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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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What the private equity takeover means for the bagel industry
The bagel’s stock is, apparently, rising — literally.
Private equity investors have decided, apparently en masse, that bagels are the new frontier for expansion.
A fund called Stripe invested $8 million into PopUp Bagels shortly after the trendy bagel shop, which hawks “rip and dip” bagels, first opened in 2023. A year later, they added $24 million to their contribution and became the majority owner. Now, PopUp Bagels boasts 30 locations.
Invus, an asset management fund, is now the majority owner of Call Your Mother, which began in D.C. but has expanded to 15 locations across the D.C. metro area and, for some reason, Denver. And Manhattan Funds, a large private equity firm, has a specific Bagel Equity Fund devoted to taking over bagelries. The industry is, they write on their site, “under-optimized at the national level.”
Even H&H Bagels, the iconic New York City institution — famed for its cameos in shows like Seinfeld and Sex in the City — has gotten shoveled onto private equity’s giant bagel baking tray. Though Wall Street investor Jay Rushin bought the brand over a decade ago, H&H, too, is beginning its boom era, opening dozens franchises outside of the city.
It’s time, these investment firms all contend, to scale bagels. But can the art of the perfect New York bagel be scaled?
Making the New York bagel in bulk is famously hard. The rings are finicky to roll out, they require boiling, and — perhaps most importantly — the long mythos to the New York bagel has at its core the premise that New York bagels cannot be made without New York water.
Many connoisseurs believe there is an alchemical process to the sought-after chew and crust only achievable with the particular water flowing in the city’s pipes, cascading down from the Catskill reservoirs almost unadulterated. Food science has somewhat debunked that concept, but the legend remains so strong that H&H is promising to par-boil its bagels in NYC water before shipping them to its new franchise locations to be finished in the oven. Even if it’s only marketing, that marketing is powerful.
This is far from the first time that companies have attempted to scale the bagel. In fact, it has worked, in a way: “bagels” can be found, at mass scale, in every major grocery store in the country, offered in plastic sleeves of a half-dozen.
The problem is that those bagels are gross. They’re made by machine, and steamed instead of boiled, which gives a glossy surface, yes, but none of the chew of a true boiled crust. The grocery store bagels are convenient and shelf-stable, sure, but they’re the Wonder Bread of the form: mushy and milquetoast. They have none of the hallmarks of a true bagel.
It’s possible that the private equity masterminds have landed on a secret to scaling the bagel without eventually reducing it to a wan grocery store offering. The results of the Wall Street takeover of the form are still emerging, and the business model could be dependent — at least at first — on devising the perfect product, and not just a passable one.
It just seems unlikely. The investment firms are built around, well, investors, not consumers. Their goal is producing equity and capital for their investors, not making the perfect bagel.
The term “enshittification,” coined by writer Cory Doctorow, has been around for a few years. It describes exactly what it sounds like — the phenomenon of everything growing, uh, worse. Specifically, it describes the way that large companies, often funded by venture capital and private investors, make their products worse over time in the process of wringing money out of the business to serve their CEOs and investors.
Doctorow, in his book on the subject, Enshittification, focuses largely on tech platforms as he examines the term. There’s Amazon: Long gone are the days of a well-priced product you could find more easily online than in a store. Now, search results are polluted by whatever someone has paid to boost to the top of the page, and it’s not even that cheap anymore. Or Twitter, which once bought by Elon Musk, fired its content moderation team to cut costs and turned its user verification, which was once limited to public figures, into a pay-to-play feature. As a result, the platform may have more income streams, but any regular user can attest that their feed is now full of neo-Nazis who shelled out for an algorithmic boost.
But it’s not just platforms — culture and aesthetics are targets for cash extraction now, too, with bad results. Netflix now churns out a constant stream of shows that are, instead of cultural touchstones, basically interchangeable, a far cry from their acclaimed early efforts like Orange is the New Black. Clothing brands like Reformation and even high-end designers like Escala, once symbols of luxury, taste and quality, are turning to lower quality materials and production in an attempt to churn out more designs, faster, and make more money. I’m trying to buy a couch right now, and have found through my research that age-old companies once lauded for their design and durability have been bought by private equity and changed their frames from hardwoods to particle board. (That information took a lot of research because you know what else has fallen prey to enshittification? Review sites.)
That means, regardless of whether these bought-out businesses have suffered yet, bagels are likely to fare poorly in the private equity boom eventually because of the need to extract increasing amounts of cash out of the project; the product itself is ultimately secondary. The Bagel Equity Fund is running trials on steaming their bagels instead of boiling them in its projected 400 shops it runs, the exact strategy that led to the mushy grocery store bagel. And a Washington Post review for the hyped new H&H location in D.C. was brutal, calling the bagels “generally unappealing” and “flavorless.”
But the bagel itself is only part of the mystique of the food. Which brings me to the more spiritual offerings of a good bagel: an ephemeral cultural cachet. That may be at even greater risk.
