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In Brooklyn, a shared studio empowers Mizrahi women artists
On the second floor of a nondescript commercial building in Gravesend, Brooklyn, is a small artists’ studio. There, four long wooden tables are pushed together to create one massive table covered with oil paints, canvases, watercolors and other tools of the trade. The white walls are adorned with dozens of drawings and paintings; along one wall, a dozen cubbies are filled with even more art supplies.
It could be one of countless shared studio spaces for artists that are hidden in corners throughout the five boroughs. But this particular space is designed expressly for Jewish women artists: It’s closed on Shabbat and Jewish holidays, and among the art and design books on the shelves are siddurs, or prayer books.
Welcome to Muse Brooklyn, a coworking space built by and for Jewish women artists. The brainchild of Lenore Mizrachi-Cohen, a conceptual artist and observant Jew, the space doubles as an arts event space for its corner of Brooklyn, which is home to a significant Syrian Jewish community. Some 38,200 and 55,000 Syrian Jews live in the surrounding neighborhoods, according to a recent study commissioned by JIMENA, a nonprofit that advocates Middle Eastern and North African Jews — and, so far, all seven members of the shared studio are Mizrahi Jews.
“I initially started it for my own needs,” said Cohen, a 35-year-old married mother of four who has been working as an artist and calligrapher for 15 years.
Cohen was inspired to create Muse after a stint, in 2019, at a women-only art studio in Jerusalem. That shared space — which was designed for religious women often facing communal pressures against their artistic pursuits — opened her eyes to what a neighborhood studio for women like her could look like.
“It was 12 minutes away from my house, and it was a very supportive environment,” Cohen recalled. When she returned to New York she sought something similar in Brooklyn, but didn’t find it. “That’s when I realized that if it doesn’t exist in my own neighborhood, then it’s my job to make it.”
At Muse Brooklyn, the seven current members are all part of the local Syrian Jewish community, and all are at least somewhat traditionally observant. (There’s room for twice as many members, Cohen added, and being Jewish, Mizrahi or religious is not required.) In the shared space, the women — who each pay $206 a month — can draw, paint, or work in any medium they like, as well as brainstorm ideas with each other in a supportive environment of a shared identity. And because the space is women-only, members never need to worry about issues of yichud, the Jewish laws prohibiting men and women who are not married to each other from being secluded together.
The idea for Muse predated the war in Gaza, but Cohen said the tense climate for some Jewish artists within the city’s existing cultural institutions that resulted fueled her drive.
Lenore Mizrachi-Cohen, artist and founder of Muse artist studio in Brooklyn, drafts a calligraphy project. (Jackie Hajdenberg)
Previously a member at a shared studio in Red Hook, Brooklyn, Cohen said that she had felt singled out there as a Jew, recalling that she was once asked if she was comfortable with another artist donating money to a pro-Palestinian children’s charity.
“A, that’s weird that you think I would have a problem with that. B, it’s already somewhat of an issue that they’re creating: ‘Oh, you’re Jewish, but I’m a ‘free Palestine’ person,’” Cohen said.
Cohen began looking for a space to execute her vision in September 2023. Muse Brooklyn officially launched exactly a year later, when she found a space to rent within a larger complex currently used as a music coworking space by another member of the Syrian community.
Aimee Swed, a 32-year-old content and marketing professional and mother of two young boys, joined Muse when it opened last fall. Swed said that, as a Shabbat-observant Jew, she felt “very discouraged from entering the art world.” Many galleries held openings on Friday nights, she explained, and workshops and classes were often on Saturdays.
An artist who works in watercolor, acrylics and multimedia, she said her work has been “transformed” by the shared Jewish space.
“The camaraderie kind of reinitiated my own artistic practice,” said Swed, whose work focuses on the food found on her Syrian Jewish Shabbat table, like her watercolors of kibbeh meatballs with rice and meat. “It’s really something that became very important to me, because it felt so good to create with others, and finally find a space that was very friendly towards what you were creating.”
Much of artist Aimee Swed’s work focuses on the foods of her Syrian-Egyptian Jewish heritage. (Courtesy Aimee Swed)
Now that she works in a studio with other Mizrahi Jewish artists, Swed, whose family is Syrian via Egypt, finds inspiration all around her, including Cohen’s Arabic calligraphy. “One of the first things that I made was [a painting of] some phrases, like, ‘yom asal, yom basal,’ — ‘one day onion, one day honey’ [which] is what my grandma would say,” she said.
