Uncategorized
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.”
—
The post These NYC college students want to kickstart a Jewish arts renaissance appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
How to stop worrying about the Democratic Socialists of America
The question of why three candidates endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America bested more mainstream Democrats in congressional primaries in New York and Colorado last month is being answered by pundits, not pollsters.
There have been no exhaustive exit polls to explain why, in Colorado, Melat Kiros unseated incumbent Democrat Diana DeGette and New York voters chose Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez — not to mention DSA victories in a slew of state races.
But there is an exhausting panic.
American Jews are worried that the often virulent anti-Israel positions these candidates take show that opposition to Israel is now a litmus test for political viability in the Democratic Party, that describing Israel as “genocidal” and “apartheid” is the ante for any blue candidate.
Given the nature of some of these races, it certainly looks that way. In Colorado, the policy differences between DeGette and Kiros were negligible. DeGette has one of the most progressive voting records in Congress. But she took AIPAC money and paid for it.
And her opponent Kiros wasn’t just critical of Israel’s government’s policies. She, like many other DSA candidates, blamed Israel for the Oct. 7 attacks. Avila Chevalier attended the Oct. 8, 2023, DSA-promoted rally that celebrated the attacks.
Meanwhile, the panic among mainstream Democrats is that primary voters are putting forth candidates who will get clobbered in general elections. In a May New York Times/Siena poll, 47% of Democrats said they want the party to move center, while 28% said the party should move to the left.
That means while DSA candidates may win in what some have called “cobalt blue,” or deeply Democratic districts, with a high number of young, white, educated voters, in crucial swing districts a DSA candidate will take the party down with them.
Israel, demonized
However the general election turns out, primary results show that among not all but a significant group of Democratic voters, two brands have become toxic: Israel and the Democratic Party.
Type “Gaza” into TikTok, scroll for five minutes, and it’s easy to understand at least one reason why. The carnage Israel has wrought in Gaza plays on a visceral loop on social media. Israel as the aggressive colonialist oppressor is a given in much of academia. And Israel’s own actions at the hands of its most right-wing government in history — well, not helpful.
DSA’s official platform on Israel — the first foreign policy position on its site — calls for an end to economic and military aid to Israel and “national sovereignty for the Palestinian people.”
Its best-known members, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have helped popularize the notion that funds spent by the U.S. to arm Israel could instead have been used to fund domestic programs, such as health care for all. On this point the DSA reflects the position of a plurality of American voters: Only 24% support maintaining current levels of aid, while 40% oppose it, according to an Economist/YouGov poll.
But other DSA candidates don’t criticize Israel; they demonize it, and they hesitate to condemn terror even when it attacks Americans. Kiros unapologetically appeared at a rally condemning Israel and refused to call the 2025 firebomb attack on peaceful Jewish marchers in Boulder an antisemitic act.
We are long past the post-Oct. 7 period when anti-Israel activists were challenged to condemn Hamas. For these candidates, pro-Palestinian means pro-Hamas.
“Militant anti-Zionism became a wedge that the group’s more radical activists used to drive away critics of authoritarianism on the left,” wrote Jonathan Chait in The Atlantic.
The other tarnished brand is the Democratic Party itself. At a time when President Donald Trump is sending ICE agents and troops into American cities, jacking tariffs, making billions of dollars in office and conducting full-scale wars without congressional approval, sitting Democrats look feckless. Even the most moderate Democrats — much less non-MAGA Republicans and independents — can see how Democrats have failed to build housing or address affordability. One way to punish the mainstream is to vote for the extremes.
The DSA’s Zionist founder
All of this is especially ironic considering the history of the DSA, whose founder, Michael Harrington, was both a Zionist and a pragmatic if radical political thinker.
Harrington founded the DSA in 1982 to create a movement for social change free from authoritarian pro-Stalinist groups. He was, in the words of the historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr., America’s “only responsible radical.”
And yes, the founder of the DSA identified as a Zionist.
In a 1975 interview with a Jewish journalist, Harrington, who died in 1989, said, “I support Israel as an internationalist. Israel is a democratic country whose people are passionately defending its self-determination.”
