Beau Jest - Chicago-Jewish romantic comedy

Beau Jest – is a nice romantic comedy about the need for adult children to be true to their own feelings and goals vs. their desire to please their parents. The movie has a huge dose of Jewish and Chicago flavor, so it could easily branded as Chicago-Jewish romantic comedy. As a conclusion I don’t think it is a surprise that it shown only in one movie theater around the country – Wilmette Theatre (which located in a heavily Jewish North/North West suburbs of Chicago). So if you like Jewish Humor with a Chicago flavor – you are in for a treat, Beau Jest is right up your alley.

The plot of the movie is relatively simple:
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When Sarah Goldman, a lovely young school teacher in Chicago, wants to please her parents, she invents a boyfriend whom she believes will be the man of her mother's dreams. When her parents insist on meeting the man, Sarah hires Bob, an actor, to pretend to be her "beau". The masquerade works flawlessly for a time and brings comic situations, but in the end, their lives are irrevocably changed.
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BEAU JEST is the hilarious, heartwarming story about Sarah Goldman, a beautiful young school teacher from Chicago who is involved with Chris, a great guy with just one apparent flaw, he's not Jewish. Sarah tells her parents that she is no longer seeing Chris, but continues to date him in secret.To keep her mother from trying to fix her up with "nice Jewish boys," Sarah invents the perfect boyfriend and regales her parents with stories of the man of her mother’s dreams. Eventually they insist on meeting the man, and in desperation, Sarah hires Bob, an actor, to play the part of her new beau. Unaware of the scope of the role he has taken on, Bob accompanies Sarah to dinner with her parents and her brother Joel. He quickly realizes that what he has gotten himself into is much more than he bargained for. It will take all of his charm, wit and improvisational skills to pull off the charade. But Bob rises to the occasion, and the antics that follow is only the beginning of a side-splitting tale that will have you rolling in the aisles, and wiping tears from your eyes at the same time. BEAU JEST stars Lainie Kazan, Robyn Cohen, Tony Daly, Willie Garson,Greg Cromer and Seymour Cassel.

To learn more about the film and see the trailer of it go to

http://www.beaujestmovie.com/home.html

Aaron at Lamb's farm

Aaron at Lamb's farm - for a fun time at Mary-goes-a-round, Children Rail Road and pat zoo with cow, goats, lambs, lamas, pigs and chickens. It was a nice time to celebrate autumn season which came upon us all of the sudden, with red and yellow lives on trees, pumpkins and chilly weather.

Let enjoy the beautiful autumn.




Aarosha surrounded by pumpkins. I did not know that cows are so big.

New Aaroshka's film ( September 2009).

Check out new Aaron's video, couple weeks ago I posted several photos of Aaron doing summer cleaning on our front yard check out the movie shot on the same day.

Enjoy!!!!!

Sholem Aleichem

This year was 150th anniversary since the birth of the greatest Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem. Sholem Aleichem became something for Jews in Soviet Union that help them to identify themselves as a Jews. If you were a Jew you were reading his books, in Russian translation, but still Sholem Aleichem’s books, trying to catch rarely coming out movies as Tavie the Milkman or Wandering Stars. Something what really made you a Jew in former USSR , no it is not a fifth line in your passport, it is a collection of Sholem Aleichem’s work in five volumes which came out in USSR in 1959 to commemorate 100th birthday of great Yiddish writer. If you would visit somebody’s home in former Soviet Union, and would see these books on a bookshelf you could say for sure that this is a Jewish home. The irony of faith – that the last film which was produced in Soviet Union was - Sholem Aleichem’s Wondering Stars, which came out in a late 1991, just before USSR fell apart.

gdeetotdom.ru

The new website was unveiled on a Russian internet, dedicated to all buildings build in Moscow and St. Petersburg proper. Website consist of Google Street View look like feature, and database with photos and details for all buildings of the two Russia’s biggest cities. The name of this site is http://www.gdeetotdom.ru/. I was able to find all the buildings where I lived as well as buildings of my schools and institute. It was very touching, I was full of sentiment and nostalgia for times when I lived where half way around the world.


Check pictures

Chelyabinskaya ul. dom 19 korp 2 apt 207 (1978-1989)

Sretinka ¼ 4 floor (1972 – 1978)

Sacolnechiski Val dom 6 korp 2 Apt 4

Mameloshen (Part 2)

Recently I found really cool map of Yiddish dialects in Europe in end of 19 and beginning of 20 century. That actually pushed me to write a small article about origination of Yiddish dialects as well as a current use of the language in today’s warls.

Yiddish has many dialects, which are usually subdivided into western and eastern dialects. The last one is divided into three main dialects: Northern (so-called. Belarusian-Lithuanian dialect:
Baltic States,
Belarus,
north-eastern regions of Poland,
west of Smolensk Oblast of Russia and
part of the Chernigov region of Ukraine),
South-East ( so-called. dialect of Ukrainian:
Ukraine,
Moldavia,
the eastern region of Romania,
first of all - Moldova and Bucovina,
the southern part of the Brest Region of Belarus and
the Lublin Region of Poland),
Central (or south-west, so-called. Polish dialects:
central and western Poland,
Transylvania,
the Carpathian areas of Ukraine).
There are also transitional dialects on a border of dialect regions. In the early twentieth century the united common Yiddish “klal shprakh” was developed, which gained acceptance mainly in the universities of Eastern and Central Europe. In North America, among Hasidim immerged common dialect based on the "Hungarian" Yiddish, widely used earlier in Transylvania. In the USSR, the grammatical basis of the literary standard served as a Ukrainian dialect, whereas the phonetics based on the northern dialect. Yiddish Theater, in accordance with the tradition of its origin from Abraham Goldfaden (Jewish poet, playwright. stage director and actor in the languages Yiddish and Hebrew, author of some 40 plays. Goldfaden is considered the father of the Jewish modern theatre. ), played in averaged Ukrainian dialect (sometimes, referred to as the Volyn).

Western Yiddish, which by some researchers is seen as a separate language, spoken by the Jews in the western regions of Germany, Switzerland and Holland, is now almost dead due to the massive assimilation of West European Jews prior of World War II.


By beginning of XXI century Yiddish speaking world consist of 3 million people of whom 600,000 to 700,000 people considered it as their first language. Here is a short list of countries with a most Yiddish First language speakers.

Israel: 215,000, or 3% of the total Jewish population (1995)
USA: 178,945, or 2.8% of the total Jewish population (2000)
Russia: 29,998, or 13% of the total Jewish population (2002)
Moldova: 17,000, or 26% of the total Jewish population (1989)
Ukraine: 3,213, or 3.1% of the total Jewish population (2001)
Belarus: 1,979, or 7.1% of the total Jewish population (1999)
Canada: 19,295, or 5.5% of the total Jewish population (2001)
Romania: 951, or 16.4% of the total Jewish population
Latvia: 825, or 7.9% of the total Jewish population
Lithuania: 570, or 14.2% of the total Jewish population
Estonia: 124, or 5.8% of the total Jewish population

Aaron is a Золушка of XXIst century.

Золушка, послушай, крошка, потрудись еще немножко...
перемой-ка всю посуду,
и натри полы повсюду,
дров на месяц наколи,
на год кофе намели...
посади среди цветов 40 розовых кустов,
и пока не подрастут подметай дорожки тут...

Aaron is involved in a summer cleaning chores at home. Sometimes it is nice to have extra pair of hands at the house, even small ones.

Aaron is sweeping the sidewalk to the house.

Aaron is shining door knobs and placing figurines next to the Entrance for pleasant view.