Lazarre Seymour Simckes
Encyclopedia
Lazarre Seymour Simckes is an award-winning playwright, novelist, educator, Hebrew
-English translator, and psychotherapist. He has developed approaches to the use of creative writing in areas including prison therapy and cross-cultural communication between students in the Middle East
.
s (including his father Herbert Isaac Simckes, grandfather Mnachem Risikoff
and great-grandfather Zvi Yosef Resnick
), was born in Saratoga Springs, New York
, and raised in Boston
, Massachusetts
. He is a graduate of Harvard College
(Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa), Stanford University
(Wallace Stegner Writing Fellow, M.A.), and Harvard University
(Ph.D.).. He has taught at colleges and universities throughout the United States including Harvard, Yale
, Williams
, Vassar
, Brandeis
and Tufts
, as well as at Bar-Ilan and the University of Haifa
in Israel
. He has also conducted live, interactive writing workshops via satellite linking middle school and high school students across the country, including the Virgin Islands
. During his Fulbright year at the University of Haifa, he conducted a similar workshop linking Israeli Arab and Jewish high school students with their counterparts in America ("Celebrating Differences").
. Clive Barnes called it "spiky, yet intensely moving. A 'Fiddler on the Roof
' without music, but with blood. Unique, wild, funny. It still haunts me." He wrote the off-off-Broadway play "Ten Best Martyrs of the Year," a Theater for the New City
(TNC) production directed by Crystal Field, about the ten rabbis who were tortured to death in Rome for supporting the revolt led by Bar Kokhbah
. in 2nd century Palestine. Simckes said of that play, “I tend to make tragic comment in a mixture of styles. So what did I do? I wrote a play as if as if through the eyes of Hadrian, the Roman emperor, watching the genocide of the Jews from his balcony.” The play was reviewed by Michael Smith in the Village Voice as "timeless, mythic, enlivened by all kinds of stylistic intrusions and an almost hysterical inventiveness."
Another of his off-off-Broadway productions, "Nossig's Antics," also a TNC production directed by Crystal Field, focuses on the character of Alfred Nossig, who was accused of collaborating with Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto
, and executed in 1943, just before his 80th birthday, by a Jewish fighters organization. The critic Richard McBee called "a riveting puzzle," and it has also been described as a "dark farce" and an "absurd exploration of history and the horrific times we live in."
His other plays include "Minutes," a fictional encounter between Sigmund Freud
and Gustav Mahler
; "Soldier Boys" about Czar Nicholas
's 1827 edict to recruit Jews into the Russian army for the first time, including children as Cadets; and "Open Rehearsal," chosen by Edward Albee
as first runner-up in the inaugural 2006-2007 Yale Drama Series Competition, He also wrote the screenplay for Sydney Lumet's movie version of The Last Temptation of Christ
, which has not yet been produced.
," "The Chocolate Deal," and "Commander of the Exodus." He also translated Nava Semel's children's book, "Becoming Gershona," about a twelve-year old girl in 1958 Tel Aviv
.
In addition to Hebrew, Simckes is fluent in Yiddish, and according to the director of the film "Kvetch," Simckes was one of the inspirations for the movie, and also appeared in it.
s.
An article in "The Israeli Fulbrighter" notes that Simckes found a "dual vocation as a writer and healer." After studying at the Kantor Family Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he began using brief writing assignments with patients in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, to help them deal with their problems. He continued working on this idea and eventually launched writing worships in community centers, "attempting to foster literacy, empathy, listening skills, insight, respect, and resolution of conflict." He believes writing exercises are especially effective because "they serve to highlight the problem in a way that it can be dealt with."
Among his initiatives were a creative writing seminar, "The Mirror of Fiction", and a two-way live interactive video workshop, "Celebrating Differences", broadcast on February 27, 1996. The live interactive TV seminar linked American high school students in the United States with Jewish and Arab students (both Israeli and Palestinian) in Israel. "He created a live bridge and prompted the participants to share their experiences on handling differences," helping the students gain new insights about one another.
To prepare for the Israeli video program, broadcast through the Massachusetts Corporation for Educational Telecommunications, Simckes made frequent visits to Nazareth
, Beit Hagefen, and Jish
to find students who were comfortable with writing spontaneously, and sharing their writing on the air—and prepared to listen, not just "to yell at each other."
Simckes has strong feelings about the use of English in workshops that involve both Israeli and Palestinians, because it is a "bridge language" and a "diffuser of power" in a political sense, interrupting "the implication of power through language."
He believes that the ability to listen is critical to both writing and healing, and hopes his writing workshops strengthen that skill. If people "can hear each other," he says, "they become a community."
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
-English translator, and psychotherapist. He has developed approaches to the use of creative writing in areas including prison therapy and cross-cultural communication between students in the Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
.
