The Genesis: Conversations About Jewish Arts and Culture

My guest this week is Steve Marcus, a New York–based artist who's on our radar because he's currently on exhibit at the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education. His work is visually striking—sometimes funny, always interesting—and it's a genuinely profound engagement with Jewish ideas and identity through the language of pop culture. A lot of his aesthetic is rooted in the comic-book, counterculture world of artists like Robert Crumb and others who rose to prominence in the '60s and '70s, but Steve puts a distinctly Jewish twist on it. And if you're watching this on YouTube (as opposed to just listening on the podcast), you'll actually get to see some of the work—we throw images up on screen as we talk. In our conversation we get into Jewish pop, "kosher pop art," and Jewish futurity—what it means to make Jewish art and culture feel alive, contemporary, and relatable, especially for people who maybe didn't grow up with it but are open to it now.  Steve is also deeply rooted in the Jewish tradition, and that comes through most clearly when we talk about learning. He does a lot of daily study. We talk about Daf Yomi—daily Talmud study—and he has a really interesting take on the very aspects of Talmud that some people find off-putting: the minutiae, the details, the endless specificity. He loves the discipline of doing it every day, and he's found real beauty in the details. We also talk about teshuvah—what it looks like for people who haven't been connected to Jewish tradition to return to it—and how his work is an expression of that process for him. If you haven't seen his show at the museum, I really encourage you to go. And one more reminder: the Portland Jewish Film Festival is happening right now. Head to the Oregon Jewish Museum's website—our partner in so much of this work—to see what's playing around town and what you can stream online. Enjoy my conversation with Steve Marcus, and thanks so much for listening.  The Genesis: Conversations About Jewish Arts and Culture is conceived of and created by Rabbi Josh Rose, and is a program of Art/Lab: Jewish Arts and Culture. Theme music by Rabbi Josh Rose. Links: Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture: www.artlabpdx.org Oregon Jewish Museum Exhibit: www.ojmche.org/events/psychedelicatessen-a-powerful-dose-of-art-by-steve-marcus/ Artist's Website: www.smarcus.com 

In this episode, I speak with filmmaker and journalist Toby Perl Freilich about why some subjects demand the documentary form. Freilich contrasts writing's breadth with film's "shallow medium that packs a punch," arguing that moving images—especially archival footage—can create an unusually immediate kind of understanding. Our discussion centers on  Freilich's feature documentary Maintenance Artist, centered on Mierle Laderman Ukeles—best known as the long-time artist-in-residence for the New York City Department of Sanitation.  That movie, along with several others, are featured as part of the Portland Jewish Film Festival later this month.  We explore the subject of the film and her radical insistence that "maintenance labor" is both essential and worthy of dignity. Freilich and I also  discuss Ukeles's institutional critiques (including her famous "mummy/vitrine" intervention at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art), her reframing of "invisible" work, and the film's Jewish ethical undercurrent (tzelem Elohim and a values-based Jewish imagination rather than "ritual-object" Judaism). Finally, my guest  offers a rare window into craft: the years-long fundraising, the editorial architecture shaped with her editor Anne Alvergue, and the deliberate design choices that keep the film visually "clean" while dealing with the aesthetics and politics of waste. Enjoy my conversation with Toby Perl Freilich. The Genesis: Conversations About Jewish Arts and Culture is conceived of and created by Rabbi Josh Rose, and is a program of Art/Lab: Jewish Arts and Culture. Theme music by Rabbi Josh Rose. Links Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture: https://artlabpdx.org  Maintanance Artist, film website: https://www.maintenanceartist.com Portland Jewish Film Festival (at OJMCHE): https://www.ojmche.org/events/portland-jewish-film-festival/sting  Mierle Laderman Ukeles and the Art of Work - at the New Yorker Magazine.    

In this second part of my conversation with Dana Lynn Lewis, she reflects on how art can be  "political" even when it isn't issuing explicit slogans: in a culture that underfunds artists and treats art as decor, simply insisting that creative work matters is political.  We get into the difference between message-forward political art and art that opens a capacious vessel—inviting people to express through their shared humanity without hammering them with ideology. A centerpiece is Dana's participatory project "Clearing"—hundreds  of tiny anonymous envelopes people filled out with whatever they wanted to "clear," sent from around the world, then ritually burned unopened.  We also talk about "witchy" earth-based spirituality: daily contemplative walks, attention to river/trees/wind, and the moment a tree became her realtor (!)  We connect that to creativity, to the feeling of being small in the face of the gorge and the river's deep time, and to the trickster energy of making community in public. Dana Lynn Lewis is truly a one-of-a-kind - enjoy part two of our conversation.  The Genesis is created, produced and edited by Rabbi Joshua Rose and is supported by Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture. Theme music composed by Rabbi Joshua Rose Links Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture - www.artlabpdx.org/ Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education - www.ojmche.org/ Dana Lynn Louis: CLEARING" (2014) —www.lclark.edu/live/news/26500-dana-lynn-louis-clearing  