Not everyone who comes to Muse is necessarily working on Jewish art. For Shelley Shamah, a 22-year-old illustrator, graphic designer and photographer, Muse is simply a safe space for artists who happen to be Jewish.
Shamah, who also joined last fall, was drawn to Muse because she needed “to be in a space that fuels creativity,” she said.
Part of that, she explained, is simply being around likeminded people. “Jews are a microcosm of the world, but Syrians are a microcosm of Jews,” she said.
Shelley Shamah paints a canvas for her dining room. (Jackie Hajdenberg)
On a recent Tuesday, Shamah, a recent graduate of the Pratt Institute, was working on a canvas for her dining room, which she will soon be sharing with her fiancé, a musician.
Shamah and another young Muse member, Allie Saada, a recent graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology, consider themselves part of the “younger bunch” of artists in the group.
Not yet married or mothers, they feel they can take full advantage of the space, coming in at all hours of the day and night, where they often run into each other.
For Swed, whose sons are 4 and 5, the space provides almost the opposite advantage.
“It was really hard, like any working mom, trying to step back into another world once she’s had children,” Swed said. “So as a mom coming into an all-women space, that felt really good, too.”
The studio also functions as a space for the neighborhood to engage in the arts. Several times a month, Muse holds events such as art classes, paint-and-sip nights and museum tours, taught and led by its members, and always with the Jewish holiday schedule in mind. Shelley Shamah even had her 22nd birthday party, a drink-and-draw night, in the space with a dozen of her friends.
Ultimately, Cohen hopes that Muse will grow into a robust network of Jewish women artists. “The more people you have in the space who generate opportunities like this, the better it is for everyone concerned,” Cohen, who’s shown work at the Jewish Museum in Vienna, the Museo Ebraico in Lecce, Ital,y and the Jewish Museum in Amsterdam, said. “All your best opportunities in your career as an artist, at least for me, come from other artists.”
She added: “Create the conditions to be successful. Show up and watch what happens.”
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The post In Brooklyn, a shared studio empowers Mizrahi women artists appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Netanyahu drags Mamdani into his reelection campaign as face of antisemitism
For nearly two years, Zohran Mamdani has made Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a central political target. Now Netanyahu is making Mamdani part of his own reelection campaign.
The 50-second video released Wednesday on Netanyahu’s political social media channels builds on comments the Israeli leader made on Fox News this week, portraying Mamdani as the face of a worldwide surge of antisemitism directed at Israel. It intersperses footage of pro-Palestinian demonstrations and antisemitic incidents with recent clips of Mamdani condemning Israel’s conduct in the Gaza war after the mayor backed off a vow to have the Israeli prime minister arrested during an upcoming visit to New York. It also features Mamdani’s wife, artist Rama Duwaji, who liked social media posts that supported Palestinians immediately after the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks. (Mamdani said his wife is a private citizen and does not work in his administration.)
The clip ends: “No one will stop me from fighting for the truth of Israel.”
The video comes as Netanyahu faces one of the toughest reelection campaigns of his political career, trailing his rivals ahead of Israel’s Oct. 27 election, which could determine not only his political future, but also his legacy and potentially his freedom as he faces a corruption trial.
The fight with Mamdani has become politically useful for Netanyahu. His main rivals — former Israel Defense Forces chief Gadi Eisenkot and former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett — are seen as more moderate leaders who could rebuild strained ties with Democrats and win back support for Israel among Americans.
Joel Rubin, a Democratic commentator and foreign policy expert, said in an interview that turning Mamdani into a symbol of today’s Democratic Party gives Netanyahu a way to challenge one of his rivals’ central arguments that they are better positioned to course-correct the U.S. political shift against Israel. “For Netanyahu, it’s very important to try to portray the Democrats as Mamdani and make the argument that only he can stand up to that,” Rubin said.
Mamdani has positioned himself as a prominent progressive critic of Israel amid the war in Gaza, a position that helped propel his rise and which has become increasingly part of national Democratic Party politics.
Mamdani’s high-profile confrontation with Netanyahu escalated when he announced a review of whether he had the legal power to arrest the Israeli prime minister when he visits the city for the United Nations General Assembly in September. Experts on Israeli politics warned of an unintended consequence: would allowing Netanyahu to cast himself once again as Israel’s defender against international efforts to isolate the Jewish state.
