Danny Sigelman has plenty to celebrate at tonight’s fourth-annual Jewbilee celebration at Grumpy’s. The deejay-artist-musician-activist donated a kidney to his father this summer, did a cameo in the Coen Brothers new locally shot film, “A Serious Man,” and saw his/the whole world change before his very eyes.
“A total Jewish thing to do is ‘Tikkun Olam,’ which means ‘to heal the world in hard times. To create community, and fix things,’ so it ties all sorts of things up,” he says. “For me, I’ve never been too religious, but there’s plenty of us who don’t have a regular synagogue, but we identify culturally with the whole idea [of Judaism]. I think there are good things to enact if that’s a part of your background.”
Co-launched by Sigelman, rapper/musician Yoni Reinhardt and the local group Indie Jews, the bash has been held in previous years at the Kitty Kat Club, the 331, and has now landed at Grumpy’s in downtown Minneapolis. Tonight’s non-denominational festivities include deejays, bands, Chinese food and drinks.
“I saw something like this when I was living in Austin, Texas, for a while, and I just thought, ‘I gotta do something like that. I don’t care if it’s me and five other people,’ ” says Sigelman. “But it’s been 400 or 500 people last year and the year before that, and all sorts of people come. I think it’s because Christmas can be so overwhelming, and this gives [non-Jews] a place to go to get away from their families.”
Jewbilee 2008. Tonight (Dec. 24) at 9 p.m. at Grumpy‘s Bar, 1111 Washington Ave. South, Minneapolis.