Having a favorite bagel shop or loudly defending your bagel order as the only possible correct way to eat a bagel — untoasted, scallion schmear, with capers, red onion and lox, and anything else is heresy, thank you for asking — makes you a real New Yorker. Or, if you don’t live in New York, it’s the mark of a devout cultural (and maybe religious) Jew.
Other, earlier attempts to innovate on the theme, and make it trendier and more lucrative, were all one-and-done fads that eventually crashed and burned, becoming a kind of scarlet letter of cringe. (Remember the vanilla-flavored rainbow bagels that were all over social media in the 2010s? They came with funfetti cream cheese. Disgusting, and also deeply uncool.)
Bagel shops are not just places that produce chewy bread with a hole in the center. They have a cultural value. Each is often unique, with its own set of delightful quirks — the place selling Lactaid loosies behind the counter, the brusque man who nevertheless remembers your order. They’re a symbol of uniqueness and authenticity — which, of course, is definitionally impossible to buy. The more constructed something is, the less authentic.
Yet that’s really what the private equity investors are trying to monetize: the idea of a bagel. If it didn’t have that symbolic power, it wouldn’t be a particularly interesting business, given how difficult the baking is to scale well.
The Bagel Equity Fund describes its target market as “fragmented, inconsistent, and devoid of a dominant brand.” But isn’t that the charm of your local bagel place? Not to those investors, which promise to rebrand every store they take over as “Go Bagels,” likely alienating the exact “strong customer bases and community presence” at the stores they aim to acquire.
Bagels have long been a metonym both for New York and for Jewishness. See: the phrase “pizza bagel,” describing people of mixed Italian and Jewish heritage. Good bagels inspire poetic food reviews — and literal poetry — but also lengthy cultural takes. There are dissertations on its history — and I don’t mean that as a kind of humorous exaggeration, I mean actual papers filed to receive a doctorate.
They were also core to unionization of American workers. The Beigel Bakers Local, which conducted its meetings in Yiddish, led strikes over pay and conditions, and standardized the bagel’s form into the icon we all know. That union was so powerful that its members put the city, during strikes, into what is memorialized as a “bagel famine” — a near-emergency for the city’s devoted consumers. The bagel and its attendant culture is a product of the blood, sweat and tears of New York City’s Jewish workers.
The union was ultimately undone by the mechanized mass production of grocery store bagels — an inferior product, yes, but one accessible at a mass scale, exactly what private equity is attempting to reproduce. The fact that a paltry imitation of a bagel still had enough financial power to destroy a once-powerful union is also worrying. People in cities other than New York — cities, that is to say, with a poor selection of bagels — will probably eat the sub-par private equity bagels, because there’s no other option, a key element of enshittification, as Doctorow observes.
But once the big conglomerates have the power, will they be so strong that the bagels they produce take over even on the bagel’s home turf? Will they exterminate the original New York bagel, and with it, its cultural history?
I don’t want to overstate the symbolic power of private equity buying the bagel brand. But at a time when antisemitism is rising, and Jews are increasingly being accused of, once again, greed, malicious control and undue influence, it certainly can’t help. If the bagel represents Jews, and the bagel has sold out, well, that’s a bad look.
But the real deal can still shine through the enshittification haze. “I just stayed in Brooklyn for the first time and felt so alive surrounded by all those bagel shops!” wrote one user on Reddit. They were there to complain — about Denver’s newest private equity bagel. Clearly, the New York bagel’s brand remains strong, even to outsiders.
The post What the private equity takeover means for the bagel industry appeared first on The Forward.
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Suspicious Explosive Package Targeting Jewish Leader Heightens Antisemitism Fears in Argentina
People hold up pictures of the victims of the AMIA Jewish center bombing during a ceremony to mark the 22nd anniversary of the 1994 attack in Buenos Aires, Argentina, July 18, 2016. Photo: REUTERS/Enrique Marcarian
Argentina’s authorities are investigating yet another suspected antisemitic incident after a suspicious package addressed to a local branch president of the country’s main Jewish umbrella organization was intercepted, further heightening alarms among community leaders amid a recent surge in attacks.
On Wednesday, the Pilares del Rosario medical center received a package containing explosive material addressed to Gabriel Dobkin, who serves as both the institution’s director and president of the local branch of the Delegation of Argentine Israelite Associations (DAIA) in Rosario, a major city in the central-eastern Santa Fe province.
According to local media, clinic staff received a package containing a pack of Philip Morris cigarettes wrapped in transparent tape, which the facility’s manager said felt unusually heavy and immediately aroused suspicion.
Because the package had arrived unrequested via a delivery service, the clinic’s manager quickly raised concerns and called in the police explosives unit.
Police bomb squad dogs later detected explosive material inside the cigarette pack. According to the ongoing investigation, the package also contained a strange substance, though authorities have not yet released further details.
