace Kelly? Not even local girl makes good. Perhaps you could try: Local girl makes great, but even that is far too low level.

Born into the Kelly family, Grace’s father was a US Olympian, successful businessman and community leader. One uncle was in show business while another uncle was an award winning playwright and author. Her brother would also be an Olympian and eventually a Philadelphia council member.

She showed a passion for the performing arts as a pre-teen and was a part/time model by age 12. Of course, a little luck was involved to turn her into a mega movie star: she was doing theater in New York by 1950 when the golden age of live TV drama, based in New York, was at its hey-day and came calling. Kelly was to perform in 50 or so live TV presentations over the years and became well known through these productions.

By this point, the early 50’s, she became active in movies. Although her movie career would extend only to 1956, she starred in 3 Alfred Hitchcock thrillers. Yet it was a movie early in her career that set the stage for her fame. This was the making of High Noon where she was the female lead to Gary Cooper. This tale of ethical and moral choice in a western setting struck a chord with US audiences and the world’s population which had gone through a highly immoral period of human history.

In spite of this movie stardom, Kelly’s most important role would not arise until 1956. At the age of 26 she was wooed by the heir to the crown of a small enclosed fiefdom on the coast of France, to be his wife and thus the Princess of Monaco. With the marriage this East Falls native moved from the production stage onto the world stage using the same Grace (if you’ll excuse the pun) she showed when a student at Germantown’s Stevens School (which closed in 1982).

Sharon Schanzer sign:Scorpio

Born in Philadelphia

Education :B.A., M.Ed. Ph.D., B.H.L.

Occupation:retired psychologist, Jewish educator

Most exciting achievement: Making a bar mitzva for a young man with paraplegia and no speech.

Most exciting achievement pertaining to Israeli dance: presentations about the Hebrew words in Israeli dances.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky born Nov 11, 1821

The 19th century (1800’s) was a highlight of Russian literature and Dostoyevsky was one of the major Russian writers of that period. Perhaps it was the extremes of

Russian society – very wealthy aristocrats amid a sea of semi slaves and peons – that brought it about, but Dostoyevsky, although distinctly related to Russian nobility, was one of several well-to-do writers attracted to socialism. In his case, this led to his arrest and commitment to the Russian Gulag.

Although he had already published several works before his imprisonment – poor folks, his first novel, was the best known at that time – Dostoevsky best work’s would come after his release in 1854.

As an example, 1866 would see the publishing of Crime and Punishment and the Gambler. The Gambler dealt with a gambling addiction, something with which he was personally familiar. In addition, after 1962, Dostoevsky made frequent trips throughout Western Europe.

Things came full circle by 1876 as he reestablished himself in Russia and was on his second marriage. By now he was relatively famous as a writer and he was summoned to the court of Tsar Alexander and hired to be the tutor of the Tsar’s sons. This must have been bittersweet – returning to the nobility and on his own terms – but this was coincident with the onset of declining health, which would see him die in 1881.

Carl Sagan born on November 9, 1934

While there are billions and billions of stars, millions and millions of people, there was only one Carl Sagan. Through his TV series (and accompanying book) Cosmos, Sagan single handedly encouraged a new generation of astronomers.

Sagan attended the University of Chicago, starting the school at age 16 given his expertise in high school subjects. At the time that he first attended, 1950, the school still basked in the aura of the research done at its labs for the Manhattan project of the early 40’s. Many of the prominent scientists in Los Alamos were tenured professors in Chicago post war and Sagan made the company of many of them. For 10 years until 1960, Sagan acquired degree after degree culminating with a PHD from the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics with his thesis on “Physical Studies of Planets”.

After working with Nasa and Rand, Sagan secured an Assistant Professorship at Harvard where he lectured until 1968. In 1968, being denied tenure at Harvard, he moved to Cornell University where he would remain until his death in 1996.

In 1980 Sagan created a 13 episode series for PBS discussing the “Cosmos”. This may have been the most watched (and re-watched) show in PBS history and certainly impelled many younger viewers into the study of the skies and astronomy.

Marie Curie born Nov 7, 1867

If ever asked who was the first woman to do something, assuming the something is not a feat of politics or athleticism, you can’t go wrong answering Marie Curie. Curie is the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and is probably the first person to win two Nobels in a lifetime, one for physics and the other for chemistry.

Besides her researching, Curie entered the world of academia becoming the first woman to teach at the University of Paris. Curie created two Curie institutes, one in Paris and the other in Warsaw. During World War I she volunteered to drive a portable xray machine to the front lines to help disgnose the casualties of war.

