Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on January 28, 2014

By THOMAS CASTLES

Staff Writer

The paper-cutting display Imagine That is on exhibit at the East Brunswick Public Library. Hou-Tien Cheng can take an ordinary piece of paper and transform it into a design with a few folds and snips. East Brunswick is a culturally diverse community, and the townships public library will spend the entire year celebrating that fact by implementing the Roots Project.

We know that E.B. is a multicultural community, and we want to highlight that, library Adult Services Manager Stephanie Filippone said. We want to show the roots of our neighbors.

The Roots Project will highlight four culturally distinct communities with representative populations in town, dedicating a month to each.

The funding to subsidize the project comes from organizations as diverse as the programs they support, Filippone said.

The New Jersey Council for the Humanities, a state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities, granted $2,800 to the library to support a series of lectures and presentations that will take place over the course of the celebration.

The Middlesex County Cultural and Heritage Commission granted $1,776 for cultural performances; and the East Brunswick Jewish Center, the Friends of the Library, the East Brunswick Arts Commission and the East Brunswick Human Relations Council all came together to provide additional funding.

In conjunction with the Jan. 31 New Year holiday, January featured a celebration of Chinese culture. Master paper-cutter Hou-Tien Cheng kicked off the festivities with an instructional exhibition for which participants took their paper-cutting skills to a whole new level, Filippone said.

We had two paper-cutting workshops, and both were full, she said.

Excerpt from:
Library’s ‘Roots Project’ celebrates ethnic diversity

Category: Jewish American Heritage Month
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