There is a good play buried in the three-hour production of “Professor Bernhardi” from the Marvell Rep, but you have to wade through a lot of Germanic bluster and posturing to get to it. Written by Austrian Jewish physician-turned-playwright Arthur Schnitzler in 1912, the play traces the fallout from a bitter confrontation between a respected Jewish doctor and a Catholic priest in 1900 Vienna.

Controversial from its beginnings, “Professor Bernhardi” was banned by Austrian censors before its first production. The Nazis later blacklisted all of Schnitzler’s works, most of which deal frankly with sexuality, describing them as “Jewish filth.” The first full English-language production was in 1936, five years after Schnitzler’s death, in London. The play has been rarely performed in the United States, but this translation by G.J. Weinberger is running in repertory with another controversial play, “The Threepenny Opera,” in a season devoted to “burned & banned” plays.

The Boys’ Choir of Teaneck’s Congregation Beth Aaron is looking for first- to seventh-grade members. Participants learn new songs, participate in performances in and out of the shul, and will be a part of an upcoming CD. Pictures and videos of the group’s performances are on the shul’s website, www.bethaaron.org, in the Events Committees/Youth section. For information, contact directors Benjy Rosenbluth, (201) 357-5685, or Yehiel Levy, (201) 357-5495, or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Yeshiva University will present “A Lens on Israel: A Society through its Cinema,” the Ring Family Film Festival, from Feb. 14 to 23. The four-part event will be supplemented by lectures, workshops, and open forums with leading Israeli actors, writers, producers, and directors. Capping the event is the Feb. 16 screening of “Footnote” — the Oscar-nominated Joseph Cedar film that won “Best Screenplay” at Cannes, and “Best Picture” at the Israeli Ophir Awards. It is among the five contenders for “Best Foreign Language Film” at this year’s Academy Awards. Following the screening, Cedar and actor Lior Ashkenazi will take questions from the audience.

The free festival opens on Feb. 14 with the screening of the internationally acclaimed drama, “Restoration.” The 2008 film “For My Father” will be shown on Feb. 15, and the festival concludes with “Three Mothers” on Feb. 23. Visit www.yu.edu/film-festival.

Anew CD celebrates composers who rebelled against Soviet oppression — Alfred Schnittke, Joseph Achron, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Arvo Part. The album “Sounds of Defiance,” released this week, features star-violinist-to-be Yevgeny Kutic, 26. The piano is played by Timothy Bozarth.

“It is their unyielding faith that provided these composers with a powerful weapon against tyranny — defiance,” Kutik has written.

Kutik’s family fled Soviet-controlled Belarus when he was five after experiencing pressures that impinged on their public, private, and religious lives.

Just as its title promises, “Imagining Heschel,” the current production of the Harold Clurman Laboratory Theater Company (the professional company of the Stella Adler Studio), imagines a series of conversations between Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and Cardinal Augustin Bea about the time of the Second Vatican Council, when Pope John XXIII reconsidered the church’s relationship to the Jews.

This change in church teachings, which removed the charge of deicide, would prove to be immensely significant, but that remains in the future at the time of the play. Cardinal Bea has come to meet with Heschel to convince him to travel to Rome to help the council formulate its new approach. Heschel is cautious, probing to see if the church is serious and ready to apologize for millennia of persecution, and willing to give up its determination to convert his co-religionists.

“Apples & Onions” by Ludlow Smethurst

“Power of Squares: Salute to Women in the Arts” with mixed media and paintings is on display at the Waltuch Gallery of the Kaplen JCC on the Palisades in Tenafly this month. A meet-the-artist reception will be on Sunday, Feb. 5, from 1 to 3 p.m. Salute is an affiliate of the Art Center of Northern New Jersey. Admission is free and artwork is available for sale. For information, call Ophrah Listokin, Waltuch Gallery director, at (201) 408-1408 or www.jccotp.org.

Magevet, the premier Jewish, Hebrew, and Israeli a cappella group of Yale University, will be at Congregation Kol HaNeshamah for Shabbat services tomorrow at 9:45 a.m., on the premises of St Paul’s Church in Englewood. A kiddush lunch will follow. (201) 816-1611 or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).