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Jewish artists in Canada turned inward during 2024—and discovered bolder identities to share for 2025

Lelala Hewak has been taking portrait photos of hundreds, if not thousands, of Jews worldwide for a project called The J-Word, which is all about challenging assumptions about appearance.

“What we like to do, where we live, how we like to live, how we like to dress, how we like to worship—everything about us is different,” she said.

Leala Hewak photographs a subject. (Credit: Jordi Nackan)

“It bothers me that people dare to make damaging generalizations, let alone slurs or attacks, and they don’t even know anything.”

She’s conscious that putting the spotlight on Jewish faces, right now, may “raise eyebrows” or encounter pushback, she says, but Hewak points to rising antisemitism as an issue on a worldwide scale.

“There’s plenty of people working on humanitarian and other political issues to do with how things are being handled by Israel in the Middle East. It’s not my area of expertise. Why would I dare go there?… Doesn’t mean I should be silent on this other problem.”

Hewak recently visited New York to take the portraits of freestyle rapper Kosha Dillz, and Rabbi Manis Friedman of Chabad Lubavitch—both of whom are familiar figures on social media. Her goal is not proving multiethnic Jews exist, she says.

“I’m not trying to say ‘Oh, look, we have different colour skin’,” but rather, that a Jew might wear, for example, anything from construction work clothes to the black suits of some religiously observant Jews.

Hewak’s playful, provocative art is one approach among many within Jewish creative circles, where artists have now contended for more than a year with a cultural world that often defaults toward overwhelming anti-Israel sentiment, and frequently poses litmus tests around it. Even artists who have refrained from commenting on the political situation post-Oct. 7 can find themselves under attack or cancelled.

Jewish arts events now tend to involve extra calculations about security for venues, audiences, and artists, causing artists to grapple with how much or in what capacity to identify Jewishly in their creative output.

For some, this new environment has meant deliberately looking inward and making art that draws more explicitly on their tradition than ever before.

Toronto-based Tamar Ilana Cohen Adams, who performs Mediterranean music and dance, was in Izmir, Turkey on Oct. 7, 2023. Following the attack, her concerts, including one at a synagogue, were moved due to safety concerns, including fears of bomb threats.

“They took down the flyers that were all over Istanbul and Izmir, and we did private house concerts. Now that was the first time I felt that kind of need to hide as a Jew,” she said.

Tamar Ilana in Nelson, B.C., in 2023. (Facebook)

Tamar Ilana, as she’s professionally known, visited the region every summer growing up, with her mother, ethnomusicologist Judith Cohen, who immersed her in folk music traditions including Ladino and Sephardic songs. Now she’s the vocalist at the front of Toronto’s Jaffa Road, a Jewish/Middle Eastern fusion band, and leads Ventanas, her Mediterranean and world music project, in which she incorporates flamenco into her performance and composes new music using or referencing traditional forms.

The apprehensions have been a new experience within a musical and cultural world that was part of Tamar Ilana’s travels and upbringing.

“My whole life, it’s always been in the background. But I had never felt it myself until I was in Turkey. All the Jewish schools closed, Jews stayed home, Jews hid, and we hid our concert.”

During concerts in Spain after Oct. 7, she felt pressure to make statements related to the war, and decided to acknowledge the possibilities for coexistence that her music demonstrates, by closing out Ventanas shows with a Moroccan Sephardic number, or, with Jaffa Road, a tune in Hebrew and Arabic.

“This is music of the Sephardic Jews, Morocco, Arabic, Hebrew… an example of peace and how people can live together,” she’ll say.

But even absent political statements, audience members disrupted Jaffa Road’s performance six months ago at the 2024 Hillside Festival in Guelph, Ont., by yelling from beside the outdoor stage.

The band had to stop the show and she addressed the protesters. 

“This isn’t how you do things. You do things through conversation,” she recalls saying.

“I was trembling… it was pretty crazy.”

Tamar Ilana was also targeted with a threatening Instagram message ahead of a live show she was producing, earlier in 2024.

“I was throwing an event for Indigenous women… We got these messages about turning it into a Palestinian fundraiser ‘or else,’ basically.” She called security. (Tamar Ilana has Cree-Salteaux ancestry from her father Robert Adams, who’s a poet and photographer.)