My guest this week is Dana Lynn Lewis, a Portland artist whose work is fabulous but does not stay politely inside the gallery by any means. Dana is the founder of Gather:Make:Shelter, a long running collaborative project that brings professional artists together with people experiencing houselessness and poverty making work side by side, sharing meals. Paying participants for their time and then bringing those stories and objects into public view in a way that refuses the kind of usual us and them bifurcation that so many cities dealing with homelessness confront. She really breaks that down with her incredibly beautiful work  approach. In this conversation, we go back to the moment that this work really ignited Dana's time in Senegal during the 2016 election. She discusses the kinda strange clarity that came from being far away looking in on the United States, people around her with every reason to be cynical, insisting that something important was happening and something good would come out of this. And she embraced that idea. She talks about her return to Portland in a very important human moment under the steel bridge that became the seed of an idea. It quickly became gather, make shelter through the beautiful work that she does. We also talk about connection and the central role that plays in her life and work.  We venture into her background and her Jewish upbringing and the role that Jewish summer camp played in her work, and we also talk about the idea that there's Dana, the artist, and Dana, the activist. For her, it's all emergent out of this sense of connection. Finally, we do talk about her beautiful, beautiful, multimedia artistic work, and there are links for you to encounter her work up online, including the link to Gather:Make:Shelter. This is a two-parter because we had so much to talk about. The second part of the conversation will be out next week. Enjoy my conversation with the one and only Dana Lynn Lewis The Genesis: Conversations About Jewish Arts and Culture is conceived of and created by Rabbi Josh Rose, and is a program of Art/Lab: Jewish Arts and Culture. Theme music by Rabbi Josh Rose.   Links: Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture: www.artlabpdx.org Gather:Make:Shelter www.gathermakeshelter.org/ Dana Lynn Louis: www.danalynnlouis.com/ Russo Lee Gallery: www.russoleegallery.com/exhibitions         

In this episode I sit down with artist Cara Levine and we discuss how grief informs her work in tangible ways. Cara's work is on exhibit right now at the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education. She lives in California now, but was a Portlander for a time. Her multi-media work is in a sweet spot between engaged in real world problems and ethereal other-worldliness. Cara is also influenced by mysticism, and is a student of it. So I was eager to sit down with her and learn more about her and the work she's brought into the world. Cara describes Carve; The Mystic Is Nourished From This Sphere, a large-scale "bowl / hole" that doesn't just hold people's words, but amplifies them—turning the gallery itself into an instrument and a vessel for community care. That opens into a conversation about what happens when an artwork accidentally (and then intentionally) becomes a structure for collective ritual and shared vulnerability. From there we go into pain. We cover the surprising role that migraines play in her creative thinking and what she learned about surrender. The conversation dips into the worldliness of her work as we touch on her piece This Is Not a Gun. And of course, we finish off with her sharing something she loves and her opinion on the best Jewish food. Enjoy the conversation.   Links Art/Lab: artlabpdx.org Cara Levine caralevine.com Oregon Jewish Museum & Center for Holocaust Education OJMCHE.org Beit Kohenet —https://www.beitkohenet.org/ Rabbi Jill Hammer —https://jillhammer.net/ Bruce Nauman https://www.artdex.com/bruce-nauman-the-art-and-irony-of-revealing-mystic-truths/ Brian Eno's Apollo: https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Apollo:_Atmospheres_…   The Genesis: Conversations About Jewish Arts and Culture is conceived of and created by Rabbi Josh Rose, and is a program of Art/Lab: Jewish Arts and Culture. Theme music by Rabbi Josh Rose. 

This episode takes a different tack on one of this podcast's central themes; Jewish culture—how it's made, displayed, argued over, and lived. In this episode, I sit down with Rebekah Sobel, the Director of the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education (OJMCHE), for a conversation that treats museums not as neutral storehouses, but as active cultural engines: places where communities decide what gets remembered, how it gets framed, and who gets to speak. Rebekah comes to this work through anthropology and archaeology. She says that objects don't "tell the truth" on their own—people interpret them. One of the through lines of our conversation is that Jewish culture is always being curated, whether it's in a gallery, a classroom, a feed, or a synagogue. And right now—especially post–October 7—the Jewish communal conversation is being curated by outrage and polarization more than by the tradition's own capacity for multi-vocal debate. Rebekah describes the museum's work in light of this moment: holding public trust while admitting that every exhibit is perspectival; creating spaces for people to be together again before they make declarations; and pushing access to Holocaust education statewide.  Finally we talk about what it looks like when Jewish culture is presented in real time to a real public—like OJMCHE's programming around Steve Marcus's "Psychedelicatessen," where religious symbolism collides with counterculture humor. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Rebekah Sobel. Links: Art/Lab www.artlabpdx.org More on Rebekah Sobel here: www.linkedin.com/in/rebekah-sobel-5321b75/ Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education: www.ojmche.org/ Polin Museum (Warsaw) polin.pl/en/about-museum   The Genesis: Conversations About Jewish Arts and Culture is conceived of and created by Rabbi Josh Rose, and is a program of Art/Lab: Jewish Arts and Culture. Theme music by Rabbi Josh Rose.

