B.A. Van Sise, Invited to Life

The 32nd Edition of the Book Festival of the MJCCA Presents
B.A. Van Sise, Invited to Life: Finding Hope after the Holocaust

In Conversation with Rabbi Brian Glusman, Outreach Director and Rabbi, MJCCA

PRESENTED BY CHERIE & GARY AVIV

Community Partner: Holocaust Survivor Support Fund

Author Talk, Q & A & Book Signing

7:00 pm Kristallnacht Commemoration at the Besser Holocaust Memorial Garden with Torchlighting Ceremony

“No mat­ter how it might seem,” writes B. A. Van Sise, ​“this is not a book about the Holo­caust.” Rather, it is about a num­ber of sur­vivors who emerged from the deep­est depths of the Shoah and accept­ed their invi­ta­tion to life. In 90 hand­some and sen­si­tive por­traits, all set against a black back­ground, Van Sise, an award-win­ning pho­to­jour­nal­ist, cap­tures the glow in his sub­jects’ faces. They are vibrant women and men whose ambi­tion and grat­i­tude take cen­ter stage in the inter­views that accom­pa­ny each photograph.

The 90 peo­ple Van Sise presents are engaged in almost every aspect of Amer­i­can life. Some are famil­iar names who have made notable careers, while oth­ers fol­lowed the trades of their Euro­pean fam­i­lies as bak­ers or tai­lors. There are rab­bis and non­be­liev­ers, social work­ers and doc­tors, accoun­tants and work­ers who fell into bad times; there are activists, teach­ers, and engi­neers. Sev­er­al have turned to the arts, some pro­fes­sion­al­ly and oth­ers for pure plea­sure. Almost all tell their sto­ry mat­ter-of-fact­ly, even as they recall their dev­as­tat­ing begin­nings, the dis­tances they have trav­eled, and the lives they have remade. With brief con­tri­bu­tions by Dr. May­im Bia­lik, Neil Gaiman, and Sab­ri­na Orah Mark, Invit­ed to Life is a com­pelling and mem­o­rable por­trait that tes­ti­fies to the strength and endurance of the human spirit.

We will be featuring the work of Mr. Van Sise in the Katz Family Main Street Gallery. You're invited to view this beautiful photography and the inspirational stories of the featured Holocaust Survivors.

The photo exhibit is generously underwritten by Cherie & Gary Aviv

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

B.A. Van Sise is an author and pho­to­graph­ic artist focused on the inter­sec­tion between lan­guage and the visu­al image. He has pre­vi­ous­ly been fea­tured in solo exhi­bi­tions at the Cen­ter for Cre­ative Pho­tog­ra­phy, the Cen­ter for Jew­ish His­to­ry and the Muse­um of Jew­ish Her­itage, as well as in group exhi­bi­tions at the Peabody Essex Muse­um, the Muse­um of Pho­to­graph­ic Arts, the Los Ange­les Cen­ter of Pho­tog­ra­phy and the Whit­ney Muse­um of Amer­i­can Art; a num­ber of his por­traits of Amer­i­can poets are in the per­ma­nent col­lec­tion of the Smith­so­ni­an’s Nation­al Por­trait Gallery.

Books will be available for purchase on the evening of the event from our partner bookseller, A Cappella Books!