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These NYC college students want to kickstart a Jewish arts renaissance
(New York Jewish Week) – On a mild Thursday evening in late March, some 100 people gathered at Kistuné, a hip café and bar in the West Village that’s associated with the French-Japanese “lifestyle brand” of the same name.
Sipping on custom-designed cocktails — like the Refusenik, a Moscow mule with a “resilient mix of vodka, ginger beer and lime” or the Tamar Collinsky, a Tom Collins reimagined and given “very possibly the name of someone you went to summer camp with” — guests mingled, discussing topics as varied as college classes, career choices and their favorite poetry.
Nearly everyone in the room was a Jewish artist or writer; the gathering was to celebrate the launch of “Verklempt!”, a new quarterly print magazine that bills itself as “The Magazine of Jewish Art and Literature.” The 75-page first issue is filled with paintings, photographs, drawings, poetry and fiction solicited from more than 30 Jewish artists around the country.
“We see the Jewish community as a place where people want to engage with fiction and poetry more seriously,” editor-in-chief Yoni Gutenmacher, a 24-year-old creative writing MFA candidate at Brooklyn College, told the crowd, which included two of his brothers and his parents. “This is a personal dream of mine so I’m very happy that it’s real.”
Specialty cocktails were on offer at the launch party of “Verklempt!” (David Gutenmacher)
The aim of “Verklempt!” (Yiddish-English slang for “overcome with emotion”) is to publish and amplify art and literature with a specifically Jewish lens — hopefully in a way that encourages pursuing art as part of a spiritual journey, Gutenmacher explained. A painting of a man praying with tefillin and tallit; a poem about Leopold Bloom, the Jewish anti-hero of James Joyce’s “Ulysses” and a collage of the Lubavitcher Rebbe and a drawing of a half-drunk bottle of Kedem grape juice all grace the pages of the first issue, whose theme is, fittingly, “On Creation.”
“I write fiction and I have a whole friend group and community in New York who aren’t Jewish, and if they are, they’re not really interested in religious or communal Jewish life,” Gutenmacher told the New York Jewish Week. “Then I have my Jewish life on the Upper West Side and all my friends from summer camp and school and everything else who are not really interested in engaging with high quality literature and art. At certain points in my life, I felt like I kind of have to choose.”
By working on “Verklempt!” he’s come to understand that those choices shouldn’t have to be so mutually exclusive, he said.
The journal is a project of Havurah (Hebrew for “fellowship”), an organization founded by two Modern Orthodox sophomores at NYU whose lofty but determined vision is to be the “bearer of a new Jewish renaissance” for young Jews in New York, according to their impressively designed website.
Founded by Daniella Messer and Eitan Gutenmacher (Yoni’s younger brother), Havurah aims to create a gathering place, a “kehila (community) of frum Jewish creatives” — both virtual and IRL — where Jewish artists can meet and mingle, make art, perform and share ideas about how all of those endeavors connect them to religious life. One of their goals, according to the “manifesto” on their website, is to “invigorate a generation of young Jews and restore the Jewish artistic impulse.”
While “Verklempt!” has wide-reaching aspirations — the artists they hope to publish can come from anywhere and be of any age — Havurah was founded to appeal to a hyper-specific community: young New York artists who are dedicated to being Jewish and Jews who are dedicated to being artists.
The idea arose during Gutenmacher and Messer’s freshman year of college in the winter of 2022. “I remember going to Israel over winter break, experiencing such an obvious realization that art and creativity is so integral to religious lifestyles,” Eitan Gutemacher, who is studying studio art at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, told the New York Jewish Week. “But [at NYU] for example, in a lot of the artistic programs, if you’re a religious Jew, you are usually the only religious Jew in the classroom, and, more often than not, the only one in the department.”
“Daniella and I wanted to create a community of lively Judaism expressed in any artistic and creative way,” he added.
With funding from the Next Gen Inc., “a start-up style incubator” that’s a project of the World Jewish Congress and World Union of Jewish Students, Havurah pursues their vision through a variety of avenues, including real-life events and performances, such as art fairs, concerts and Torah study conversations held at bars, cafés, apartments and synagogues.
In addition to the physical journal, the organization’s high-design web site publishes essays, interviews, criticism, reviews and Torah commentaries, as well as “Sessions” for musicians, which are professionally mixed video tapings of live music performances similar to NPR’s “Tiny Desk Concerts.”