“This is without me saying anything at all, all year, so I can’t imagine [where the threat originated]… This is from people reading my bio and seeing I’m Jewish, is the only thing I can gather.”

Tamar Ilana, who recently released Ventanas’ latest album, says she’s feeling a shift toward “looking inwards” that Jewish friends and colleagues in particular have observed.

“Friends sort of emerged who happen to be Jewish… suddenly we were looking for solidarity in each other, and just to be in a room where we felt safe and where we felt surrounded by people who understood us.

“We heard our whole lives about Jewish history, and I’ve always felt like it was like an extended Jewish family. It’s almost… the family coming together now, when we need each other—even people who you don’t know that well, but there seems to be this cord,” she said. “It’s comforting, but it’s also a little scary that we need it.”

Aaron Lightstone, the Jaffa Road bandleader and oud player, said they were performing music based on poetry by Israel ben Moses Najara, a 15th century rabbi who lived in Gaza, Safed and Damascus, when demonstrators interrupted.

“If you’re protesting Tamar and Jaffa Road, you’re either totally ignorant because you have no business protesting; don’t know what you’re talking about; or totally antisemitic.”

Lightstone is rethinking music festival submissions for 2025, and wonders if it’s safer to focus on bookings at Jewish venues exclusively.

“As much fun as they are, should I be chasing Canadian jazz and folk festivals?”

It’s an odd question, Lightstone says, for a band centring “coexistence, [and] pushing Jewish music into [the] mainstream.”

Still, he says, “it doesn’t take a lot of people to be disruptive.”

A new brand of unity

Jewish Futures, an arts and culture salon held on Nov. 24, offered conversational spaces to foster a sense of Jewish unity in the arts. (The CJN was a promotional partner for its second year.)

Kultura Collective, an initiative by UJA Federation of Greater Toronto, organized the day, including a session on exploring Yiddish cultural expressions, where visual artist Jonah Strub discussed making artwork “as accessible as possible,” often through humour. His ultimate goal is “to provide representation to other queer and Jewish people.”

During a panel discussion titled “Jewish Infusions,” four artists shared how they’ve incorporated their Jewish identity into their creative practices and output.

Erez Zobary, a Toronto singer and songwriter, was releasing her new album, which explores her identity through connecting to her Yemeni Mizrahi background and her grandmother’s story of leaving Yemen for Israel via Operation Magic Carpet. Zobary received a Canada Council for the Arts grant to visit family in Israel as part of the personal project.

The new album is a departure from her previous work, where her songs “[talked] about getting dumped on a Thursday,” she said.

Making new music that’s so “outwardly Jewish,” with Hebrew and English song titles, plus Yemeni Jewish cultural elements, allowed her to see the process in a new way.

“Before I was making music about coming of age… breakups and living in the city and trying to figure out who I am,” said Zobary.  “With this one, it definitely feels different.”

In the months following the Oct. 7 attacks, Zobary says, her writing process for the new album shifted.

“’I [had been] so excited to write this project and to share my identity with people… and then I just became so afraid to do it, and I think it took me months and months to get to a point again when I [felt] good to share it.”

Some panellists said they braced themselves for a negative reception that thankfully never came.

Playwright and actor Jordi Mand described an unexpectedly warm reception to her own work In Seven Days from audiences in London, Ont., where her family lives. The play unfolds as a family contends with their father opting for Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID), and includes a rabbi among the play’s five characters.

“The father goes through with ending his life … [it’s about] how we say goodbye to people we love, but it’s also about MAID in the context of Judaism.”

Mand lives in Toronto but says she remains connected to her synagogue in London, and was apprehensive when her play was mounted in a city where the Jewish community is less prominent.

“I was absolutely terrified about sharing an unabashedly Jewish story there,” specifically, when the show’s run started last February at the Grand Theatre.

But the London response was “overwhelmingly positive,” she says.

“It really taught me a lot about where we are in place and time… [with] stories where there is such universality.”

Painter and jeweller Edith Barabash, who had been working as a lawyer in Victoria, B.C., started making and selling art out of a camper van two years ago. While there wasn’t much Jewish content at first, she now makes earrings of challah, babka, and matzah, and paints shofar-blowing scenes.