In this episode I sit down with writer, poet, and Alexander Technique teacher Eve Bernfeld to talk about what it means to sustain a creative life in the middle of parenting, teaching, and everyday obligations. We talk about discipline and devotion — daily writing practices, working through creative resistance, and what happens when you take yourself seriously as an artist even when time, energy, and certainty are in short supply. Our conversation moves through Jewish prayer, fairy tales, and Jewish magic as living creative resources rather than abstract traditions. Eve reflects on discovering tkhines (vernacular women's prayers), writing contemporary poetic prayers that emerge directly from domestic life, and finding her way back to speculative and magical fiction rooted in Jewish sources. Along the way we talk about vulnerability, belonging, the body as part of artistic practice, and how creativity can be a way of reclaiming parts of ourselves we thought we had left behind.   Show Notes  Art/Lab (Portland) — https://artlabpdx.org/ Eve Bernfeld's Website: http://www.evebernfeld.com/ Tkhines (Yiddish women's prayers) — YIVO Encyclopedia — https://encyclopedia.yivo.org/article.aspx/Tkhines The Artist's Way (Morning Pages origin) — Julia Cameron — https://juliacameronlive.com/the-artists-way/ "Shitty first drafts"  https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/10332/bird-by-bird-by-anne-lamott/ Alexander Technique (general overview) — AmSAT — https://www.amsatonline.org/alexander-technique/what-is-the-alexander-technique/ Omer: A Counting https://www.ccarpress.org/shopping_product_detail.asp?pid=50132 Grimm tale "The Jew in the Thorns https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm110.html   The Genesis is created, produced and edited by Rabbi Joshua Rose and is supported by Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture. Theme music composed by Rabbi Joshua Rose  

My guest today is journalist Rebecca Clarren. Her work has appeared in Mother Jones, High Country News, The Nation, and Indian Country Today. For her reporting, she's won a Hillman Prize, received an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellowship, and earned multiple grants from the Fund for Investigative Journalism. But as you'll hear in our conversation, she's much more than a journalist. Her debut novel, which we touch on, is Kickdown, which was shortlisted for the PEN Bellwether Prize. Clarren is also a published poet; her work has appeared in North American Review, Catamaran, CutBank, and Poetry Northwest. We spend most of our time talking about The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance, an extraordinary book in which she turns her journalistic eye on her own story—and her family's. It was named a Best Book of 2023 by several publications, won the Will Rogers Medallion Award, and was shortlisted for the High Plains Book Award and the Great Plains Book Award. Rebecca and I talk about Jewish identity and values, and how those shape her work. She has a passion for amplifying marginalized and silenced voices—and for uncovering the stories that get buried beneath the dominant narrative. We talk about storytelling, contested truth, and what it means to hold multiple perspectives at once. We also talk powerfully about grief and loss, and how they've informed her life and her work. Israel and Gaza come up because we're talking about competing narratives and moral urgency—and she offers a striking framework for balancing truth and compassion, rooted in learning with her rabbi. It's a rich conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it. This is my conversation with Rebecca Clarren. The Genesis is created, produced and edited by Rabbi Joshua Rose and is supported by Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture. Theme music composed by Rabbi Joshua Rose ----   Links & Show Notes Art/Lab: artlabpdx.org Rebecca's website: https://www.rebecca-clarren.com/ Indian Land Tenure Foundation: https://iltf.org/ Peter Beinart's Being Jewish Adrer the Destruction of Gaza: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/775348/being-jewish-after-the-destruction-of-gaza-by-peter-beinart/