“When Eitan and Daniella approached us and told us about Havurah, we knew instantly they would be a great fit for our incubator,” Yoni Hammerman, senior manager of the NextGen, told the New York Jewish Week via email. “Their work, to build a university student-run art community, perfectly aligns with NextGen’s mission of amplifying and supporting the voice and the work of Jewish student leaders.”
The Havurah staff — all eight of them are volunteers — believe that their offerings are the first time people who are both deeply involved in their Jewish communities and in their artistic pursuits have had a definable place to gather and collaborate that celebrate both.
“It’s so simple that you’d think it would already exist,” said Yosef Itzkowitz, a 24-year-old artist and poet who has three drawings in the first edition of “Verklempt!” “Jews love writing and art, and love talking about writing and art,” so why not make it happen?” Itzkowitz got involved, he said, after Eitan Gutenmacher reached out via Instagram.
Of course, similar initiatives have and do exist — for example, the fiction journal JewishFiction.net publishes original and in translation work from Jewish writers around the globe, while CANVAS matches emerging Jewish multimedia artists with funders and grants. The Jewish Book Council puts out their literary journal “Paper Brigade” with art, interviews, essays and fiction, once a year.
On Tuesday, the inaugural Jewish Writers’ Initiative Digital Storytellers Lab showcased works by creators taking part in an eight-month fellowship supported by the Maimonides Fund. The work shown at Manhattan’s Rubin Museum included animation for Jewish kids, pop songs about women in the Bible and a podcast about the gay Jewish dating scene in Los Angeles.
According to Yona Verwer, founder of the Jewish Arts Salon — “a global network for Jewish visual art” that does regular programming in New York — while what the group is doing may not be “new,” one of the most exciting things about Havurah is how young its members are and how dedicated they are to the cause.
“Being geared specifically towards people in their 20s” attracts people who have to be “very enthusiastic and very into it,” Verwer said.
“It’s interesting to see this immense interest in Jewish arts” from younger generations, added Verwer, who started the salon in 2008 and now serves as an advisor for Havurah. “When I started the salon, it was something that a lot of people were not interested in. Things have really changed over the years and it’s great to see people so dedicated.”
Yoni Gutenmacher reads a poem at the launch party of “Verklempt!”, March 30, 2023. (David Gutenmacher)
As of now, contributors are unpaid, though there are hopes that the cover price of “Verklempt!” ($10) may help change that. “There’s a lot of places I see where you submit completely unpaid and it is completely not worth my time,” said Kim Kyne, a 32-year-old painter and sculptor from Los Angeles whose painting was in the first edition of the journal.
“What felt different about this is it feels like everyone’s all in it together,” she added. “Yoni and his brother are super humble and super young. What was really attractive to me about it is being connected with all these other Jewish artists in a way that I haven’t been before.”
Messer and the Gutenmacher brothers understand that the media and literary magazine worlds are very crowded spaces, especially in New York. But for now, they are embracing the heimish vibe and say they’ve seen, first-hand, just how many Jewish artists were looking for a space exactly like this. Submissions are already arriving for the next edition of “Verklempt!”, which is set to be published this summer, and according to Gutenmacher, he doesn’t recognize any of the names — meaning no repeats of last time, and no friends submitting as a favor.
“Of course, there are Jewish artists all over the world. But it feels different because it has more of a modern take and the younger feel,” Kyne said. “It feels like the beginning of a movement.”
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The post These NYC college students want to kickstart a Jewish arts renaissance appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Anti-Israel, Antisemitic Views of US Republicans Concentrated Among ‘New Entrants’ to Party, New Poll Finds
People gather for the UTEP chapter of Turning Point USA’s event featuring Border Czar Tom Homan on Dec. 4, 2025, at the UGLC on the UTEP campus in El Paso, Texas. Photo: USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
A strong majority of Republicans in the US support Israel and reject antisemitism, but “new,” more liberal entrants to the party are more likely to hold an animus toward the Jewish state and tolerate antisemitic hatred, according to a major new survey.
The Manhattan Institute, a prominent US-based think tank, has released a new poll examining the evolving makeup of the Republican Party (GOP) and its current attitudes toward Israel and Jewish Americans.
The results show a GOP that still contains a strong, reliable core of pro-Israel voters, yet one that is increasingly fractured, with a growing minority expressing skepticism toward Israel or even openly hostile antisemitic views.