Marie Sklodowski was raised in Poland and surreptitiously schooled. Later at age 24 she went to Paris where she received her formal education. Tutoring at night, taking multiple courses in multiple subjects during the day, she received several degrees in the next few years. Looking for a place to do her advanced research, an acquaintance introduced her to Pierre Curie who made room for her in his small and increasingly congested lab. Both had a passion for their research projects and that passion quickly encompassed both romantically. In 1895 they were married and Marie now had both a husband and research partner.

This union came at the same time that the scientific world was discovering and studying x rays. She decided to study the properties of uranium in x rays for her doctoral thesis. In studying uranium she concluded that atoms were divisible - probably made up of other components. This assumption led the couple into many paths of research but, unknown to them, into dangerous conditions that would considerably shorten at least her life.

At the end of 1903 the Nobel committee on Physics awarded Pierre Curie, Marie Curie, and Henri Becquerel a nobel prize for their work in the study of Uranium and radiation. The couple continued their collaborative research until Pierre was killed accidently by a horse drawn carriage in 1906. To honor Pierre, the Universary Of Paris, where Pierre was a professor, hired Marie to fill Pierre’s chair. In addition, the University made a modern lab available to her for continuing research.

This continued research led to the discovery of radium and this in turn led to her second Nobel prize – awarded only to her – in 1911 for radium’s discovery.

To prepare for leading the class in Grant's absense, Marc also takes pictures of the dances played in the weeks before. Germantown - when Grant is leading the schedule - writes the dances down on a board as they are played. So, one can get a feel for the selections played by taking a photo of this board at the end of the session. These pictures also include two of the dancers, Lillian at the left and Susan at the right, who lingered in the Marcus auditorium one Sunday late in October.

While the other Israeli dancers may not know this, Marc also studies a Cuban dance form - a form of Salsa - called Rueda, So he's very appreciative of Israeli dance music having a latin flair. We mention this as it probably is a factor in his choice of music (and the corresponding dance) to teach to the Germantown dance session that morning when he is in charge. Marc remembered a latiny dance that Don sometimes plays at his session. With quite bit of research - given his lack of knowledge of Hebrew - Marc determined this dance to be Hachayim Haacherim sung by Lea(h) Lupatin who is the artist featured in another favorite of Germantown, Hakol Patuach. We've taken the liberty of finding a performance of this dance on YouTube. What you are viewing in this montage is {https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGZw_ohIrcg|this dance being done by a Czech group.|this dance being done on a beach in Israel.} Note: To see this move your cursor over the picture and click on the big arrow to start the video.

Marc even got to the point of setting up a perspective repertoire to play that morning as shown here. Of course, anyone who is familiar with the Germantown session - not to mention any Israeli dance session - knows that things change as the dancing occurs as different people request different dances. Germantown, through Grant's weekly efforts, attempts to satisfy these requests. In addition, Marc tries to play the favorites of those he knows who show up that session.

However, the question of whether all of this could be done on Nov 12th was still up in the air. However, by Nov 5th - the Sunday before Nov 12th - it was clear that Sharon's part of the program was solved, the question of what dance to teach had been found and Marc had resolved to do the shopping needed for the annual Homage to Scorpio on the Friday and Saturday prior to the chosen daate. All was ready and several other dancers indicated a willingness to help. Ellen volunteered to buy a cake given that the 12th was her actual birthday and this would be a great boost to the festivities. And, Lee Friedman later in that week volunteered to bring smoked whitefish salad. We present in this montage the Email exchange with Grant giving the final oks including the request of a projector and coffee.

It is now the morning of Nov 12th, 2017. The Germantown session is scheduled to start at 10AM in the Temin canteen room. But there is a lot of prep work to do so marc arrives a little before 9AM. At first he tends to the equipment. He will use 2 ipods, one PC and three bosh amplifiers. This and for this session the dances will not be recorded. This montage shows the equipment on a table positioned halfway down the room.

Earlier in the morning, Marc had visited his local Panera's bakery to buy a dozen and a half of different types of bagels. Armed with these items and several containers of different types of creme cheese, an offering of bagels were created in a corner of the room.

The usual homage to scorpio menu items were also laid out in two parts. Next to where the coffee urn would be placed, a variety of cookies were place in serving bowls. The coffee eventually was set up by the facility's staff somewhat at the time that the dancing commenced. Here the leftmost picture shows the ice water container on the same table as the cookies.

