The new exhibit of original works by Salvador Dali called "Aliyah, the Rebirth of Israel" opened on Thursday to great acclaim. Dali expert and guest curator of the recent exhibit at The High Museum, "Dali: The Late Works," Elliott King, presented an insightful commentary on Dali's life and works to an audience of students, faculty and community.

King described the images in the Aliyah suite as reflecting a kind of "defiance" in portraying the rebirth of Israel.

“These images of defiance reflect the resiliency of the Jewish people -- of not only surviving but thriving against all odds,” Hillel Director Michael Rabkin said. “The kind of vibrancy that we see in Dali's paintings captures the essence of that resilience and vibrancy even today in our community in Atlanta and America and also Israel.”

Opher Aviran, the Consul General of Israel to the Southeastern U.S. - one of the primary sponsors of the exhibit - joined in opening the exhibit. College senior, Sarah Green, an art history major and president of Emory Students for Israel (ESI), introduced Elliott King. ESI included the opening of the Dali exhibit as part of their "Israel Peace Week" initiative at Emory.

Emory Professor David Blumenthal opened the event with a stirring recollection of how he came to acquire this suite of lithographs. From the article in today's Emory Wheel:

Blumenthal started the reception with the romantic story of how he came by the lithographs. When he and his wife were dating, he took her to a museum in New York to see a Dalí Exhibit.

“Two years later, in 1967, Dalí was working on a series of pieces of art on the theme of Zionism, the theme of the rebirth of Israel,” Blumenthal said.

His wife, Ursula, bought the set for him in the early 1980s. Until now, it had remained in its original box under their piano. It wasn’t until last spring that Ursula decided these pieces would make a great complement to The High Museum of Art’s “Dalí: the Late Work” exhibition and would also serve as a way to honor the new Hillel Center.

“It is what I, as a professor of Jewish studies, consider to be the fusion, in the finest sense of the word, of Jewish civilization and the humanities in general,” Blumenthal said.

The exhibit is on display at the Marcus Hillel Center until June 2011. An audio guide, which can be downloaded for free from iTunes U to an iPhone or iPod Touch, is available with commentary on each of the 25 framed lithographs. For more information, visit www.emoryhillel.org/dali.

Photos from the opening are after the break.

Tomorrow evening, 15 select Emory students will start a six-week course at Hillel called "Israel for Dummies." The goal is to help these students become confident, effective Israel advocates on campus. Organized by Danielle Eisenberg (B’13), Sarah Green (C’11), and Rebecca Friedman (C’14), the course will usher in a new cohort of Israel leaders at Emory.

With only a week of marketing the program, there were 38 applicants for only 15 seats in the course.

By attending a 90-minute class every week, students will learn key dates and figures in Zionist and Israeli history, social issues in Israel, the history of the conflict, the peace process, the role of the media, issues of religion and state in Israel, and the relationship between Israel and America. The course is non-polemical and demonstrates mutuality—it presents unbiased facts and lets students develop their own opinions.

Israel for Dummies is unique in that it is not intended for your typical pro-Israel student leader. Rather, it is geared towards beginners - students who are just starting out on their Israel journey. The 15-person class is made-up of underclassmen, some of them current Taglit-Birthright Israel applicants or recent alums. These students who are not yet involved in Israel activity on campus, have not traveled to Israel on a long-term or summer-long program, and haven’t taken any relevant Israel coursework at Emory.

On Monday, Jewish Canadian musician, producer and self-proclaimed Klezmer-Hip Hop maestro, Socalled visited Emory. Socalled mixes old Yiddish records with hip-hop beats and the brightest international artists. He’s created a modern and distinctive sound that had students moving in their seats.

Socalled sat down with Jake Krakovsky from Emory’s WMRE radio and music professor Dr. Matt Miller to discuss his Klezmer-Hip Hop invention. Socalled is an animated and talkative artist eager to tell you exactly what Klezmer is. He likens it to the Duke Ellingtons and Count Basies of Jewish culture, a genre he laments may be falling off of the radar since many young Jews have never heard of it.

“I guess I’m a missionary trying rile you up and make you a little interested about your own funky, interesting culture –it’s there if you want it,” he said.

Over the past few months, I worked with Hillel to organize a group to tour some of the many Civil Rights sights in Atlanta in the midst of Black History Month. I wanted to explore the history of the Civil Rights Movement and the Jewish involvement in this period of progress while seeing the very places where this history unfolded. Our visit this past Sunday afternoon included a trip to the pencil factory of Leo Frank, a Jewish man whose rights were ignored as he was sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit. We then visited Auburn Avenue, the home to Martin Luther King, Jr - his birth house, his burial site, Ebenezer Baptist Church, and the King Center.

Add one more to Emory's incredible array of a capella groups this year. Emory's only Jewish a capella group, has returned to Emory after a four-year hiatus under new leadership and with a new name: chaiTunes.

Sarah Krame ('13C) spent her freshman year laying the groundwork and recruiting initial members of the new group with assistance from Hillel. Their debut was at the Marcus Hillel Center dedication in September with a performance of the Shehechianu prayer.

After holding tryouts this semester, chaiTunes landed on the front page of the Arts & Entertainment section of the Emory Wheel.