After the United Nations voted to condemn Zionism as racism, Harrington wrote, “If one preposterously charges that Zionism is racist, then so are all nationalisms which joined to condemn it at the U.N. And that is to drain the concept of racism of any serious meaning.”
Clearly, Harrington has left the building. After Sanders’ presidential campaign inspired a membership surge a decade ago, the current national DSA swelled with more radical membership, including from struggling far-left and communist groups.
“Having dismantled the guardrails that Harrington built to exclude communists,” wrote Chait, “the group established new guardrails to exclude anybody opposed to Israel’s destruction.”
DSA’s first iteration included Jewish activists who worked toward coexistence and a two-state solution, wrote Jo-Ann Mort, a DSA cofounder. Now, she wrote, “its socialism is more concerned with ‘anti-imperialism’ than the democratic socialism that inspired the founders.”
Extremism feeds extremism
The Jewish fears that a Zohran Mamdani mayoralty will lead to pogroms in Manhattan have not been realized. But after Ocasio-Cortez, another DSA candidate, drew the wrath of the group for initially supporting defensive weapons transfers to Israel, she has now come out against them.
One can imagine a DSA that struggle-sessions Sanders, the man most responsible for its revival, subjecting him to a humiliating show trial for being insufficiently anti-Israel. Far-fetched as that seems, it’s unclear how DSA will address the clear schism between its liberal Zionists and its increasingly hardcore anti-Israel wing.
Meanwhile, the ascendant DSA is a boon to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose own brand of extremism thrives on creating an Israel-against-the-world mentality. On a visit to Israel last month, I found Israelis and the Israeli media obsessed with Mamdani. One woman told me she wouldn’t dare set foot in New York City as long as the putative leader of the DSA was still mayor. Extremism feeds extremism.
And if the DSA specter leads American Jews to think the Republican Party is a safe haven, think again.
Young Republican voters are shifting against Israel in the same way young Democrats are. And just this week, Tucker Carlson, a confidant of the vice president, the right’s most popular media personality and a vicious Israel critic, said, “I officially don’t care about Hamas.”
An Israel-less ‘Promise to America’
Democratic leaders have struggled with ways to recapture the young voters lured away by the DSA.
The group Promise to America, founded earlier this month, asks representatives and candidates to sign on to six “pledges” that seem focus-group-tested to appeal to 18- to 26-year-olds: free speech, “government that works,” fiscal discipline, fair capitalism, just national security and “national renewal.”
“Democrats that hold these values that do well in the party,” Felix Frisch, the group’s 20-year-old founding director, told me in a phone interview. Frisch, who took a leave of absence from the University of Chicago to run the organization, pointed out that two of the pledge’s signers — Rep. Tom Suozzi in New York and Rep. Adam Gray in California’s Central Valley — were the only two Democrats to flip a district that Trump won in the 2024 cycle.
How did he explain the DSA’s success?
“They’re a lot more organized,” he said. “The reason I got so fired up to do this was because we need some organization around our core principles.”
The website, I pointed out, doesn’t mention Israel, which for many young voters is a defining issue. Frisch suggested I speak to the pledge’s signers, which I took to mean: Where Democrats can win, it may be in spite of their support for Israel, not because of it.
Where the DSA lost
Aside from online pledges, what hope is there for moderate Democrats who don’t put Hamas or Israel-bashing first?
I didn’t have to look far for an answer. In my Los Angeles City Council district, CD 11, a charismatic and accomplished DSA candidate, Faizah Malik, challenged incumbent Traci Park. In the early June election, Malik got trounced, 64% to 35%, in a district that teems with the same progressive, white voters who backed winning DSA candidates elsewhere.
The difference? Since taking office in 2022, Park has greatly reduced homeless encampments and, according to the Los Angeles Times, “became the face” of recovery after the Palisades fires. She pushed to bring 2028 Olympic events, Hollywood film shoots like Baywatch, several large affordable housing projects and a much-needed marine mammal recovery station to the area. Nothing sexy — well, except the Baywatch reboot — but noticeable.
Malik didn’t mention Israel or Gaza in her campaign materials, and it’s unclear whether doing so would have helped or hurt her. She did have the backing of Engage Action, the Muslim American lobbying group that considers Israel an occupier of Palestinian lands since 1948.