A Christmas message (!) from Rabbi Josh

Rabbi Josh Rose sits down with writer Nikki Schulak to talk about humor as survival strategy, artistic method, and truth-telling device. What begins as a discussion of comedy quickly opens into an exploration of trauma, Jewish family life, grief, and the way humor can both conceal and reveal what hurts most. Nikki reflects on how comedy functioned in her childhood, in her eccentric Jewish family, and in the complicated dynamics between piety, cruelty, affection, and love. The conversation moves into Nikki's radical commitment to honesty on the page. Known for writing with almost no filter, Nikki talks openly about shame, depression, sex, marriage, mental health, and the personal costs of telling the truth publicly. From her seventh-grade journals to her current Substack, vulnerability wasn't a strategy she adopted—it's who she's always been. Along the way, she shares the story behind her Prozac tattoo, her experience with depression, and why making mental health visible matters to her. Josh and Nikki also dig into questions of marriage, intimacy, and unconventional family structures. Nikki speaks frankly about her long marriage, having an affair, the therapy that followed, and the surprising, hard-won equilibrium her family ultimately found. The discussion is not theoretical or ideological—it's grounded in lived experience, with all the discomfort, humor, and tenderness that entails. The episode closes with reflections on parenting, teaching preschool, politics, and why humor remains an essential tool for surviving a tragic and absurd world. It's a conversation about truth, timing, and courage—about what happens when you refuse to look away from your own life, and insist on telling it as clearly and honestly as you can. Links Art/Lab artlabpdx.org The Genesis on Youtube: youtube.com/@thegenesisjewishpodcast Nikki Schulak's Website: nikkischulak.com Her Substack: nschulak.substack.com 

I sit down with Art/Lab director Shoshana Gugenheim—my longtime collaborator—to clarify what changed since Co/Lab went on hiatus and Art/Lab spun out as its own org  and we tackle the basic question: why a Jewish contemporary arts fellowship, and why now? We talk about creativity as core to being human and Jewish, and how Art/Lab serves artists and audiences who don't always find a home in synagogues or legacy institutions. We reflect on October 7 and the year that followed: how Jewish artists across the country were censored or sidelined, and how our cohort became a rare room where people could bring divergent views, grief, and complexity without an ideological litmus test. That experience also shaped the (paused-for-now) gallery vision: a space for experimentation and public-facing work by contemporary Jewish artists in the Pacific Northwest. Then we lay out what Art/Lab looks like today: the flagship nine-month fellowship (this year's theme: memory), public workshops drawn from our growing network of 38 artists, this podcast, deep partnerships with the Oregon Jewish Museum and Eastside Jewish Commons, and new educators joining our text study series. We also share two big updates: Art/Lab's selection for the 2026 Jerusalem Biennale and fresh support from CANVAS—along with the real-world fundraising trade-offs arts programs face. Finally, Shoshana name-checks what she's loving right now and we close with some breads-and-spreads talk and an open invite to learn more, get involved, or support the work.   Links from the Show Art/Lab website — artlabpdx.org   CANVAS  — bycanvas.org   Jerusalem Biennale  — jerusalembiennale.org   Oregon Jewish Museum & Center for Holocaust Education — ojmche.org   Eastside Jewish Commons — ejcpdx.org   Guerrilla Girls at the Getty — "How to Be a Guerrilla Girl" (Getty Research Institute) — getty.edu    

THIS THURSDAY, DECEMBER 4TH AT 7:30 PM AT THE EASTSIDE JEWISH COMMONS IN PORTLAND YOU CAN COME LEARN IN PERSON WITH THE GUEST ON THIS EPISODE, RABBI ADINA ALLEN. GO TO ARTLABPDX.ORG FOR TICKETS. DON'T MISS THIS WONDERFUL TEACHER!   *This is a re-release of Episode 20 from this season.*   On this show I've continued to explore the boundary between Jewish culture and Jewish religion. We've talked about for example the flourishing of Yiddish artistic culture in the 19th and 20th century, boldly, undeniably Jewish and largely secular. But we've also found links between Jewish religion and culture, like the continued focus on peoplehood, or the texts of the Jewish tradition, or the urge for transcendence. Today's conversation is all about the place where that line between Jewish creative culture and Jewish spirituality disappears, or is reimagined and leapt over - or something. Rabbi Adina Allen is the co-founder and creative director of the Jewish Studio Project. The work of this influential and growing organization is based on Jewish Studio Process, a unique methodology that unlocks creativity through the fusion of art and Jewish learning that has been embraced by thousands of organizational and community leaders, educators, artists, and clergy across the United States. I recently read her book The Place of All Possibility: Cultivating Creativity Through Ancient Jewish Wisdom. I thought it was going to be a book that just encouraged a creative approach to Jewish learning. It is much much more than that. As you'll hear today, it's something like a theology of making that is grounded in Jewish learning. Her work is profound and inspiring. In this conversation we talk about creativity as spiritual technology: a disciplined path to encounter the divine and build a community that is grounded in individual expression. We go into some depth about the Jewish Studio Process so you'll why this work is something original and powerful. We also discuss how this work has been used not only to help individuals deepen their connection to and understanding of Jewish sources but also how it is working its way through schools, synagogues and other organizations. I think you'll really like hearing about this meeting point between creativity, religious experience, and Jewish learning.  Finally, RabbiAllen will be here in Portland on December 4th at 7:30 pm, for a book talk sponsored by Art/Lab and co-sponsored by the Eastside Jewish Commons, The Portland Jewish Federation, and the Jewish Studio Project. More information at artlabpdx.org Enjoy my conversation with Rabbi Adina Allen.  Links: Art/Lab: www.artlabpdx.org Jewish Studio Project: www.jewishstudioproject.org Rabbi Allen's Personal Website: www.adina-allen.com Pat Allen (Rabbi Adina's Mom): www.patballen.com Ayin Press: www.ayinpress.org (where you can find Rabbi Adina's book and many other wonderful Jewish titles)

