The Genesis: Conversations About Jewish Arts and Culture

In this episode, Rabbi Josh speaks with writer Daniel Elder, whose deeply personal nonfiction grapples with intimacy, loneliness, and identity. Elder discusses his journey from playful fiction to raw self-revelation, and the ways his involvement with Corporeal Writing opened up a body-centered approach to storytelling. He reflects on the paradox of being an “exhibitionist” who still feels vulnerable, his exploration of queerness and family, and the influence of grief on his voice as a writer. The conversation also turns to Elder’s evolving Jewish identity—shaped by loss, mentorship, and participation in Art/Lab—and the challenges of being a Jewish artist in a polarized moment. Together, they explore what it means to hold paradoxes, whether in art, faith, or politics, and how writing can serve as both a personal unveiling and a form of connection.   Show notes Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts & Culture – artlabpdx.org Daniel Elder’s writing – danielelderwriter.com  Corporeal Writing – corporealwriting.com Lidia Yuknavitch (mentor, founder of Corporeal Writing) – lidiayuknavitch.net Jonathan Richman – Only Frozen Sky (new album Elder recommends) – Spotify link | Apple Music link Arcade Fire – “My Body Is a Cage” – YouTube  

Mariah Berlanga-Shevchuk is the Head of Public Engagement at the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education—OJMCHE’s first person in that role—where she’s widening the museum’s public programs and community partnerships.  Before Portland, she co-curated LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes’ landmark exhibition “afroLAtinidad: mi casa, my city,” a home-shaped journey through Afro-Latinx histories and contemporary life that used rooms—kitchen, living room, backyard—to surface issues like food deserts, media representation, and belonging. She’s also been a cultural resources and exhibitions lead at Five Oaks Museum here in Oregon.  In this episode we cover a lot of ground.  We discuss Mariah’s Mexican American–Ashkenazi–Ukrainian story and how her name carries that lineage, how that lineage informs her Jewish and professional worldview, talk about how a Jewish Museum and the OJMCHE in particular to capture the complex, rich and changing world of Jewish life and culture. And Finally, we map Portland’s grassroots Jewish energy—from Rosh Ḥodesh circles to DIY minyanim and creative pop-ups—and ask how institutions can meet that vitality with openness rather than gatekeeping. Notes: Here are links to epople/places/things mentioned in the episode:  Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture artlabpdx.org Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education (OJM&CHE) — homepage. ojmche.org OPB feature quoting Mariah on Alice Lok Cahana’s art. https://www.opb.org/article/2025/05/08/ashes-into-rainbows-the-art-of-alice-lok-cahana/  afroLAtinidad: mi casa, my city — exhibition page at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes. https://lapca.org/exhibition/afrolatinidad-mi-casa-my-city/ TischPDX  tischpdx.org  

S3E11 Tom Haviv Anyone who takes Jewish sacred texts seriously  has to care about how we interpret these stories, which means how these storeis and myths are re-told, invested with new dimensions and meanings, in each generation.  The stories would get old and become dead, useless, if we insisted that they mean to us what they meant to a jew who lived 1000 years ago. They gain life when we renarrate them, so to speak. We are grappling in America and Israel both, with the collapse of earlier narratives about what those nations mean. The people who make up these nations do not share an overarching narrative that binds them. Our stories seem broken, and disfunctional.   This week's guest, Tom Haviv, thinks about narratives, how they work and what it means when they break - when they stop working. Tom is the co-founder and Executive Director of Ayin Press, an independent publishing platform and interdisciplinary creative studio rooted in Jewish culture. He is also an artist and a poet in his own right. With Ayin Press Tom and his co-founder Eden Perlstein have created an outlet and inspiration for superb Jewish work, and work that reaches beyond the Jewish world as well. Ayin published Daniela Molnar’s Protocols: An Erasure, which you’ve heard about on this podcast and a visit to their website ayinpress.org will reveal an impressive range of new works, from philosophy, to mysticism, to a Jewish tarot deck and more. But Tom’s own life story and his poetic work digs deep into myth and narrative, and what they mean for our lives and our world.  He was the perfect partner for an exploration of this topic which is perhaps more relevant now than it has been in at least a generation.   Enjoy the conversation with Tom Haviv. Links----- www.tomhaviv.com www.ayinpress.org 

Rabbi Josh talks about his own path from religious to cultural Jew.