She lost online followers after releasing work with Jewish symbols.

“People who didn’t resonate with that, just unfollowed me immediately as soon as I started posting anything related to Judaism, Israel… a lot of the following that I built up until then was gone. And then a new following came.”

Barabash says she now feels called to bring community connections to her work—and now, she tends to stick to Jewish markets. She agrees “we’re becoming more insular.”

She also finds beauty in Jewish artists leaning into Jewish culture.

“When the world is more ready to hear those stories and see that art, we’re going to be so much stronger as a community, and our stories are going to be stronger.”

Josh Saltzman, a screenwriter whose recent short film is a horror set at a shivah, said he encounters antisemitism constantly in his industry, including social media posts from his crew members. It has led him to prepare for potential disruptions at film festival screenings.

When asked later if the antisemitism has worsened, Saltzman wrote in response: “I do believe it’s been worse since Oct. 7. Although I can’t say if antisemitism is spreading or people are just emboldened to be louder about it.”

However, he remains unapologetic about making space for Jewish culture.

“Every culture should get to share their stories… if people are going to unfollow any of us, any artists … their loss. Let them unfollow.”

While antisemitism is probably making Jewish artists more insular, that shouldn’t silence them, he says.

“I don’t want to let that stop me from making Jewish stories, because some people hate Jews. That’s the history of the world. So keep making art.”

Saltzman’s uplifting tone closed out the panel with a call for collective support.

“I feel like more than ever, I want to be more provocative with my work… I encourage any of you that are artists or have anything to say or even just how you live your life to spread [your] wings more,” said Saltzman.

“I am scared to do it, but I’m trying to and I want to… I feel like if I see other people spreading their wings, I’m more encouraged to do it as well,” he said, to a room of nodding respondents.

Jewish Futures 2024 in Toronto brought Jewish artists together. (Credit: Shay Markowitz)

In the concluding conversation at the salon, Indigenous and Jewish actor and director Jennifer Podemski called stories her bridge-building effort, including Little Bird, the TV series she co-created about a First Nations woman adopted by a Jewish family during Canada’s Sixties Scoop, who tries to reconnect with her birth family and heritage.

“I am fascinated and dedicated to sparking humanity through story… that sparks something in someone else that they connect to, that creates a bridge,” said Podemski. “And in that bridge, you can build a conversation and from that conversation, you can have a dialogue.

“As much as I really didn’t like or enjoy being Native and Jewish pretty much most of my life… I realized that it was on purpose that I was this thing at this time and doing this work… to find humanity in some way, and tell the stories that can connect people.”

Now more than ever, she said, Jewish expressions may be sparking difficult conversations.

“Nobody cared about it before. Right now people care about [Jewish identity] because they don’t like it, and they don’t want you to exercise your Jewishness anymore… so I want to exercise it more.”

Pride in the face of prejudice

Sam Mogelonsky is director of Arts, Culture and Heritage at UJA Federation of Greater Toronto and runs Kultura Collective, which has now produced two Jewish Futures conferences since Oct. 7.

“Everyone’s approaching this moment differently,” said Mogelonsky.

Pride in being Jewish might look different for each person: Self-identifying in a website bio, for instance, as a Jewish Canadian or Israeli Canadian artist, “where maybe that word Jewish wasn’t there before,” said Mogelonsky, although she notes “some people have taken that wording out of their bios.”

There’s a sense of seeking out “like-minded creatives,” she says, which runs parallel with fears about “how you are going to be perceived by the wider community… that potentially, doors might close on you if you are outward with that identity.”

It’s both a complicated moment, and a sad one, says Mogelonsky, with fears about additional security needs, or perceptions that venues aren’t interested in Jewish cultural content.

“There’s many reasons why people may not want to be as open about their connections to being Jewish,” she said. “At the same time that we’re finding so much pride and joy in sharing these Jewish stories… we’re also finding moments of complication around that.”

Jewish Futures, she hopes, offered inspiration, helped grow connections, or simply allowed artists to hear “that other people are feeling the same way that you are.”

Mogelonsky developed the cultural salon concept following discussions she and UJA colleagues were having with artists during a previous event series called Art Schmooze, where informal gatherings—usually held at art galleries—brought artists together over wine and cheese.