Don't miss Art/Lab's special guest Rabbi Adina Allen (a guest in episode 20 of this season) IN PORTLAND THIS THURSDAY at the Eastside Jewish Commons. Go to artlabpdx.org for the registration link.    In this week's episode, I talk with puppeteer and theater maker Ora Fruchter about what actually happens when an object comes alive on stage. Ora walks me into the inner mechanics of puppetry in a way that has nothing to do with tricks or clever engineering. Instead, she talks about breath, presence, and the strange collaborative agreement between performer and audience—the shared moment when everyone decides that a piece of tissue or wood is breathing. Hearing her describe how she "listens" to an object and lets it guide the next movement was one of the most arresting parts of our conversation. As we keep talking, something deeper opens up. Ora grew up in a Modern Orthodox world steeped in text study, and although she doesn't label her art "Jewish," the parallels are unmistakable. She and I explore how puppetry resembles Torah in its basic structure: nothing comes alive unless the community brings its imagination to it. Meaning isn't delivered; it's co-created. The act of witnessing becomes the act of animating. That connective, interpretive, breath-driven space is where Ora locates her spirituality, and it's where she feels most present and most herself. We also talk about her family, which turns out to be a full ecosystem of artists—writers, musicians, rabbis, makers. Ora shares the new collaborative project she's building with her siblings: Boy of the Sea, based on her sister's invented Jewish folktales, a set of stories that feel both ancient and entirely original. She describes the early stages of translating these tales into puppet theater and how she's thinking about ancestry, Shabbat tables layered across time, and the echoes of past generations that move through the work. Finally, we explore another show she's developing with a collaborator in Portland, You're Doing It Wrong, a family performance about animals and natural creatures who are inexplicably terrible at what they're "supposed" to be good at. The piece, like much of Ora's work, uses humor and lightness as a way into more serious questions—how we handle discouragement, how we show up for each other, and how we stay human in difficult times. Throughout the episode, I found myself struck by how naturally Ora weaves craft, spirituality, and community into a single practice. It's a conversation about puppetry, yes, but also about presence, lineage, imagination, and the things that really make us come alive.   Links Art/Lab: artlabpdx.org Ora's Website: orafruchter.com The South Philadelphia Shtiebel (synagogue of Ora's sister Rabbanit Dasi Fruchter): southphiladelphiashtiebel.org Sandcatchers (Ora's Brother's Band): sandcatchers.bandcamp.com City of Laughter (Novel by Ora's sister) Book Review in NYT. Click Here. Ronnie Burkett: https://www.johnlambert.ca/ENGLISH/ronnie-burkett/   The Genesis is created, produced and edited by Rabbi Joshua Rose and is supported by Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture. Theme music composed by Rabbi Joshua Rose

In this episode I sit down with illustrator Youki Iimori for a frank conversation about the realities of building an artistic life—creative identity, comparison, intention, and the pressure to make work that "sells."  Youki was part of Art/Lab: Jewish Arts and Culture's third cohort.  Youki talks openly about early talent, hitting a wall of self-comparison, an ADHD diagnosis that arrived much later, and the long aftermath of trying to make art while fighting a loud inner critic. We get into how animation, manga/anime, and gaming shaped Youki's visual instincts, and why intent—not medium, not market—determines whether something is art. That takes us through Duchamp's urinal, bananas duct-taped to gallery walls, the economics of contemporary art, and why a game like Undertale can carry more artistic coherence than many prestige museum pieces. We also talk about Youki's Jewish upbringing,  the Jewish ideas that sit under the surface for Youki—not as symbols or motifs but as conceptual frameworks—and how those Jewish concepts might surface more clearly in long-form work like comics or animation. And throughout the conversation, we keep returning to a central question: what happens to an artist's work when they stop comparing themselves to everyone around them and start making the things they actually enjoy? You'll hear about the challenge of finding one's voice, the pull between pure creativity and professional expectations, and the choice to relieve financial pressure so art can breathe again. Show Notes:  Art/Lab: artlabpdx.org Youki Imori (Ee-mori): yiillus.com  "Why Undertale is a Timeless Masterpiece" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o79TiRMgLmw (note: this is not a recomendation from Youki) Museum of Modern Art page on Barnett Newman (painter) https://www.moma.org/artists/4285-barnett-newman The podcast is a production of Rabbi Josh Rose with support of Art/Lab.  Theme music created by Rabbi Josh Rose