Life and Works
Simckes, descended from a long line of rabbiRabbi
In Judaism, a rabbi is a teacher of Torah. This title derives from the Hebrew word רבי , meaning "My Master" , which is the way a student would address a master of Torah...
s (including his father Herbert Isaac Simckes, grandfather Mnachem Risikoff
Mnachem Risikoff
Mnachem HaKohen Risikoff , was an orthodox rabbi in Russia and the United States, and a prolific author of scholarly works, written in Hebrew. Risikoff used a highly stylized and symbolic pen-name, יאמהדנונחהים, made up of the Hebrew letters of his first name, the Hebrew word for Lord, and the...
and great-grandfather Zvi Yosef Resnick
Zvi Yosef Resnick
Rabbi Zvi Yosef HaKohen Resnick was a well-known orthodox Russian rabbi and Rosh yeshivah , also known as Rebbe Hirsch Meitsheter .-Life and work:Resnick lived in Zhetel , a town in Belarus, and at least one of his children was born...
), was born in Saratoga Springs, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, and raised in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
, Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
. He is a graduate of Harvard College
Harvard College
Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of two schools within Harvard University granting undergraduate degrees...
(Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa), Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
(Wallace Stegner Writing Fellow, M.A.), and Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
(Ph.D.).. He has taught at colleges and universities throughout the United States including Harvard, Yale
YALE
RapidMiner, formerly YALE , is an environment for machine learning, data mining, text mining, predictive analytics, and business analytics. It is used for research, education, training, rapid prototyping, application development, and industrial applications...
, Williams
Williams College
Williams College is a private liberal arts college located in Williamstown, Massachusetts, United States. It was established in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams. Originally a men's college, Williams became co-educational in 1970. Fraternities were also phased out during this...
, Vassar
Vassar College
Vassar College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, in the United States. The Vassar campus comprises over and more than 100 buildings, including four National Historic Landmarks, ranging in style from Collegiate Gothic to International,...
, Brandeis
Brandeis University
Brandeis University is an American private research university with a liberal arts focus. It is located in the southwestern corner of Waltham, Massachusetts, nine miles west of Boston. The University has an enrollment of approximately 3,200 undergraduate and 2,100 graduate students. In 2011, it...
and Tufts
Tufts University
Tufts University is a private research university located in Medford/Somerville, near Boston, Massachusetts. It is organized into ten schools, including two undergraduate programs and eight graduate divisions, on four campuses in Massachusetts and on the eastern border of France...
, as well as at Bar-Ilan and the University of Haifa
University of Haifa
The University of Haifa is a university in Haifa, Israel.The University of Haifa was founded in 1963 by Haifa mayor Abba Hushi, to operate under the academic auspices of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem....
in Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
. He has also conducted live, interactive writing workshops via satellite linking middle school and high school students across the country, including the Virgin Islands
Virgin Islands
The Virgin Islands are the western island group of the Leeward Islands, which are the northern part of the Lesser Antilles, which form the border between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean...
. During his Fulbright year at the University of Haifa, he conducted a similar workshop linking Israeli Arab and Jewish high school students with their counterparts in America ("Celebrating Differences").
Playwright
His first play, "Seven Days of Mourning" (adapted from his novel published by Random House), was staged on Broadway at Circle in the SquareCircle in the Square Theatre
The Circle in the Square Theatre is a legitimate Broadway theatre in midtown Manhattan on 50th Street in the Paramount Plaza building.The original Circle in the Square was founded by Paul Libin, Theodore Mann and Jose Quintero in 1951 and was located at 5 Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village...
. Clive Barnes called it "spiky, yet intensely moving. A 'Fiddler on the Roof
Fiddler on the Roof
Fiddler on the Roof is a musical with music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, and book by Joseph Stein, set in Tsarist Russia in 1905. It is based on Tevye and his Daughters by Sholem Aleichem...
' without music, but with blood. Unique, wild, funny. It still haunts me." He wrote the off-off-Broadway play "Ten Best Martyrs of the Year," a Theater for the New City
Theater for the New City
Theater for the New City, founded in 1971 and known familiarly as "TNC", is one of New York City's leading Off-Off-Broadway theaters, known for radical political plays and community commitment. Productions at TNC have won 43 Obie Awards and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama...
(TNC) production directed by Crystal Field, about the ten rabbis who were tortured to death in Rome for supporting the revolt led by Bar Kokhbah
Simon bar Kokhba
Simon bar Kokhba was the Jewish leader of what is known as the Bar Kokhba revolt against the Roman Empire in 132 CE, establishing an independent Jewish state of Israel which he ruled for three years as Nasi...
. in 2nd century Palestine. Simckes said of that play, “I tend to make tragic comment in a mixture of styles. So what did I do? I wrote a play as if as if through the eyes of Hadrian, the Roman emperor, watching the genocide of the Jews from his balcony.” The play was reviewed by Michael Smith in the Village Voice as "timeless, mythic, enlivened by all kinds of stylistic intrusions and an almost hysterical inventiveness."
Another of his off-off-Broadway productions, "Nossig's Antics," also a TNC production directed by Crystal Field, focuses on the character of Alfred Nossig, who was accused of collaborating with Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto
Warsaw Ghetto
The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of all Jewish Ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. It was established in the Polish capital between October and November 15, 1940, in the territory of General Government of the German-occupied Poland, with over 400,000 Jews from the vicinity...
