Wednesday October 12, 2011 JEWISH TELEGRAPH 23

CONTACT MIKE COHEN [email protected] Tel: 0161 741 2637 with mercurial PICTURE: SHAYNE LAVERDIERE says daughter NEW RELEASES: Mayer Hawthorne, Adam Cohen and Moshe Hecht New albums for trio MAYER HAWTHORNE released his new The 39-year-old, who lives in Los album this week. Angeles, has previously Adam Cohen How Do You Do is his full-length (1998) and the French language debut for Universal Republic Records. Mélancolista (2004) as well as Ex- Born Andrew Mayer Cohen in Girlfriends (2004) with the band Low Michigan, the 32-year-old used the Millions. name of the street in which he was Chassidic indie-folk artist Moshe raised, Hawthorne Street, as his stage Hecht releases his debut album, Heart name. is Alive, next week. He originally signed with Stones It was produced in Seattle by seven- Throw Records, releasing the album A time Emmy winner and Grammy- Strange Arrangement in 2009. nominated producer Steven Ray Allen How Do You Do features the single and marks Hecht;s much anticipated The Walk. entrance onto the Meanwhile, singer-songwriter Adam Inspire Me and When I’m In Need Cohen has his third solo album, Like A were inspired by an encounter with a Man, released by Cooking Vinyl this homeless man in Jerusalem. week. The first single Believers is available Adam is the son of legendary as a free download on Facebook and on performer Leonard Cohen, although his Hecht’s official website. parents separated when he was five. His mother, Suzanne Elrod took him I www.mayerhawthorne.com, and his younger sister to the south of www.adamcohen.com and France. www.MosheHecht.com

HAPPY FAMILY: Erica with her parents Joseph and Shirley and brother Ted Erica said: “There was no New York University before Once she delved into his Liza honour religion in their lives when he becoming a copywriter for friends and colleagues, she was Simeon spies a hit LIZA Minnelli will see was younger. But I do know that many years. “bowled over”. LAWYER-turned-comedian Simeon Goulden’s new comedy her late father honoured one of the ways he would During that time, her “I never expected to hear Spy starts on Sky One (8.30pm) on Friday. when she visits Israel embarrass his mother was when tempestuous relationship with anything back from anybody, It tells the tale of a 30-something stuck in a dead-end job, next month. someone was visiting and he Joseph unravelled and it was but they all just loved him and as well as being locked in a custody battle with his ex-wife The Oscar-winner is would say ‘throw me a ham not until around three years his work and were so happy to over his son. heading to the country sandwich’ and she would be ago that she decided to put help,” she said. “Heart-warming But his world is shaken when he’s accidentally recruited as for the Cameri Theatre’s mortified.” some thoughts down for me.” a trainee spy for MI5, going from zero to hero. debut of Cabaret and Erica, born in 1952, has only “It is extraordinary to me As a testament to his Goulden read English at Manchester University before she will also perform lived outside New York for one that people still read his influence, Erica said that going into law and specialising in litigation. But he left in two concerts. term as a student in Midwest books,” she said. comedian Richard Lewis — 2004 and wrote material for television presenter Clive America and later in “When I was growing up I had famous in the UK for his Anderson. And, during her time Amsterdam during a brief no comprehension of it at first. appearances in Curb Your Simeon has also written for American comedies there, the Tel Aviv marriage. “The reviews were not great Enthusiasm — “thinks my dad Californication and 30 Rock. theatre’s main rehearsal She admitted: “I went to they didn’t sell very well — all I was really important in terms And he has also written episodes for ITV2’s Secret Diary hall will be named after college in Lake Forest in the knew was that we moved to a of humour, irony and black of A Call Girl and contributed material to The Armstrong and her late father, film Midwest, which was a disaster. really big apartment and I went comedy”. Miller Show, on BBC1. director Vincente “The Midwest and I did not to a private school. Catch-22 has been republished Minnelli. get along very well.” “People were certainly to mark its 50th anniversary. So she returned to her home treating him differently. Joseph also wrote Something city and an area of New York “I started realising it when Happened (1974), Good as Gold that was “Jewish but non- we began taking better (1979), God Knows (1984), Picture observant”. vacations. Everything was very This (1988), Closing Time (1994) She went on to finish her lavish when we went to Europe and Portrait of an Artist, as an studies in English literature at for the summer.” Old Man (2000). Dan’s search leads to distillery

