Philadelphia's Rodeph Shalom Scholar Series

"Continuity and Change: Charting a Course for the Future of a Museum, a Synagogue, and a City."

Timothy Rub, Philadelphia Museum of Art Director

Wednesday, February 1 at 7 PM 

Congregation Rodeph Shalom, 615 North Broad Street, Philadelphia

Open to the public.

March 7: Elsie Stern, PhD., Professor of Bible, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College - "Jewish Revenge Fantasy: The Film Inglourious Basterds and the Story of Purim".

Y.U.Museum Tour & Discussion

February 22, 6-8PM
 

Tour of the Y.U. Museum's exhibits, followed by discussion with the curator. 


Y.U. Museum Curator Zachary Levine will lead us through Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women and Prophecy of Place: Quintan Ana Wikswo  Followed by a discussion with the curator.


Open to members & friends of the Jewish Art Salon. Free admission.

Yeshiva University Museum at the Center for Jewish History.

15 West 16th Street, New York, NY 10011.

RSVP required: jewishartsalon@gmail.com

Open Call for Submissions by Sh'ma Journal

Sh’ma is now accepting submissions for its inaugural online art show in May, which will be hosted on its website, www.shma.com.

Each month, Sh’ma will curate a selection of visual and interactive art that best expresses the journal’s monthly theme. This mutually beneficial endeavor will help Sh’ma expand its online content, while giving Jewish artists an opportunity to showcase their talents and increase their exposure.

Talmud Synesthesia (Visual Art/Jazz/Poetry): A unique workshop

Thursday February 16, 8:30PM -10:30PM

Jewish Art Salon and Sixth Street Synagogue in NYC premier a night of break-through cross-genre collaboration.

Talmud Synesthesia (Visual Art/Jazz/Poetry): A Workshop

Open to the public. Welcome to all.

Performance poet Jake Marmer will recite his cycle of Talmud-inspired poems, while musicians will spontaneously "darshen" - interact with, and interpret - the spoken material. Saxophonist Greg "Jazz Rabbi" Wall, Uri Sharlin on keys, Rob Henke on trumpet, and Jon Madof on guitar.

Visual artists (and non-artists) are invited to spontaneously create the next level of "darshening", further interpreting the words and music through their medium.

Greg Wall

There will be discussion and conversation interspersed with the performance.



You are welcome to just hang out and listen / watch, without sketching.


Create your own art work or participate in a collaborative piece!
There will be an opportunity to do large-scale work as well.


Exhibit of the best results will be on view at the synagogue's social hall that night till February 24th.

• The Center for Jewish Arts and Literacy at the Sixth Street Community Synagogue,
• 325 East 6th Street, New York, NY 10003.
• Between 1 & 2 Avenue. N, R, or 6 train to St. Marks Place / Astor Place / 8th Street.
• Thursday February 16, 8:30PM -10:30PM
  
   

$10 Cover /$6 for JAS members.

Bring your own sketch book and art materials. For non-artists who'd like to try, paper & markers will be available.

RSVP required at jewishartsalon@gmail.com

Shaped by Books: The 42-Letter Name

Robert Kirschbaum's art exhibit Shaped by Books: The 42-Letter Name.

      

Opening reception on Sunday, January 22, 2 PM - 4 PM  

Dodd Gallery, Thomas J. Dood Research Center, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT

Exhibition from January 3 - March 2, 2012

Hours: Monday- Friday, 8:30 AM - 4:30 PM 

      

A print folio/artist’s book, "The 42-Letter Name" is a visual commentary on concepts found in early Jewish mysticism relating to The Creation and one of the secret names of God.  Robert Kirschbaum is exhibiting all 42 images from the folio along with other books, ranging from The Sefer Yetzirah to Superman comics, that inspired, influenced and informed "The 42-Letter Name." 

  

More information available here

Article about the exhibit here

Matronita: Jewish Feminist Art - Ein Harod Museum

Helene Aylon

The Mishkan Le'Omanut, Museum of Art, Ein Harod, Israel. 