, and executed in 1943, just before his 80th birthday, by a Jewish fighters organization. The critic Richard McBee called "a riveting puzzle," and it has also been described as a "dark farce" and an "absurd exploration of history and the horrific times we live in."
His other plays include "Minutes," a fictional encounter between Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
and Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic...
; "Soldier Boys" about Czar Nicholas
Nicholas I of Russia
Nicholas I , was the Emperor of Russia from 1825 until 1855, known as one of the most reactionary of the Russian monarchs. On the eve of his death, the Russian Empire reached its historical zenith spanning over 20 million square kilometers...
's 1827 edict to recruit Jews into the Russian army for the first time, including children as Cadets; and "Open Rehearsal," chosen by Edward Albee
Edward Albee
Edward Franklin Albee III is an American playwright who is best known for The Zoo Story , The Sandbox , Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , and a rewrite of the screenplay for the unsuccessful musical version of Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's . His works are considered well-crafted, often...
as first runner-up in the inaugural 2006-2007 Yale Drama Series Competition, He also wrote the screenplay for Sydney Lumet's movie version of The Last Temptation of Christ
The Last Temptation of Christ
The Last Temptation of Christ is a novel written by Nikos Kazantzakis, first published in 1953. It was first published in English in 1960. It follows the life of Jesus Christ from his perspective...
, which has not yet been produced.
Novelist and translator
Simckes's first published work was a translation of two stories by the Israeli author, S. Y. Agnon, followed by the short story, "Behold My Servant!," published in Stanford Short Stories 1962. His novels include "Seven Days in Mourning" and "The Comatose Kids." He has translated a number of works from Hebrew to English, including "Adam ResurrectedAdam Resurrected
Adam Resurrected is an American-German-Israeli film, directed by Paul Schrader and adapted from Yoram Kaniuk's novel of the same name published in Israel in 1968 .Jeff Goldblum stars as the titular character, alongside Willem Dafoe, Derek Jacobi and Ayelet Zurer...
," "The Chocolate Deal," and "Commander of the Exodus." He also translated Nava Semel's children's book, "Becoming Gershona," about a twelve-year old girl in 1958 Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...
.
In addition to Hebrew, Simckes is fluent in Yiddish, and according to the director of the film "Kvetch," Simckes was one of the inspirations for the movie, and also appeared in it.
Psychotherapist
As a practicing psychotherapist, Simckes has worked with multi-problem families and imprisoned sex offenderSex offender
A sex offender is a person who has committed a sex crime. What constitutes a sex crime differs by culture and by legal jurisdiction. Most jurisdictions compile their laws into sections such as traffic, assault, sexual, etc. The majority of convicted sex offenders have convictions for crimes of a...
s.
An article in "The Israeli Fulbrighter" notes that Simckes found a "dual vocation as a writer and healer." After studying at the Kantor Family Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he began using brief writing assignments with patients in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, to help them deal with their problems. He continued working on this idea and eventually launched writing worships in community centers, "attempting to foster literacy, empathy, listening skills, insight, respect, and resolution of conflict." He believes writing exercises are especially effective because "they serve to highlight the problem in a way that it can be dealt with."
Cross-cultural educator
Simckes has tried to bring all his talents and experiences to bear in his efforts among Israelis and Palestinians. He made "fostering cross-cultural insights and empathy" in the "interlocked perspectives surrounding the Arab/Israeli encounter" the core of his Fulbright year in Israel, at the University of Haifa.Among his initiatives were a creative writing seminar, "The Mirror of Fiction", and a two-way live interactive video workshop, "Celebrating Differences", broadcast on February 27, 1996. The live interactive TV seminar linked American high school students in the United States with Jewish and Arab students (both Israeli and Palestinian) in Israel. "He created a live bridge and prompted the participants to share their experiences on handling differences," helping the students gain new insights about one another.
To prepare for the Israeli video program, broadcast through the Massachusetts Corporation for Educational Telecommunications, Simckes made frequent visits to Nazareth
Nazareth
Nazareth is the largest city in the North District of Israel. Known as "the Arab capital of Israel," the population is made up predominantly of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel...
, Beit Hagefen, and Jish
Jish
Jish is an Arab town located on the northeastern slopes of Mt. Meron, north of Safed, in Israel's North District. The population is predominantly Maronite Christian and Greek Catholic with a Muslim minority....
to find students who were comfortable with writing spontaneously, and sharing their writing on the air—and prepared to listen, not just "to yell at each other."
Use of language
Simckes has strong feelings about the use of English in workshops that involve both Israeli and Palestinians, because it is a "bridge language" and a "diffuser of power" in a political sense, interrupting "the implication of power through language."
He believes that the ability to listen is critical to both writing and healing, and hopes his writing workshops strengthen that skill. If people "can hear each other," he says, "they become a community."
Awards
His awards include two National Edowment of the Arts fellowships and the National Jewish Book Award.Books
- Seven Days of Mourning, Random House, 1963, Library of Congress Catalog Number 63-16151
- The Comatose Kids, University of Alabama Press, 1975, ISBN 9780914590194
External links
- Simckes play database.
- YouTube film trailer, "Kvetch." (Note: Simckes is first actor seen in trailer.)