BY SIMON YAFFE to bring her life to the converted to Catholicism In the film, in scenes into the project. screen. and became a republican. depicting and describing “When I told experts in NEARLY 100 years ago, a “She was born into a Max, however, became what happened, Dan plays the vodka industry about Ukrainian distillery was wealthy Ukrainian Jewish integrated with Northern his grandfather while wife my idea, they thought I seized by the Bolsheviks at family which was Ireland’s Protestant elite Hilary is Maroussia. was mad, that it was all hot the height of the Russian connected to Ukrainian and became a Freemason. Interspersed in the story air,” he said. Revolution. aristocracy. He died young, however, are the births of his But, with a lot of It wasn’t a rare “They were landed and in the mid-1940s. daughter Esmé and his determination and work — occurrence — the part of the gentry, which London-based Dan was father George. artist Hilary designed the communists appropriated was pretty unusual for going to call his film From Dan, who attended the bottle — bottles of what they saw as capitalist Ukrainian and Russian Bolshevism to Belfast, but New York Film Academy, Zorokovich 1917 are being land all over the region. Jews in those days.” changed his mind after said: “Most Jews in the sold in top London But historic events Dan, whose father George visiting Ukraine and early 20th century lived in department store always have a ripple effect. died when Dan was three, discovering the distillery the Pale of Settlement, so Selfridges, as well as had heard the story of in an impoverished village the Zorokovichs were And it certainly has for numerous bars in the Maroussia and his Polish outside of Kyiv called unusual in that they were capital. film director Dan Jewish artillery officer Douboviazovka. assimilated into Ukrainian Edelstyn. Dan also has plans to grandfather Max Edelstyn, “It was an attractive sell society and gave jobs to the have a Manchester bar Dan set about making a through his mother. to the broadcasters and local non-Jews. film on his late DYNASTY: Dan Edelstyn stock it in the near future. “I was aware that my funders,” he explained. “It was also unusual that A sad scene towards the grandmother Maroussia became interested in his surname was quite “Suddenly this self- they were aligned with the Zorokovich, who was born end of the film sees Dan Jewish roots, determined different from everybody indulgent story became White Russian movement, locate Maroussia’s into a wealthy Ukrainian to go back to the land of his else’s, but I didn’t much more sexy.” as many Jews were Jewish family. unmarked grave in Belfast grandmother. necessarily associate it It was still a working communist sympathisers. and pay for a gravestone. Her father owned the His life changed when he with Jewishness,” he said. distillery and Dan came up “I discovered from the How To Re-Establish A distillery and Dan has discovered his Having left the Ukraine with the idea of producing manuscripts that, Vodka Empire will be ended up trying to recreate grandmother Maroussia’s due to the Bolsheviks, vodka himself and naming although Maroussia was this vodka dynasty. manuscripts in a suitcase screened next week at the Maroussia and Max it after his grandmother’s Jewish, she only mentioned BFI London Film Festival The story is told in Dan’s in 2005. the fact in one paragraph eventually settled in family for the Western and at the forthcoming UK film How To Re-Establish a “I became obsessed with Northern Ireland. — and that was with a market. Jewish Film Festival. Vodka Empire. her story,” Dan, 34, told the She, due to her husband He was also asked by the lower-case J.” And it will be shown on Growing up in Northern Jewish Telegraph. and rabbi’s horror, saw a villagers if he could reopen The vodka idea, which he More4 early next year. Ireland, he knew that his “Something leapt out at common cause with the the sugar factory which the has called Zorokovich 1917, surname was different and me and I definitely wanted Catholics of Ulster, Zorokovichs owned. has seen Dan plough money I www.myvodkaempire.com