Today's conversation is with artists historian and Jewish educator, Leila Wice, someone whose life pretty much explodes the idea that Judaism has to be either religious or secular, or traditional or creative. In fact, it can be all those things. Leila is an art lab alum but started out as a historian of 19th century Japan, so she's journeyed quite away. She was obsessed with the idea that objects or texts as she talks about, and she'll actually share an object with us,, which you can see in video. It exemplifies how an object can become a text and also exemplifies how reinvention and creativity lie at the core of her vision of what it means to be Jewish Over time and with a big push from Art La, her sensibility moved from the archive and her academic life into the studio and into her Jewish life. Leila talks also about the Jewish Studio Project and the impact that that had on her. And if you listen to last week's episode, you will have heard from the co-creator of the Jewish Studio Project, Rabbi Adina Allen, and you can go back and hear that episode if you want to  understand the underpinnings of that.  Leila and I discuss all of that and we cover a lot of other ground. We talk about the erased world of Yiddish modernist culture and how it's been reclaimed by feminists and queer artists. We talk about Refrom Judaism not as a watered down tradition, but as a bold engine of invention. And really at the heart of our conversation and underlying all of this, is a discussion about whether creativity itself is the real through line of Judaism after the destruction of the temple. So she brings her own experience of Jewish creativity from what she's learned. And from her own creative impulses and brings it all together in this vision that she has of what it means to live a Jewish life. Leila brings it all down to ground level with her work on mikvah, on ritual immersion, that is as a tool for transition, and on transforming broken glass from anti-Semitic vandalism into shimmering ritual art, which kind of encapsulates what she does. We also wrestle with fear and safety, armed guards or community peacekeepers, hiding damage or making art out of it, and what it all means to stay Jewishly rooted if you don't think of yourself as religious at all. So I hope you enjoy this conversation with Leila Wice. Art/Lab: www.artlapdx.org Jewish Studio Project: https://www.jewishstudioproject.org   SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva: https://svara.org   Yiddish Book Center: https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org   The Way We Think: A Collection of Essays from the Yiddish (2 vols., 1969) Joseph Leftwich (ed.),   Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/15900/persepolis-by-marjane-satrapi   Monsters Are Afraid of the Dark,  Marjane Satrapi

Reminder: Stephen Arnoff will be in Portland tomorrow evening - that is Thursday, November 13th - for the Art/Lab event, The Jew-ish Spiritual Wisdom of Bob Dylan | An Evening of Music and Conversation with Dr. Stephen Arnoff (w/special guest Alicia Jo Rabins on violin). If you haven't heard my conversation with Stephen, go back and listen to episode 16 from this season. Such an interesting guy with big ideas and insights into Dylan and more. Go to artlabpdx.org to register. Again Thursday November 13th at 8pm at he Eastide Jewish commons. ------- On this show I've continued to explore the boundary between Jewish culture and Jewish religion. We've talked about for example the flourishing of Yiddish artistic culture in the 19th and 20th century, boldly, undeniably Jewish and largely secular. But we've also found links between Jewish religion and culture, like the continued focus on peoplehood, or the texts of the Jewish tradition, or the urge for transcendence. Today's conversation is all about the place where that line between Jewish creative culture and Jewish spirituality disappears, or is reimagined and leapt over - or something. Rabbi Adina Allen is the co-founder and creative director of the Jewish Studio Project. The work of this influential and growing organization is based on Jewish Studio Process, a unique methodology that unlocks creativity through the fusion of art and Jewish learning that has been embraced by thousands of organizational and community leaders, educators, artists, and clergy across the United States. I recently read her book The Place of All Possibility: Cultivating Creativity Through Ancient Jewish Wisdom. I thought it was going to be a book that just encouraged a creative approach to Jewish learning. It is much much more than that. As you'll hear today, it's something like a theology of making that is grounded in Jewish learning. Her work is profound and inspiring. In this conversation we talk about creativity as spiritual technology: a disciplined path to encounter the divine and build a community that is grounded in individual expression. We go into some depth about the Jewish Studio Process so you'll why this work is something original and powerful. We also discuss how this work has been used not only to help individuals deepen their connection to and understanding of Jewish sources but also how it is working its way through schools, synagogues and other organizations. I think you'll really like hearing about this meeting point between creativity, religious experience, and Jewish learning. Finally, RabbiAllen will be here in Portland on December 4th at 7:30 pm, for a book talk sponsored by Art/Lab and co-sponsored by the Eastside Jewish Commons, The Portland Jewish Federation, and the Jewish Studio Project. More information at artlabpdx.org Enjoy my conversation with Rabbi Adina Allen.   Links: Art/Lab: www.artlabpdx.org Jewish Studio Project: www.jewishstudioproject.org Rabbi Allen's Personal Website: www.adina-allen.com Pat Allen (Rabbi Adina's Mom): www.patballen.com Ayin Press (where you can find Rabbi Adina's book and many other wonderful Jewish titles): www.ayinpress.org  