Park won because her record gave the district’s 284,000 residents plenty of reasons to vote for her, embodying what The New York Times columnist Ezra Klein called “a liberalism that builds.”
The same, by the way, could be said about Brad Lander, a liberal Zionist who beat Rep. Dan Goldman by running to his left on Israel but parted ways with DSA after Oct. 7. While the Israel issue helped tank his opponent, it was Lander’s record of delivering for his constituents as a City Council member and then city comptroller — including pushing through affordable housing initiatives and paid sick leave — that accounted for much of his popularity.
There is as much to learn in where the DSA candidates lost as where they won. When Democrats stand up articulate, social-media-savvy candidates who can galvanize voters around effective solutions to the problems they care about — and then make those solutions happen — they win.
The post How to stop worrying about the Democratic Socialists of America appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
AIPAC attacked a Democrat for funding ICE. Now it’s backing one who voted the same way.
AIPAC’s super PAC is spending big to boost Rep. Haley Stevens in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary — over a record that includes the same ICE funding vote the group used to attack a different Democrat earlier this year.
Stevens is one of three leading candidates in the primary, running against progressive insurgent Abdul El-Sayed, who called the Israeli government “evil” like Hamas, and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow. A new 30-second ad from AIPAC’s super PAC, the United Democracy Project, praises Stevens for confronting Trump’s immigration policies — citing legislation she introduced to create an independent prosecutor for ICE misconduct, and her calls for then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to resign.
The ad is part of a multimillion-dollar campaign to boost Stevens, a longtime AIPAC ally, whom the group helped elect in 2018 and reelect in 2022.
But the message is hard to square with AIPAC’s own record elsewhere. Earlier this year, the group spent more than $2 million attacking former Rep. Tom Malinowski in a New Jersey special election for voting to fund ICE as part of a bipartisan border bill. “We can’t trust Tom Malinowski to stand up to President Donald Trump,” that ad said. Stevens voted for the same funding bill. Last June, she also voted for a House resolution thanking ICE agents “for protecting the homeland.”
An AIPAC spokesperson and a UDP representative did not immediately respond to explain why the vote to fund ICE was presented as a liability in Malinowski’s race but not in Stevens’ case.
AIPAC has spent years cultivating ties to Trump-aligned Republicans, many of whom strongly support aggressive immigration enforcement.
The Israel-boosting organization’s brand has become increasingly controversial among mainstream Democrats in recent years. Congressional candidates, including some Jewish Democrats, have promised not to take contributions from AIPAC. Last month, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani used the word “monsters” to describe AIPAC at a rally for progressive candidates he backed, all of whom won their primaries.
In the Michigan race, shaping up as one of the starkest tests of the Democratic coalition and how the party navigates policy towards Israel in Congress, United Democracy Project has already spent $10.7 million backing Stevens, making the Michigan contest one of its largest Senate investments this election cycle. AIPAC also raised several million dollars for Stevens by directing its donors to online portals that funnel money directly to the candidate’s campaign, effectively erasing its fingerprints in public data.
McMorrow has the endorsement of J Street, the liberal Zionist advocacy group that supports a two-state solution. The Jewish Democratic Council of America issued a rare dual endorsement of Stevens and McMorrow.
El-Sayed, the progressive frontrunner, is increasingly trying to transform AIPAC’s investment in the race into a centerpiece of his campaign message. Backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, El-Sayed has released videos accusing AIPAC of attempting to buy Democratic elections and police debate over Israel. In recent months, he has also reached out to Jewish voters while seeking to channel the energy of the 2024 Uncommitted movement, which protested the Biden administration’s support for Israel in the war against Hamas in Gaza. The state is home to the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the United States. Jewish voters make up just 1.4% of the electorate in the state.
Arno Rosenfeld and Hannah Feuer contributed to this article
The post AIPAC attacked a Democrat for funding ICE. Now it’s backing one who voted the same way. appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Adam Sandler officiates Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce wedding, fueling theories about singer’s Israel stance
(JTA) — A Jewish comedian who played one of cinema’s most notable Israeli characters took center stage — literally — at Taylor Swift’s wedding at Madison Square Garden on Friday.