A tradition of the homage to scorpio events is the ice creams and toppings presentation. This was also included as you can see here. In addition, the documentation indicated above pertaining to prominent scorpios, both internationally and in the local dance community, is prominently displayed.

About 10:15 Lee Friedman arrived with the whitefish salad which she bought at a Deli in the Northeast. This montage shows the full compliment of one of the tables: the ice cream and toppings, the bagels and the whitefish salad.

Somewhat later Ellen arrived with the cake. It would be later that the cake was meted out to the dancers but here are a few pictures once the ckae was positioned close to the coffee.

Marc tels us that he was too busy to take photos until around 11:50 when Ellen reminded him about cutting the cake. With the dancing stopped for a moment, the session celebrated the Homage to Scorpio event at the Germantown Jewish centre with a rendition of "Happy Birthsday, scorpios". Finally, Marc was able to get someone to take some pictures of this celebration as you can see.

With the camera back in hand, Marc managed to snap these shots of the dancers enjoying the foods and camaraderie. These types of celebrations no doubt are good for the morale and we know that Marc likes to initiate these "homage to Scorpio" events. We would find out later that Marc would attempt to duplicate this a week and a half late at Beth Sholom on Nov 20th but that's a tale for another script.

Soon it was time to continue the session. A Germantown favorite, Katonti, was played to get everyone back into the swing of things. A video was taken to show the participants in that dance. These two pictures are stills taken from the video at the start and the end of the video.

And here's the full video (some browsers will need you to move your cursor over the still picture to see the controls to start the video). The camera was turned on a few seconds after the music started. You can count the number of dancers in attendance about 12 when this picture was taken and this is 21 or 22. It leads Marc to believe that the high in attendance that morning was 25 but Marc did not have a chance to do an official count as he normally does.

Given that Sharon was ready to start her lecture, the session ended somewhat prematurely at 12:18. The next 15 minutes involved setting up the table and chairs; dropping down the screen and connecting the equipment which proved harder than originally thought. But, by 12:40 everything was ready. And, everything has been readied on in this script. You can see the powerpoint presentation as placed on this website by clicking here. This presentation includes audio of the songs that are being studied. You can also [click here] to display the slides as images immediately below .

By 12:45 or so, Sharon (and the equipment) is ready to go. A little history on this. Sometime in early 2017, Sharon Schanzer thought it would be a good idea to give a seminar on the meaning of the lyrics of specific Israeli dances. At Germantown many of the dancers do not know Hebrew and even those who are fluent may not understand the full nuance in the meaning of the words. Sharon is in a good position to help those in this position. She has an educational background both in teaching - with the School district of Philadelphia - and an administrative background - with the Delaware County Intermediate Unit. Sharon has been visiting Israel on extended vacations for many years - recently she came back from her seventeenth visit to that country - and has been studying Hebrew in a scholarly fashion - studying etymology which is the study of the roots of hebrew words. We denote this by the pictures in this montage of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda considered as one of the fathers of modern Hebrew.

Getting the OK from Tamar - the administrative leader of Germantown - Sharon's first seminar, in front of 17 dancers, was given on May 21, 2017 after that morning's dance session. Since she felt that the lecture would be better received with some audio visual aid, she enlisted Marc to put together the slide show. This first seminar's slide show is available to readers of thie web site by clicking here. This montage shows the first slide

For her second lecture as mentioned Sharon decided to concentrate on songs that she felt had religious meaning, perhaps prayers. Just from the context of the song's names - Kol Nederai (all my vows) and Ani Ma'amim (I believe) - she believed these songs to be of some religious nature. Sharon uses various sources of information including www.hebrewsongs.com. But, as she looked at the lyrics she found there was some surprises especially in one of these songs and these surprises formed part of the basis of her lecture. She explained this as a prelude once the equipment was operating. This montage contains pictures that we understand to be of the lecture as it started. Besides Sharon and Marc, fifteen others attended.

The lecture went to approx 1:45, about an hour. The two songs were discussed and both were played to give the attendees a context that they were familiar with - dancing to the music. Some high points: (1) Finding out that Kol Nederai is the music that was alluded to before as this is not a prayer (as Sharon and other dancers) thought but a type of love song by a male bemoaning the breakup of a relationship; (2) discussion of Maimonides whose 12th article of faith is the basis of Ani Ma'amim;(3) that Aramaic was the collequial language of the Jewish people as Hebrew was the language of prayer (similar to how Latin is used today in Catholicism) (4)and that in 1948 as Israel was being established that German was in the running with Hebrew to be the official language of Israel. This picture shows Sharon and the attendees near the end of the lecture.