Today I am speaking with artist Jessica Rehfield, whose work lives at the intersection of art, Jewish identity and resistance. Jessica was in our first art lab cohort and her big, bold paintings at the first exhibition. I can still remember. Jessica is not a wallflower in their work or their life, and is a self-described big old queer Jew. And that Jewish and Queer self understanding isn't just decorative. It's the backbone of their practice paintings, their community projects, writings push back against what they call the state of Miseducation about both queer and Jewish histories.  In this conversation, Jessica describes how their work evolved from solitary charcoal drawings during graduate school into collaborative community centered projects, art as a form of collective response to fascism. Jessica insists that art. And politics cannot be separated when your very existence is politicized and is an advocate for linking the inherent politics of Jewishness as they see it with the experience of marginalization of Jews and of queer people. We talk about how Jewish and queer communities are each under pressure, and how shared language history and courage might help us rehumanize one another in this fractured moment. We also dig into Jessica's rediscovery of Yiddish during the pandemic, A language that they call the body of the Jewish Spirit out of their focus. On that came a self illustrated Yiddish primer as they'll describe new large scale paintings in a renewed understanding. That they had of language as both inheritance and resistance. Now, if you have not heard yet, my discussion with Lou Cove way back in season two, that can help frame an understanding for this part of the conversation (Episode 20) about how Yiddish culture's breadth and unifying Jewish diversity contrasts with our fractured Jewish world today. Thank you for listening. And hey, if Jewish ideas, Jewish identity, and Jewish creativity are important to you, please tell one person about this podcast. Word of mouth is how people hear about new, cool things, and it's how podcasts grow. Plus, this is a really, really important moment for us to put strength, creativity, and Jewish pride right out there, front and center. Thanks for listening. Enjoy my conversation with Jessica Rehfield.    Links relevant to the conversation:  www.artlabpdx.org www.instagram.com/alenereh/ www.jessicarehfield.com www.yiddishbookcenter.org

 One of the unexpected pleasures of hosting these conversations with Jewish artists is noticing the recurring themes that emerge without my planning them. Again and again, I see points of convergence between important Jewish religious questions and the experience of artists in their creative work. I continue to hear resonances between between artistic vision and spiritual yearning, between creative community and Jewish religious community in these convresations with Art/Lab's cohort of Jewish artists. It's become clear to me that this isn't a coincidence, but a profound area of inquiry: where do art and religion meet, and why do so many artists find themselves, consciously or not, engaging religious or spiritual questions through their work? This theme is especially present in my conversation today with painter Justin Jude Carroll, a member of Art/Lab's inaugural artist cohort. Justin is a classically trained artist whose vivid, abstract paintings have been shown throughout Portland and are now beginning to receive national attention. His creative journey is inseparable from his personal journey, particularly his recovery from a traumatic brain injury—a pivotal experience that reoriented his life and ultimately led him toward painting with a new sense of urgency and authenticity. What fascinates me about Justin's story is how it illuminates a deeper connection between art and spirituality: both can become vehicles for healing, for transformation, and for the search for authenticity. At the heart of both traditions lies a fundamental Jewish religious question: Who am I, and what am I called to bring into the world? Artists, like seekers in religious communities, often struggle to navigate the tension between external expectations and inner truth. As Justin and I discuss, that tension is not simply psychological—it is, in many ways, theological. We also touch on the role of community—how both Jewish religious and artistic communities can serve as containers for growth, vulnerability, and accountability, and how essential that network is for an artist trying to push the boundaries of their own voice.  This is a rich and wide-ranging conversation: we explore art as a mystical and spiritual practice, Justin's current work and expanding national presence, and the ways in which creativity itself can become a path of meaning-making. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Justin Jude Carroll. 