After digging a pit in the facility’s backyard, police experts carried out a controlled detonation of the material.
Even though the package did not include an automatic triggering mechanism, it reportedly contained a number of coins intended to serve as shrapnel in the event of an explosion.
Local law enforcement is treating the incident as a targeted antisemitic attack, describing it as either an attempted act of violence or, at the very least, an act of intimidation.
As the investigation continues, detectives are still analyzing the substance found inside the package but have not yet determined its composition or origin. Surveillance footage from the area is being reviewed, and staff from the clinic are also expected to be interviewed.
DAIA Rosario strongly condemned the attack, describing it as a troubling escalation of threats against Jewish institutions, reflecting a wider atmosphere of hostility toward the community.
“This is an expression of hatred that not only targets the Jewish community, but also undermines the fundamental values of coexistence, respect, and democracy. Such acts must be condemned unequivocally and confronted with resolve. Simply denouncing them is not enough — decisive action is essential,” the organization said in a statement.
“Impunity cannot be an option. Every act of antisemitism that goes unpunished sends a message of tolerance toward hatred,” it continued. “Every firm response from the state is a clear signal that society will not back down. To prevent these acts from recurring, determination, action, and justice are essential.”
This latest incident comes amid heightened security concerns within Argentina’s Jewish community after unknown individuals threw a homemade firebomb at the Chabad-Lubavitch Jewish Community Center in La Plata, a city in southeastern Buenos Aires Province, last Sunday.
The Buenos Aires Security Ministry and Police Counterterrorism Division have opened an investigation into the incident, examining possible links to another attack last week that appears to share a similar modus operandi.
The Israelite Literary Center and Max Nordau Library in La Plata were also targeted last Thursday when unidentified individuals threw a homemade Molotov-type device at the building’s entrance.
Although the device failed to ignite, it shattered the building’s windows and caused some material damage. Fortunately, no fires broke out and no injuries were reported.
In response to these latest attacks, Jewish institutions across the country have strengthened preventive protocols and reinforced internal security and surveillance measures.
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US, Israel Cripple Iran’s Nuclear Weaponization Work, New Report Shows
Symbolic mock-ups of Iranian missiles are displayed on a street, amid the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Tehran, Iran, March 22, 2026. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
More than two months into the war, Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons has suffered a major setback as US and Israeli strikes have ravaged critical facilities, crippled essential infrastructure, and killed personnel central to Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, according to a new analysis
On Friday, the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a Washington, DC–based think tank, released a new assessment of the impact of Israeli and US strikes on Iran’s nuclear program, concluding that the attacks significantly damaged Tehran’s ability to advance nuclear weapons development, particularly by disrupting its weaponization activities.
A nuclear program generally begins with uranium enrichment, the process of producing material that can power civilian reactors or, at higher levels of purity, be used in a nuclear weapon. Much of Iran’s enrichment infrastructure was destroyed during last year’s 12-day war.
The second element is weaponization, which involves the design, testing, and production of the components needed to assemble a functioning nuclear device — a central focus of the more recent Israeli and US military campaign.
According to ISIS’s newly released report, at least six confirmed nuclear-related sites were destroyed so far, with three additional locations possibly connected to the program also struck, bringing the total number of targeted facilities linked to nuclear weapons development to between nine and 12.
Since the start of the war earlier this year, Israel and the United States have struck a wide range of military-industrial facilities involved in missile, drone, and conventional weapons production.
However, the report indicates that some previously undisclosed sites may also have had connections to Iran’s nuclear activities, potentially raising the true scale of the damage.
By analyzing satellite imagery, the report concludes that Iran’s ability to successfully complete a nuclear weapon has been significantly degraded, with the strikes greatly extending the timeline required to produce a bomb while sharply increasing the likelihood of technical failure.
Before the June 2025 war, intelligence assessments estimated Iran could likely produce a nuclear weapon in less than six months with a high probability of success.
Now, the regime’s chances of successfully completing the weaponization process are considered technically low even over a one- to two-year period, largely because the strikes destroyed not only facilities, but also critical equipment and personnel involved in the final stages of bomb development.
ISIS’s latest findings contradict earlier US intelligence assessments, which reportedly concluded that Iran’s nuclear timeline had not been significantly delayed, arguing that such data is inconsistent with extensive visible destruction across key nuclear sites.
The report also argues that there are no signs Iran has resumed uranium enrichment activities, as facilities repeatedly targeted by Israeli and American airstrikes remain heavily damaged with no detectable reconstruction efforts underway.
Despite extensive damage to the regime’s infrastructure, the report cautions that Iran’s nuclear threat has not been fully eliminated.
ISIS has identified tunnel complexes near Esfahan and Natanz in central Iran that were not directly targeted and are believed to contain most of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, including roughly 440 kilograms enriched to 60 percent — far above civilian requirements and much closer to weapons-grade material.