Rencently Rabbi Josh and Oregon Book Award winner and Art/Lab Alum Daniela Naomi Molnar sat down for a public conversation at Annie Bloom's Books. They discussed Molnar's recent book (Ayin Press) Protocols: An Erasure.  This beautiful and important work reworks, reimagines, and reflects upon the deeply anti-semitic work The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This episode is a recording of that conversation.  Show Notes:  Ayin Press: https://www.ayinpress.org Daniela Monar: https://www.danielamolnar.com Annie Blooms Books (Portland): https://annieblooms.com

***** The deadline for applications for the next Art/Lab Cohort is midnight this coming Saturday August 30th…. If you are a Jewish artist or know someone who is, now’s the time! Artists consistently tell us what a powerful experience their time in Art/Lab was. Don’t miss out.  Go to artlabpdx.org for the application.  ***** Today  I’m joined by Shir Ly Grisanti, an artist, curator, and cultural leader whose work lives right at the intersection of art, ecology, and Jewish values. Shir has spent over a decade building projects that bring people together through creativity and conversation. In 2012, she founded c3:initiative in Portland, a nonprofit designed not just to display art but to steward resources and solidarity with artists and partner organizations working on some of the hardest social questions of our time. At the same time, Shir and their husband Laurence are the stewards of Camp Colton, an 85-acre woodland in rural Oregon. Together they’ve turned this former camp into a place of rewilding and restoration, planting thousands of trees and nurturing a fragile ecosystem back to health, while also hosting gatherings, retreats, and cultural programs And on top of all of this - or undergirding it? - Shir is herself an artist. She was part of the Second Art/Lab Shir’s work is guided by a “dual–nondual” vision: a sense that everything is interconnected, that we are always in relationship—with ancestors, with traditions, with the land, and with each other.  Enjoy my conversation with Shir Grisanti. Show Notes: artlabpdx.org Shir's website:  shirgrisanti.com Stelo – steloarts.org c3:initiative – c3initiative.org Camp Colton – campcolton.com Andrea Gibson – andreagibson.org Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass – Milkweed Editions Sonia Sanford’s Cookbook Braids (for the challah recipe!) – soniasanford.com/cookbook  

Rabbi Josh's reflection: What if Judaism is not a religious tradition, but an artistic one?

 ​  In this episode, Merridawn Duckler and Rabbi Josh explore pop culture and high art, Judaism as culture and religion, and challenge these distinctions. Duckler's background as artist and serious student of Jewish religious texts add to the rich conversation. Enjoy.  Relevant to the Conversation:    https://merridawnduckler.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Levinas 

Rabbi Josh: Springsteen and Dylan on Art and Politics

Hello, listeners. Yesterday's podcast conversation contained  some editing errors, including the DEADLINE FOR THE ART/LAB FELLOWSHIP.  The deadline is AUGUST 30TH. This has been correected in this version of the conversation. ______  In the 21st century it feels that the seams of our world have come undone. American citizenry is profoundly fractured. Old political allignments have broken apart; norms of decency and public trust are in pieces. The same thing seems to be happening within Israel.  The American Jewish community is more fragmented now than I’ve ever seen it. The divisions are not just ideological but social. We have an increasing number of micro-communities, but less Jewish unity.  That question — how we create those kinds of connections, and what they make possible — was one I wanted to explore with my guest today, Rabbi April Villareal. Rabbi Vlilareal is an educator and teacher who brings real insight into this topic. She's the Senior Coach and Program Associate with Hadar’s Pedagogy of Partnership. In our conversation, we talk about: Why shared texts experiences can make space for intimacy that pure dialogue sometimes can’t. How to hold people accountable to a tradition while making room for their unique voice. What it takes to build relationships across deep differences, without erasing them. How art and creativity can be relational tools in community and classroom. Links:  Art/Lab - artlabpdx.org Rabbi April Villarreal – Hadar.org PoemHunter – Fancies (Emma Lazrus) Sefaria        

Rabbi Josh offers a reflection about art, ideology, art for art's sake, and the current state of affairs for Jewish artists.  Referred to in this episode:  Seamus Heaney's "The Flight Path" https://fawbie.info/the-spirit-level/the-flight-path/ Shostakovich, Lament for a Dead Infant, https://music.apple.com/us/album/from-jewish-folk-poetry-op-79-i-lament-for-a-dead-infant/1452151175?i=1452152698

21st-century Jewish life has been marked by shifting boundaries—exciting for some, but challenging for those accustomed to inherited lines of demarcation. Demographic changes and evolving patterns of observance have blurred the distinctions between movements and reshaped their identities. More challenging still are the shifting boundaries around intra-communal debate, particularly on Israel and Zionism. The Jewish world is fractured along new fault lines, and in the arts—where openness, boundary-pushing, and transgression are often core values—Jewish communities are grappling with what, if anything, Jewish culture stands for collectively. My guest this week has been navigating these challenges on a national and global stage. Seth Pinsky is the CEO of the 92nd Street Y, a 150-year-old cultural and community center in New York. It’s a leading institution for Jewish and universal arts, education, and civic dialogue—offering rich intellectual and artistic programming, a religious community, and a global platform through its digital reach. Seth has guided the Y through a time of renewed growth and relevance, even amid profound communal tensions. Previously, he served as president of the NYC Economic Development Corporation under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and he brings deep experience to questions of leadership and identity. In this conversation, he challenges some of my own assumptions and offers insight into what it means to engage with Jewish culture today. In this Episode:  https://www.92ny.org https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2023/october/an-open-letter-on-the-situation-in-palestine          

Documentary Filmmaker Michael Turner and Rabbi Josh Discuss the relationsship between the past, the present and storytelling.  