One of the enduring questions of Jewish life is this: How do we hold on to individual expression while remaining rooted in inherited tradition? Another is equally urgent: What is the role of art in a world in crisis? My guest today lives at the heart of these tensions and turns them into music. Aaron Kahn is a trumpet soloist, educator, and creative force—described recently as a "Portland-based trumpet virtuoso"—who uses music as a vehicle for healing, social engagement, and for spiritual connection. In our conversation, we explore the power of sound, not simply as entertainment, but as a transformative force that can respond to the brokenness of our time.  Aaron speaks candidly about his emergence as an experimental artist working within—and pushing against—the boundaries of classical tradition. Together, we draw parallels between Jewish liturgy and classical composition: both deeply structured forms that still make space—sometimes limited space—for individual voice and meaning. What does creative freedom look like inside structure? Where is the line between preservation and reinvention? This season on the podcast, we've been asking what social responsibility artists carry in the 21st century. Aaron insists on relevance and engagement. He calls for music that confronts our reality head-on, music that is spiritually grounded and socially awake, including in the post–October 7th landscape where questions of identity, community, and responsibility are sharper than ever. Aaron was a member of the second Art/Lab cohort and is widely recognized across Portland's creative community. He studied Music and Cognitive Psychology at McGill University, earned his BFA from CalArts, and completed his Master of Music at the University of Oregon, where he served as Graduate Teaching Fellow under the renowned Brian McWhorter. His performance career includes collaborations with Grammy-winning artists such as Teddy Abrams, Michael Gordon, Mason Bates, David Rozenblatt, and the band Chicago. Here in Portland, audiences have heard him premier an arrangement of Handel's Judas Maccabaeus at Congregation Beth Israel, and perform at the Opening Ceremony of the Oregon House of Representatives this legislative session. This is a conversation not just about music, but about what it means to be a human being—and a Jew—making art in a time that demands both courage and imagination. Enjoy my conversation with Aaron Kahn. Links from the Episode Art/Lab www.artlabpdx.org Aaron Kahn https://aaronkahncreator.com/ Ernest Bloch – Sacred Service https://www.ernestbloch.org/ Rising Song Institute (Hadar) https://www.hadar.org/torah-tefillah/rising-song Oregon Jewish Museum & Center for Holocaust Education https://www.ojmche.org/

Portland residents take note: Today's guest, Stephen Arnoff, will be in Portland on Thursday November 13th at 8pm at the Eastside Jewish Commons as a guest of Art/Lab. Register for this night of Dylan's music and for reflection on Dylan's Jewish spiritual wisdom at artlabpdx.org I've been circling two questions for a long time on this show. First: how do traditions actually stay alive—who keeps the line between the core source material and the later commentary tight enough to matter, but loose enough to breathe? Second: what kind of community can nurture both a deep connection to the Jewish past and also support artistic creative freedom and independence? This was a fun conversation for me not only because I got to indulge my Bob Dylan brain with this Dylan maven but also because over the past few months, I've become a little obsessed with American roots music and country. And, I love and listen to a lot of contemporary music. So as an overthinking rabbi, I've wondered about how our traditions - American or Jewish - do or do not show up in contemporary culture. Stephen Arnoff had a lot to say on this topic because he lives every day at the intersection of tradition and contemporary expression. He is Chief Executive Officer of the Fuchsberg Jerusalem Center, a leading hub for Jewish learning and culture in Israel. He founded Zamru, Fuchsberg's flagship musical and cultural initiative, and he's spent more than two decades building real infrastructure for artists and seekers—at the 92nd Street Y, the 14th Street Y, Shalem College, and the JCC Association. He earned his doctorate in Midrash and Scriptural Interpretation at JTS as a Wexner Graduate Fellow, and his professional fellowships include the Mandel Jerusalem Fellowship and a Tikvah Fellowship at NYU School of Law. He helped launch LABA, which became a global network of cutting-edge artist residencies; chaired Jerusalem Culture Unlimited from 2017 to 2024, supporting more than 50 emerging cultural organizations; and serves as an Executive Mentor with CANVAS, North America's largest grant-maker for Jewish arts and culture. He's also the author of About Man and God and Law: The Spiritual Wisdom of Bob Dylan, based on his podcast od the same name. We talk about Dylan as a laboratory for empathy and interpretation, and about the practical, unsexy scaffolding—space, time, money, safety—that lets artists refresh a tradition rather than merely borrow its language. Enjoy!   Show Notes and Links Registration for Portland Nov 13 Event: artlabpdx.org Stephen Arnoff: https://www.stephendanielarnoff.com/ Fuchsberg Center: https://fuchsbergcenter.org/ Arnoff's Dylan Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bob-dylan-about-man-and-god-and-law/id1522223234?utm_source=chatgpt.com