According to the poll, the majority of Republicans, defined as registered GOP voters or those who, regardless of party affiliation, voted for Donald Trump in 2024, remain consistently conservative on foreign policy and firmly supportive of Israel. The Manhattan Institute divided this group into two groups: “Core Republicans,” defined as “longstanding GOP voters who have consistently backed Republican presidential nominees since 2016 or earlier,” and “New Entrant Republicans,” defined as “recent first-time GOP presidential voters, including those who supported Democrats in 2016 or 2020 or were too young to vote in cycles before 2020.” The two blocs comprise about two-thirds and one-third of the GOP coalition, respectively.
Among the nearly 3,000 total respondents, 55 percent said that Israel is an “important and effective” US ally, while 23 percent said that Israel is “a country like any other” whose interests sometimes align with the US. An additional 12 percent agreed with a description of Israel as a “settler-colonial state” and a liability, indicating a heavy disdain for the Jewish state.
“New Entrant Republicans” perceive Israel in a far harsher light than the general GOP base, according to the data. Among this cohort, 24 percent see Israel as a “liability” while just 39 percent still consider Israel an important ally of the US.
Notably, old guard and newer members of the Republican Party have split perspectives on Qatar, with 41 percent of new entrants viewing the Middle Eastern country favorably compared to 23 percent of “core” Republicans.
The survey also delivers a stark warning about a troubling minority within the GOP and across the broader electorate that holds openly antisemitic views. According to the results, 17 percent of current Republicans can be categorized as “anti-Jewish,” defined as those who “self-identify as both racist and antisemitic and express Holocaust denial or describe Israel as a colonial state” or “do not self-identify that way but nevertheless hold both of those extreme positions.”
The Manhattan Institute found that newer entrants are more likely to be anti-Jewish.
“Anti-Jewish Republicans are typically younger, disproportionately male, more likely to be college-educated, and significantly more likely to be New Entrant Republicans,” the survey states. “They are also more racially diverse. Consistent church attendance is one of the strongest predictors of rejecting these attitudes; infrequent church attendance is, all else equal, one of the strongest predictors of falling into this segment.”
This group is also in general more politically liberal, according to the survey: “Given that many of these voters are younger and former Democrats, more progressive policy tendencies are unsurprising.”
Notably, the Manhattan Institute found slightly higher levels of anti-Jewish sentiment (20 percent) among Democrats.
Among newer Republicans, 38 percent believe that Jews are more loyal to a foreign country than the US, compared to 24 percent of more traditional Republicans.
The “new entrant bloc is more likely to express tolerance for racist or antisemitic speech, more likely to support political violence, more conspiratorial, and — on core policy questions — considerably more liberal than the party’s traditional base,” the Manhattan Institute writes. “These voters are drawn to Trump but are not reliably attached to the Republican Party.”
A key factor in the data is age, with the survey showing a major generational divide in which older GOP voters are much more supportive of Israel and less likely to express antisemitic views than their younger cohorts.
According to the data, 25 percent of GOP voters under 50 openly express antisemitic views as opposed to just 4 percent over the age of 50.
Startlingly, a substantial amount, 37 percent, of GOP voters indicate belief in Holocaust denialism. These figures are more pronounced among young men under 50, with a majority, 54 percent, agreeing that the Holocaust “was greatly exaggerated or did not happen as historians describe.” Among men over 50, 41 percent agree with the sentiment. There are also substantial divisions among racial lines. Whopping amounts of black and Latino GOP voters, 66 percent and 77 percent, respectively, believe in Holocaust denialism. Thirty percent of white GOP voters deny or minimize the Holocaust, according to the Manhattan Institute.
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Neo-Nazis Deploy AI Apps as New Creative Weapons Against Jews, Watchdog Groups Reveal
Screenshots taken on Oct. 23, 2025, of three Sora videos created by user “Pablo Deskobar.”
Large language model (LLM) programs marketed as “artificial intelligence” have become common tools in the kits of online extremists advocating a genocide of the Jewish people, according to new research from longtime watchdogs of antisemitic hate groups and terrorist movements.
On Tuesday, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) released its report, “The Safety Divide: Open-Source AI Models Fall Short on Guardrails for Antisemitic, Dangerous Content,” which presented the results of testing 17 LLM models — including Google’s Gemma-3, Microsoft’s Phi-4, and Meta’s Llama 3 — which are available for anyone to download and customize to their preferences.