Now, in some pockets of Toronto, gallery events are helping Jewish artists forge new connections outside the fraught, one-sided alignment of many left-leaning elements of independent arts communities.

Gillian Lahav and Zack Rosen were booking a show at a Dundas Street West gallery when the venue declined to host a Jewish-themed show. The painter friends instead ran a cat-themed exhibition, and invited friends for an Art Shabbat evening on a Friday in November. (The gallery says it’s open to hosting more Shabbat events.)

“It’s kind of difficult to find homes for Jewish work right now,” said Rosen. “There’s a sense in the broader world that to engage with Jewish work right now is unsafe for the venue holding it.”

He says the explicitly Jewish gathering provided an important—if also informal—Jewish community space.

“The scariness… some of the heaviness of the world around us now has brought us together,” says Rosen. “And that’s not a terrible thing.”

Lahav says Jewish artists have experienced a level of fear around how they will be received in such spaces.

“[People] are very quick to jump to one side of a binary that we know is nuanced but unfortunately the broader art world forgets is nuanced,” she said.

“When [they] go out of their way to assert which side [of the] boundary they land on,” that can alienate Jewish community members.

“At the same time, it’s an opportunity to see where we are welcome.” Community-based art galleries are where she feels “everyone knows they can have a home.”

Art Shabbat was a way to gather without “the weight we carry around all week.”

Petrina Blander launched her photo exhibition at the She Said Gallery, housed inside a laundromat at 384 Roncesvalles Ave., with a Friday night candle-lighting and challah blessings.

Shabbat Shalom Toronto, which continues to Jan. 8, is not an explicitly Jewish-themed exhibition, she says, although some of the images relate to Judaism, and Blander’s artist bio references her Israeli background.

But the photos were secondary to the gathering itself, according to Blander.

Shabbat blessings kicked off Petrina Blander’s photo exhibition.

“The primary purpose was to bring people together… a safe space to break bread and connect.”

It’s a community where a nearby viaduct had been spray-painted “Fuck Zionists” in huge letters in the weeks after Oct. 7, as Israel’s military attacked Hamas in Gaza.

Blander says she isn’t religious, but found resonance in the idea expressed via the Netflix show Jewish Matchmaking, about how “‘there’s 15 million Jews and there’s 15 million different ways of being Jewish.’”

“I can’t tell you what part of this is Jewish [to me], because to me it doesn’t really matter… we all connect to it in a different way,” she said.

“There was prosciutto on the table… and two ginormous challahs, and they were blessed.”

Blander’s co-organizer Elise Kayfetz, who’s also the thrifting proprietor behind Vintage Shmatta, said Shabbat Shalom Toronto brought together “all walks of life, from Israel to down the street.”

“I haven’t been in a room with this many Jews since my bat mitzvah,” she said at the gathering.

Blander leaned over to Kayfetz: “This is my version of a shtetl in the heart of Toronto.”

The post Jewish artists in Canada turned inward during 2024—and discovered bolder identities to share for 2025 appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.

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Israel Pounds Gaza City Suburbs, Vows to Press on with Offensive

Smoke rises following an Israeli strike, in Gaza City, August 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas

Israeli planes and tanks pounded the eastern and northern outskirts of Gaza City overnight Saturday to Sunday, destroying buildings and homes, residents said, as Israeli leaders vowed to press on with a planned offensive on the city.

Witnesses reported the sound of explosions non-stop overnight in the areas of Zeitoun and Shejaia, while tanks shelled houses and roads in the nearby Sabra neighborhood and several buildings were blown up in the northern town of Jabalia.

Fire lit the skies from the direction of the explosions, causing panic, prompting some families to stream out of the city. Others said they would prefer to die and not leave.

The Israeli military said on Sunday that its forces have returned to combat in the Jabalia area in recent days, to dismantle militant tunnels and strengthen control of the area.

It added that the operation there “enables the expansion of combat into additional areas and prevents Hamas terrorists from returning to operate in these areas.”

Israel approved a plan this month to seize control of Gaza City, describing it as the last bastion of Hamas. It is not expected to begin for a few weeks, leaving room for mediators Egypt and Qatar to try and resume ceasefire talks.

Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz on Sunday vowed to press on with the offensive on the city where famine has been declared, which has raised alarm abroad and objections at home. Katz has said that Gaza City will be razed unless Hamas agrees to end the war on Israel’s terms and release all hostages.

Hamas said in a statement on Sunday that Israel’s plan to take over Gaza City showed it wasn’t serious about a ceasefire.

It said a ceasefire agreement was “the only way to return the hostages,” holding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responsible for their lives.

The proposal on the table calls for a 60-day ceasefire and the release of 10 living hostages held in Gaza and of 18 bodies. In turn, Israel would release about 200 long-serving Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

Once a temporary ceasefire begins, the proposal is for Hamas and Israel to begin negotiations on a permanent ceasefire that would include the return of the remaining hostages.

On Thursday, Netanyahu said that Israel would immediately resume negotiations for the release of all 50 hostages – of whom Israel believes around 20 are still living – and an end to the nearly two-year-old war but on terms acceptable to Israel.

‘HUNGRY AND AFRAID’

Around half of the enclave’s two million people currently live in Gaza City. A few thousand have already left, carrying their belongings on vehicles and rickshaws.

“I stopped counting the times I had to take my wife and three daughters and leave my home in Gaza City,” said Mohammad, 40, via a chat app. “No place is safe, but I can’t take the risk. If they suddenly begin the invasion, they will use heavy fire.”

Others said they will not leave, no matter what.

“We are not leaving, let them bomb us at home,” said Aya, 31, who has a family of eight, adding that they couldn’t afford to buy a tent or pay for the transportation, even if they did try to leave. “We are hungry, afraid and don’t have money.”

A global hunger monitor said on Friday that Gaza City and surrounding areas are officially suffering from famine that will likely spread. Israel has rejected the assessment and says it ignores steps it has taken since late July to increase aid.

The war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led gunmen burst into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mainly civilians, and taking 251 hostages.

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Iran Signals Willingness to Scale Back Uranium Enrichment to Ease Tensions

Atomic symbol and USA and Iranian flags are seen in this illustration taken, September 8, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

i24 NewsIran may be prepared to significantly reduce its uranium enrichment levels in a bid to stave off renewed UN sanctions and limit the risk of further strikes by Israel and the United States, according to a report published Sunday in The Telegraph.

Citing Iranian sources, the paper said Tehran is considering lowering enrichment from 60% to 20%.

The move is reportedly being championed by Ali Larijani, the newly appointed secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, who is holding talks with regime leaders.

“Larijani is trying to convince the system to reduce the level of enrichment in order to avoid further war,” a senior Iranian official told the paper.

The proposal, however, faces stiff resistance from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which has long opposed concessions on the nuclear program. Still, the report suggests Iran’s leadership may be open to greater flexibility, including the possibility of reviving engagement with Western powers.

Last month, i24NEWS reported exclusively that a delegation from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is expected to travel to Iran. The team of technical experts would seek to resume monitoring of nuclear sites, inspections that have been heavily restricted in recent years.

The development comes amid mounting regional tensions and could represent a critical turning point in the long-running nuclear standoff.

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Major Brush Fire Erupts Near Jerusalem, Evacuations Underway

A view of the new Tel Aviv-Jerusalem fast train seen over the HaArazim Valley (“Valley of Cedars”) just outside of Jerusalem, Sept. 25, 2018. Photo: Yossi Zamir/Flash90.

i24 NewsA large brush fire broke out Sunday in the Cedars Valley area, near Route 1 and the Motza interchange, prompting an emergency response from Jerusalem district fire services. Several water-bombing planes were dispatched, and authorities have declared a “fire emergency.”

As a precaution, residents of Mevaseret Zion are being evacuated. Access to the town from Route 1 has already been blocked, and officials are weighing a full closure of the major highway.

Fire crews from the Ha’uma station are on site working to contain the flames, while motorists in the area are urged to heed traffic updates and follow instructions from emergency services.

Eight firefighting aircraft are currently operating above the blaze in support of ground teams. The fire comes amid one of the hottest, driest summers on record, with conditions fueling a series of destructive wildfires across the country.

Officials warn the situation remains critical, as the blaze threatens a vital transportation corridor leading into Jerusalem.

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