Matronita: Jewish Feminist Art

Opening: Friday, 11:00 a.m. 27th January 2012.

Curators: Dvora Liss and David Sperber

This will be the first time in Israel that a museum has organized a major exhibition of Jewish feminist art by women who come from a traditional Jewish background.

Jewish Feminist art shares its themes with feminist art in general. Usually these are familiar subjects, such as power and oppression, body image, women as periphery, object-subject, blood and menstruation, and so on. Feminist Jewish works deal with subjects unique to the Jewish experience: niddah and immersion, hair covering, halakhic questions such as the problem of the agunah or halakhic infertility, women's prayer, and women in the study hall.

Mark Podwal's design for the new Reform Haggadah

Podwal's design for the new Reform Haggadah to be published mid to late February 2012.

ATARA Arts Conference February 2012

COMING THIS FEBRUARY 
10-12

Friday Night February 10 - ONEG for the ARTS

Congregation Aish Kodesh, 

894 Woodmere Place Woodmere, NY 11598. http://www.aishkodesh.org/

Improv Theater & Harmonious Zmirot - Open to the Community

Motzei Shabbos February 11 - Coffee House at the Jewish Music Cafe!
401 9th Street Brooklyn, NY 11215 (F to 7th Ave, R to 9th St). 

http://www.jewishmusiccafe.com

Night of women's music with MC Elana Greenspan.
Multiple talented singer-songwriters and Jewish Art sale

SUNDAY FEBRUARY 12 - ARTS CONFERENCE FOR WOMEN
Workshops and programs 10am-5pm in the theater district of Manhattan for Women Only!

Urban Bubble by Elke Reva Sudin

'Hipsters And Hassids' At Mandell JCC

Works By Elke Reva Sudin Show Comparisons Between Those Two Groups

By SUSAN DUNNE, The Hartford Courant | January 11, 2012
The artist's critically acclaimed one-woman show stops for a month starting this week at the Mandell Jewish Community Center in West Hartford. It will be on display there until Feb. 25, alongside works from her "Urban Bubble" series of landscapes of New York City and Israel. Read more...

Urban Bubble January 15 - February 25, 2012

Chase Family Gallery at the JCC of Greater Hartford
335 Bloomfield Avenue West Hartford, CT
Opening Reception with the Artist: Sunday, January 15, 2-4 pm


THe Highline, 2011. Acrylic on canvas, 12 x 48 in.

Urban Bubble is a collection of architectural landscapes and figurative narratives that discuss ideas of cultural identity, spiritual awareness, and attaining perspective in the diversity of urban environments. Select paintings included from the series Hipsters and Hassids juxtapose the similarities between these two dominant cultures sharing the neighborhood of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York. The dichotomy of the hipster and Hassidic Jewish ways of life plays on the Brooklyn resident Elke Reva Sudin’s own understanding of both worlds as a young artist and observant Jew.

CALL FOR PAPERS - CCAR Journal

  CCAR  Journal: The Reform Jewish Quarterly

TOPIC:  The Intersection of The Arts and Judaism

SLATED FOR PUBLICATION:  Winter 2013

GUEST EDITORS: Rabbi Eve Ben-Ora and Vickie Reikes-Fox

There are those who claim that the Jewish world has entered another Golden Age.  Unprecedented opportunities for creative expression have led to a blossoming of the arts in the Jewish world.  Visual expression, music, fine art and crafts have found their way into the consciousness of the Jews.  Museums with Jewish content are being built or reimagined across the country. With the opportunity to create comes the question of authenticity. 

Judaism has often had a conflicted notion of the visual depiction of ideas.  The second commandment, which prohibits making something in GOD’s image, gives the impression that the visual depiction of human beings must be avoided; all the more so, the visage of the Divine.  The strict rules around not illustrating a Torah scroll provide a clear message of avoiding the visual, while the long-standing tradition of illuminating Megilat Esther gives a different message.  To further confuse the issue, we know of examples where it would appear that the prohibition against worshiping other gods is totally disregarded, i.e. early mosaic floors in synagogues that the symbols of the zodiac.