“The ability to easily manipulate open-source AI models to generate antisemitic content exposes a critical vulnerability in the AI ecosystem,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the ADL. “The lack of robust safety guardrails makes AI models susceptible to exploitation by bad actors, and we need industry leaders and policymakers to work together to ensure these tools cannot be misused to spread antisemitism and hate.”
In addition to the “open source” models, the group’s researchers analyzed OpenAI’s “closed source” GPT-4o and GPT-5 as a comparison and reported a surprising finding.
“As suggested by previous research and data, OpenAI’s closed-source GPT-4o beat every open-source model (save gpt-oss-20b) in nearly every benchmark, compared to the next highest, the open-source Phi-4 with a score of .84,” the ADL researchers wrote. “GPT-5, in contrast, despite being a newer model than GPT-4o, had a lower guardrail score (.75 compared to .94), fewer refusals (69% compared to 82%), more harmful content (26% compared to 0%) and a higher evasion rate (6% compared to 1%).”
The analysts considered varying explanations for their findings including the possibility “that GPT-5 is designed for ‘safe completions’ (partial or high-level answers), leading to significantly fewer refusals than GPT-4o (e.g., 0% vs. 40% in one prompt). This also resulted in a change of tone. In Prompt 3, for example, GPT-4o started with a preamble about the sensitive nature of the topic, while GPT-5 usually omitted the warning, choosing instead to address and illustrate problematic tropes within the answer itself.”
The complexity of analyzing the LLM models and ambiguity of the results led the ADL to adopt a cautious tone and assess that “we cannot claim a strict linear boost in overall capability.”
“The decentralized nature of open-source AI presents both opportunities and risks,” said Daniel Kelley, director of the ADL’s Center for Technology and Society. “While these models increasingly drive innovation and provide cost-effective solutions, we must ensure they cannot be weaponized to spread antisemitism, hate, and misinformation that puts Jewish communities and others at risk.”
In its list of recommendations in response to the research findings, the ADL urged governments to “establish strict controls on open-source deployment in government settings, mandate safety audits and require collaboration with civil society experts, [and] require clear disclaimers for AI-generated content on sensitive topics.”
The ADL report came out a few days after the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) published a new analysis of how online neo-Nazi advocates have started to use AI models. The group described the discovery of custom AIs with names like “Fuhrer AI” and “Deep AI Adolf Hitler Chat” programmed to speak in the style of the Nazi leader and to promote his genocidal ideology.
“We are also witnessing the rise of a new digital infrastructure for hate. And it’s not just fringe actors,” Steven Stalinsky, executive director of MEMRI, and Simon Purdue, director of MEMRI’s Violent Extremism Threat Monitor project, wrote in their analysis. “State-aligned networks from Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea amplify this content using bots and fake accounts, sewing division, disinformation, and fear — all powered by AI. This is psychological warfare. And we are unprepared.”
Stalinsky and Purdue warned that “the threat isn’t hypothetical. We’ve been studying how extremists began experimenting with generative AI as early as 2022. Since then, the volume, coordination, and sophistication have grown dramatically.”
Analyzing the many dimensions of the threat posed by AI has recently drawn significant research attention from both the ADL and MEMRI, with the two groups findings’ complementing one another.
Last month, The Algemeiner reported on MEMRI’s in-depth analysis, “Artificial Intelligence and the New Era of Terrorism: An Assessment of How Jihadis Are Using AI to Expand Their Propaganda, Recruitment, and Operations and the Implications for National Security.” In October, the ADL released its report, “”Innovative AI Video Generators Produce Antisemitic, Hateful, and Violent Outputs.”
Meanwhile, Israel has begun moving quickly to integrate AI into its war plans.
Last week, the Israel Defense Forces announced its “Bina” initiative, named after the Hebrew word for “intelligence.” This restructuring and consolidating of Israeli military efforts in artificial intelligence-fueled warfare specifically aims to counter aggression from Iran, China, and Russia.
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Can Jewish tradition help you stay sane when all your bosses are ‘idiots’?
Dear Bintel,
My work colleagues and I need your help. Does Jewish tradition have anything to say about how not to lose your mind when all your bosses are idiots?
