Tue, Jul 11
|Skokie Public Library
!דאָס רעדעלע דרײט זיך / The Wheel Keeps Turning! with Stewart Figa
An afternoon of Yiddish song, humor, and lore
Time & Location
Jul 11, 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM CDT
Skokie Public Library
About the Event
Stewart Figa weaves Yiddish songs and stories from his experience of working in the Yiddish Theatre in New York City and his touring of concert halls throughout the United States and Europe for a distinctive tribute to the ongoing legacy of Yiddishkayt.
The event is free; donations are welcome. This is an in person event (not accessible remotely). Registration is not required.
Since 1998 Stewart Figa has served as cantor at West Suburban Temple Har Zion in River Forest, Illinois, and has been a cantor in the Chicago area since 1990. An established and in-demand performer of Yiddish and Jewish music, his programs for the annual Chicago YIVO Society Summer Festival have been cheered by capacity audiences.
In the 1980s Stewart Figa performed several seasons in Yiddish theater productions in New York City where he had the rare privilege of working with and befriending some of the legendary greats of the pre-war Yiddish Theatre and Yiddish Film scenes.
In 2015, Mr. Figa received a Grammy nomination for his work as a vocalist with the New Budapest Orpheum Society on their CD “As Dreams Fall Apart”. With the NBOS he has also delighted audiences on tour in several cities in England and throughout Germany, in Vienna and New York City. Stewart has also sung at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, where an historic picture of his father Leon Figa, a Partisan resistance fighter in the forests of Belarus, is on permanent display.