With this background in mind, the Winter 2013 issue of the CCAR Journal: The Reform Jewish Quarterly will offer the opportunity for reflection on the intersection between the arts and Judaism; who can create Jewish art and who determines what makes the art Jewish.

Jewish Art History by Richard McBee

JEWISH ART HISTORY THIS JANUARY

At THE DERFNER JUDAICA MUSEUM, Riverdale NY

This Five-Part Primer on Jewish Art Continues through January with Richard McBee

Join Richard McBee for any or all of this series of classes on Jewish art history. “Murals, Mosaics, and Manuscript Illumination (250 CE to 16th century)” on Jan. 5 will explore the very beginnings of Jewish art with the Dura Europos murals, the synagogue mosaic floors from Roman and Byzantine Palestine, and the Golden Age of Jewish illuminated manuscripts from the 11th to 15th centuries. Then on Jan. 12, “Books, Manuscripts, and the Dawn of Jewish Painting (16th to 20th century)” will trace how the invention of the printing press revolutionized Jewish life and literacy, especially the illustrated Haggadah, as well as, on a much more modest scale, the renewal of illuminated manuscripts in the 17th century. On Jan. 19, “Modernism and Israeli Art – The 20^th Century” looks at how, as modernity revolutionized traditional Jewish life, Jewish artists explored the complexities of art, Judaism, and Zionism inPalestine and Europe. The last session on Jan. 26, “Contemporary Jewish Art (1950 - 2011),” often considered an oxymoron by secular and religious Jews alike, shows how Jewish art has slowly grown from practitioners in total denial about the Jewish content of their work to blossoming groups of artists proudly proclaiming the vibrant creativity of a new contemporary Jewish Art.

AJWS Launches Design Competition to Revitalize Philanthropy

WHERE DO YOU GIVE?  ARTISTS REIMAGINE TZEDAKAH BOX FOR 21ST CENTURY

American Jewish World Service (AJWS), an international development and human rights organization, has launched a national design competition focused on philanthropy and social change. 

Where Do You Give? challenges artists to create a 21st century icon inspired by the values and imagery of the traditional Jewish tzedakah, or charity, box. The organization is encouraging designers to consider the tzedakah box in the context of an increasingly interconnected, global and technologically accelerated world. Submit between 1/10 - 3/1/2012. 

More info here

Call for Art for the Jewish Theological Seminary

The Jewish Theological Seminary in New York:

Seeking images of contemporary Jewish Art on the seven days of creation. If you have created work on this theme and may be interested in the images being used for a Jewish educational curriculum, please contact shirahtova@gmail.com

Robert Katz at the Maine Jewish Museum

Robert Katz

The Five Books of Moses

January 5 - March 20, 2012

Maine Jewish Museum

Portland, Maine. 9-5PM

A mixed media sculptural installation interpreting the Five Books of Moses.

Radical Jewish art and community - Jewish Art Salon at Limmud NY 2012

Patricia Eszter Margit of Art Kibbutz has invited the Jewish Art Salon to participate in two events at Limmud NY.

Panel: Radical Jewish art and community 

Sunday January 15, 2012. 4:40 - 5:35 PM

With Marc Michael Epstein, Patricia Eszter Margit, 

Greg Wall, Yona Verwer

Three Jewish cultural organization’s leaders discuss how their work creates community, encourages diversity, understanding, action, outstanding artistic expression, collaboration and new ways to connect to Jewish identity through art. 

Panelists share their experiences about inspiring, innovative and relevant projects that foster 21st century Jewish culture and creativity, such as Art Kibbutz’s Shofar FlashMob, that involved artists in more than 20 international locations taking a post-modern twist (flashmob) on an ancient ritual (sounding the ram’s horn) enabling myriad of artistic interpretations. Jewish Art Salon’s Dura Europos Project brought together a diverse group of visual artists giving their responses to the very first visual presentation of Jewish culture. Rabbi Greg Wall at The Sixth Street Community Synagogue uses the arts to promote Jewish literacy among artists and their audiences.