Signed,
Losing It
Dear Losing It,
Proverbs 29:2 sums up the impact of bad leadership on morale better than I can: “When a wicked man rules, the people groan.” Believe me, I can hear you and your colleagues groaning in response to every ridiculous email and edict from your inept employers.
The Bible is also full of stories about individuals saddled with work they neither want nor enjoy. Jeremiah is a reluctant prophet ordered to deliver messages nobody wants to hear. Jonah also pointed out the futility of his assignment, saying, essentially, “Why should I tell everyone they’re evil when they won’t listen?” Meanwhile, Moses tries to talk God out of giving him the task of leading the Jews out of Egypt.
And what does the Talmud have to say about all this? The sages portray pushback not as insubordination, but as part of the fundamental relationship between Jews and God: We have a responsibility to demand justice and challenge authority.
But how do you do it without getting fired? Speaking truth to power is an art. Nathan the prophet did it with panache: He got King David to see the error of his ways by relating a parable. When David noticed that the man in Nathan’s tale had transgressed, Nathan said to David, “You are the man!”
Now, I’m not saying your work life will improve if you tell your terrible bosses a story in which the villains are thinly veiled versions of themselves. Nor am I suggesting that you must endure 20 years of servitude, like Jacob did, in order to get some sheep and the woman of your dreams, or that you should argue about every single thing you’re asked to do, as did Moses.
But here’s an oft-quoted Talmudic saying that expresses one of Judaism’s guiding principles, and I think it’s relevant to your work-life quandary: “It is not up to you to complete the task, but neither are you free to avoid it.”
In other words, you aren’t responsible for fixing everything that’s wrong with your job. But you are required to make an effort.
What might that look like? How about cheerfully encouraging adherence to best practices by offering evidence-based recommendations? Or matter-of-factly questioning a pointless policy — without pointing fingers — by simply showing that it’s hurting the bottom line or creating delays?
Now I wouldn’t want you to get on the bosses’ bad side or put yourself in the firing line in the course of offering criticism veiled as new ideas. To help your cause, enlist trusted colleagues to backread that email before you send it, or ask others to jointly request a meeting to propose a new approach to something you’re aching to improve.
What if your suggestions and complaints go unheeded? The Talmud tells of a rabbi who predicts that those on the receiving end of his protests “will not accept the rebuke from me.”
Do it anyway, is the response: “Even though they will not accept it, the Master should rebuke them.”
Consider, too, this beautiful precept from the great philosopher Maimonides: “Each of us should see ourselves as if our next act could change the fate of the world.” Meaning that every small choice you make as you carry out your duties — rendering a compliment to an overwhelmed work friend, making a correction without judgment, sharing a shortcut with the team or listening to a colleague’s frustration — matters.
I truly believe that part of how we maintain our sanity in the face of incompetence or evil is by standing up for our own values, even when it seems pointless. If you subscribe to the notion that every righteous act we perform, no matter how small, contributes to repairing our broken world, and if you can truly believe in the power of individual good deeds, it will go a long way toward restoring your peace of mind.
Peace of mind can also come from the time-honored Jewish tradition of kibbitzing. If you don’t already have an online group on WhatsApp or Discord where you and your coworkers can kvetch as well as support each other away from the bosses’ gaze, start one. If your work is in-person, in the office, rather than remote, invite a couple of colleagues out for a beer or coffee or a meetup in the park.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t also serve up this oft-quoted Talmudic nugget: “A person should love work and not hate it.” The ancient rabbis believed work not only supports one’s material needs, but also provides dignity and self-worth — or so it should. If it’s impossible for you to love your work given your current situation; if you can’t bear the thought of sticking it out the way Jacob did; and if you don’t feel motivated enough to push back one small act at a time, as Maimonides advised, well then, you could always go all out and confront those idiotic bosses head on.
Of course, if you do that, they might hand you your walking papers. Then again, maybe being forced to look for a new job isn’t the worst thing that could happen given your disdain for your situation. Maybe you’re thinking of quitting anyway — and maybe that’s not a bad idea. As a more contemporary Jewish sage, Bob Dylan, once said, “All you can do is do what you must.”
Signed,
Bintel
What do you think? Send your comments to bintel@forward.com or send in a question of your own.
This is Beth Harpaz’s final column for Bintel Brief. She managed and wrote for the column from 2022 to 2025.
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