This is a conversation Rabbi Josh had months ago with Zac Banik, Art/Lab alumnus and habitual Jewish learner and explorer.  Enjoy. 

Daniela Molnar is an award winning poet and visual artist. She and and Rabbi Josh will be together on August 25th at 7pm at Annie Blooms Books in Portland to discuss her stunning new  work Protocols: An Erasure.  This episode is a rebroadcast of Rabbi Josh's conversation with Molnar from Season One of this podcast.  This week and next, and then periodically thereafter we'll be sharing snippets and full episodes that look back on highlights and moments that helped shape the direction of the Genesis.  Thank you for being a listener, and enjoy the conversation with Daniela Molnar. 

 To explore how music shapes Jewish cultural meaning, this week Rabbi Josh welcomes Eric Stein — mandolinist, bassist, and artistic director of Toronto’s Ashkenaz Festival, one of the world’s largest celebrations of Jewish music and culture. (And yes, it might be a little confusing — last week’s guest was Eric Stern, another multitalented Jewish musician.) Eric Stein has spent more than 25 years redefining the sound of Jewish music through projects like Beyond the Pale and Tio Chorinho. In this wide-ranging conversation, he and Rabbi Josh talk about Jewish cultural identity, spiritual honesty, and the surprising affinities between klezmer music and the Grateful Dead. Eric shares his journey from secular musician to a leader in the global Jewish music revival, reflects on what it means to seek meaning in a world that often feels devoid of it, and offers a compelling defense of art as a form of cultural resistance.

Josh (Host): Eric Stern builds Jewish community and is a curator of Jewish culture. He's a very interesting, multi-layered renaissance man who is the irector of Programming at Portland’s Eastside Jewish Commons, an important player in the emergent Jewish scene here in Portland Oregon.    Eric is also musician, vocalist, accordionist, pianist, composer, arranger, he trained as a classical singer and went on to found the eclectic, genre-bending band Vagabond Opera, which toured nationally, appeared on NPR and at the Kennedy Center, and mixed opera, jazz, cabaret, Klezmer and Balkan influences.  Rabbi Josh and Eric explore his EP and its roots in Greek Rebetiko, trace the parallels between marginalized musical traditions like Klezmer and blues, discuss Stern's transformation from performer to facilitator, talk about whether religious experience and music-making are connected, and whether Jewish art on its own can sustain community in the absence of synagogue life.

Part two of Rabbi Josh's conversation with Lou Cove, CEO of CANVAS, an organization seeding "The 21st Cultural Renaissance in Jewish Life". 

In this episode, Rabbi welcomes Lou Cove—writer, cultural strategist, and longtime champion of Jewish arts and storytelling—for a rich and personal conversation about Jewish cultural identity, memory, and the power of creative revival. Lou shares the story of how a casual visit to the Yiddish Book Center unexpectedly transformed his life and career. Raised with little connection to Jewish communal life, Lou recalls how this moment set him on a path to reclaim a cultural legacy he didn’t even know he had. Rabbi Josh and Lou discuss the emotional and intellectual journey of reconnecting with Jewish culture through literature, storytelling, and memory. They also explore whether this  revival in Jewish life can be seen essential not just for preservation, but for ongoing meaning-making in Jewish life.  (Part 2 will be released next week).

Today on the podcast, Rabbi Josh speaks with Ahuva S. Zaslavsky — a Portland-based multidisciplinary artist whose work grapples with the raw, layered questions of identity, transformation, and belonging. Ahuva was born and raised in Tel Aviv in a deeply mixed family — Mizrahi and Ashkenazi, traditional and secular — and it wasn’t until a move to the United States as an adult that she unexpectedly stepped into her life as an artist. Zaslavsky's work spans sculpture, printmaking, painting, video, writing, and performance — but at its core, it wrestles with what she calls “metamorphosis”: how something shifts forms while carrying the imprint of its origin. She draws inspiration from Jewish mythology, especially the golem — a creature formed from clay, brought to life to protect, and ultimately beyond its maker’s control — and explores what it means to be both the creator and the created. The conversation covers exile, motherhood, Jewishness in America, the Israeli art world, October 7th and its aftermath, and what it’s like to feel alienated from both the place you left and the place you live. And we talk about art as a survival instinct — not just for the artist, but for the self. Enjoy. If you like what we do here, please subscribe and leave a comment!