Drink’n Draw with Jewish jazz   

Sunday January 15, 2012. 9:15 PM–10:30 PM

With Frank London, Greg Wall, Hasidic New Wave. 

Presenter Patricia Eszter Margit and Curator Yona Verwer.

Silent Witnesses: Julian Voloj

The Jewish Art Salon is a proud collaborator in the exhibit Silent Witnesses: Migration stories through Synagogues Transformed, Rebuilt, or Left Behind.


The story of Detroit is the inspiration for this artists project and exhibition on how synagogues, as community institutions, stand as witness to the social upheavals of our time.


Conceived and sponsored by Cynthia Beth Rubin of the Cultural Heritage Artists Project, Julian Voloj of JWalks: Retracing Jewish Heritage and Yona Verwer of the Jewish Art Salon, this exhibition was initiated as a team effort and coordinated by participating artists. It will take place February and March 2012 at The Holocaust Memorial Center, Zekelman Family Campus in Farmington Hills, Metro Detroit, Michigan. More info on the exhibit here.


We will focus on several artists in the exhibit, starting with Julian Voloj. His project for this exhibit is titled: Forgotten Heritage - Uncovering Detroit’s Hidden Jewish Past.

Ben Schachter's "Who needs the second commandment when we have the fourth?"

Ben Schachter

Who needs the second commandment when we have the fourth?

A reframing of Jewish Aesthetics

Note: This paper was delivered on Monday, December 19, 2011 at the Association for Jewish Studies in Washington, DC.

Does Judaism really have a problem with art?  The prohibition against graven images found in the second commandment has colored our relationship with the visual arts for some time.  Even so, ‘graven images’ remains a convenient definitional tool.  But most of the time discussion begins and ends with the second commandment leaving the issue of art unresolved or meekly suggesting that the arts will always contain an idolatrous temptation.

Events at the Derfner Museum's Women of the Balcony

Jane Trigere

The Derfner Museum in Riverdale NY currently features Jane Trigère’s installation, Women of the Balcony.

Upcoming programs:

• December 26, 2011, 1 PM. Poet Maxine Silverman will lead a poetry and memoir writing workshop exploring themes such as home, refuge and femininity inspired by Jane Trigère’s installation, Women of the Balcony. More info here.

• Jewish Art History. A Four-Part Class with Richard McBee. 

  Join McBee for a series of classes in Jewish Art History. Continues each Thursday in January at 2.30 PM. More info here.

Heather Stoltz's Temporary Shelter Exhibit & Book

Heather G. Stoltz's Temporary Shelter will move to its last NYC venue - Congregation Shaare Zedek, 212 West 93rd St. Temporary Shelter is in the shape of a sukkah, created by Stoltz and homeless New Yorkers.

Join her Monday December 19 at 7:00pm at Shaare Zedek for a discussion about the Jewish texts that inspired the piece and the stories that are inculded in the art.

On Saturday, December 24 at 11:00am, she will be speaking with the children about homelessness and the students she met at the family shelters.  And after the December 24 service, she'll be available to answer questions about the piece.

Mark Podwal's events at the YU Museum

Courtesy Mark Podwal

Join Jewish Art Salon member Mark Podwal for 2 events involving his exhibit at the Y.U. Museum in New York "Old and the New: Mark Podwal’s Textiles for the Altneuschul in Prague".

* Sunday December 18, 2-3 PM - Mark leads a tour of the exhibit.

* Monday, December 19, 2011, 6–8 p.m.
Public program featuring the artist and others on the historic, religious and cultural context of the Altneuschul and the Prague Jewish Community.

Yeshiva University Museum, 15 W. 16th St, New York, NY 10011, 212.294.8330  www.yumuseum.org


Article on Mark Podwal in The Jewish Week here, "Jewish art that is skin deep".