Adam Sandler officiated the ceremony between Swift and Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, a spokesperson for Swift confirmed to media after the wedding.
The event included a wide range of Jewish attendees, including the Haim sisters, who recently attended a Knicks game with Swift; the writer and actor Lena Dunham; Joshua Kushner, the businessman whose brother Jared is a top Middle East advisor to President Donald Trump; and Kelce’s former teammate Mitchell Schwartz.
Sandler’s presence in particular fueled criticism from anti-Israel voices, who argued it was significant that someone who has described himself as “very pro-Israel” officiated the wedding. Sandler has discussed his friendship with Swift and Kelce publicly, saying that it developed through his daughters, who are Swift fans.
Swift has largely avoided wading into polarizing political issues, and her outlook on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been a source of confusion for many fans, who have struggled to interpret her silence on the topic at a time when many celebrities have publicly voiced support for Gaza. Her decision not to publicly criticize Israel is seen as having bolstered her popularity among Israelis. At the same time, some pro-Palestinian fans have decried her silence and protested at her concerts, while others have speculated that she is privately pro-Palestinian but has avoided speaking out for fear of alienating fans.
“For all the Swifties defending Taylor Swift regarding her silence on Palestine she had Adam Sandler … a well-known Zionist, officiate her wedding so I think we know where she stands now,” tweeted an account called Land Palestine that had nearly 2 million followers on Instagram before being suspended last year.
“They’re all Zionists, clearly, and no doubt about it,” tweeted the Oxford University student Kate Crawford, a prominent pro-Palestinian voice on X who identifies as partly Jewish.
Some pro-Israel voices joined in the speculation. “I wonder if she is publicly aligning herself with certain people for a soft launch of her views. If she were to say some pro-Israel or pro-Jewish things, I think it could go a long way amongst the younger generation,” wrote one user on Reddit’s “Jewish” forum, in a post that was deleted but yielded nearly 200 comments parsing Swift’s possible Israel attitudes. (Among the evidence offered for possible pro-Israel leanings: She and Kelce recently dined at a buzzy Israeli restaurant. But other commenters noted that Gigi Hadid, a Palestinian-American celebrity who has spread anti-Israel rhetoric, was also at the wedding.)
The chatter about the wedding and Israel swelled so much that the parody account Buzz Crave riffed off of it with a viral post proclaiming: “Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce have left the U.S. for Israel to start their honeymoon.”
Like Swift, Sandler is not among the celebrities to engage in activism on Israel or Gaza. In fact, Sandler — whose early hits included “The Hanukkah Song” — is not known to have visited Israel, after disclosing in a 2022 interview that he had never traveled to the country of one of his signature characters. He played Zohan Dvir, an Israeli soldier who prefers partying to war, in the 2008 comedy “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan.”
Sandler made the “very pro-Israel” comment in 2015 while criticizing artists who boycott Israel during an appearance on Howard Stern’s radio show. He has said little publicly about Israel since the immediate aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack that began the war in Gaza, when he said his “heart is shattered” and signed onto an entertainment industry letter calling on then-President Joe Biden to help return the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas.
For some, the reaction to Sandler’s officiation added to a growing sense that no Jewish figure can escape being targeted by anti-Zionist activism. “You can stay silent. You can avoid politics. You can try not to get involved,” the pro-Israel influencer Ran Alkalay posted on Instagram. “For antisemites, none of that matters.”
For other Jewish voices commenting on the wedding, the guest list was immaterial. On Facebook, Rabbi David Glickman of Kansas City noted that Swift and Kelce had doled out $26 million in charitable gifts ahead of their nuptials.
“Jewish tradition says that a bride and groom have the ear of God on their wedding day — so the couple will say silent prayers for folks in need. I’m grateful your prayers weren’t only silent,” Glickman wrote. “You gave an example for all of us that personal celebration is made greater through tzedakah and generosity. Your charitable gifts are more impressive than a wedding at MSG — I hope it will get the same publicity.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Adam Sandler officiates Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce wedding, fueling theories about singer’s Israel stance appeared first on The Forward.