“Many Israelis are sick of him and hope to vote him out,” Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro wrote on X on Saturday. “The only possible outcome of a fruitless attempt to arrest him in NYC would be to give him a political boost at home. That would be an own goal.”
Some political strategists argue that Mamdani and his allies have little reason to mind if Netanyahu remains in power. “I bet they’re rooting for Bibi, in a perverse way,” said Matt Bennett, co-founder and executive vice president of the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way, in an interview with the Forward discussing how Israel is reshaping Democratic politics.
While still serving as a New York state Assembly member, Mamdani zeroed in on the Israeli prime minister as an enemy, leading chants of “Netanyahu, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide,” during a protest in Oct. 2023.
Throughout his mayoral campaign last year, Mamdani repeatedly injected Netanyahu into New York politics., Mamdani first pledged to arrest Netanyahu shortly after he launched his campaign. According to a report, members of Mamdani’s inner circle were pushing for him to make this arrest declaration. After his election, already knowing the city lacked the authority to arrest Netanyahu, Mamdani proceeded with the review. When it concluded he did not have the power to arrest Netanyahu, Mamdani used a mayoral address to declare him a war criminal and then encouraged New Yorkers to protest him on his UN visit. Critics say the episode was a calculated political move aimed at energizing the pro-Palestinian and progressive base that helped elect him.
“There is a core principle amongst the left in American politics that having someone to organize against is crucial to growing numbers and persuasion, and for Mamdani, having the foil of Netanyahu is an incredibly valuable tool for motivating support,” said Rubin, who led Jewish outreach for Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign.
Whether that principle translates into votes for Netanyahu’s coalition in Israel’s Oct. 27 election remains to be seen. At the moment, Mamdani and Netanyahu have become unlikely political assets for each other, each giving the other a powerful opponent to campaign against.
The post Netanyahu drags Mamdani into his reelection campaign as face of antisemitism appeared first on The Forward.
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As Conservative rabbis, we’re rethinking our communities’ policies toward interfaith families
(JTA) — As Conservative/Masorti rabbis, we see firsthand the joy of couples building a life together in the Jewish community, and the pain of those who feel shut out because one of them is not Jewish.
We think of the community member, though not Jewish, who developed a profound love for davening (prayer) and Torah study, and has supported his children’s and grandchildren’s Jewish education and observance of mitzvot. We think of another community member who faithfully drove her four children to Hebrew school for years and, after her youngest child’s bat mitzvah, chose to convert to Judaism herself.
It is time for our halacha, or Jewish law, to address issues facing intermarried couples and families robustly.
The two of us had the honor of joining colleagues in co-authoring a teshuvah — a rabbinic response to questions of Jewish law — that does just that. The Rabbinical Assembly’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards has approved a teshuvah that seeks to honor these couples and families and their commitment to Jewish life in our congregations and communities.
Since we are part of a movement that balances a commitment to halacha with the realities of modern life, our work is grounded in traditional Jewish texts, laws and principles while also reflecting the core belief that welcoming others and extending hospitality are essential Jewish values.
Based on halacha and Jewish tradition, the teshuvah affirms the longstanding standard of Conservative/Masorti rabbis that clergy may officiate only at weddings where both partners are Jewish. It emphasizes that while a wedding is a significant moment that often singularly drives these conversations, there are many other important life-cycle moments that rabbis can offer as occasions for Jewish celebration and reaffirmations of commitment to mitzvot.
Through this teshuvah, we formalize a public mishebeirakh (blessing) before or after the wedding day for a couple committed to building an exclusively Jewish home, as well as a hanukkat habayit ceremony to dedicate their home.
We welcome non-Jewish parents on the bimah during their children’s b’nei mitzvah and offer “mazal tov” and other basic gestures of inclusion to intermarried couples, both of which were once considered unacceptable. Our goal in doing so is to inspire the couple and family to grow in Jewish living.
We affirm that synagogues may not hire intermarried individuals as clergy but may hire intermarried individuals for other roles, and that rabbis may officiate at funerals for non-Jewish family members and support a Jewish mourning process when a non-Jewish loved one dies.
It’s been about 40 years since the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, which sets halachic policy for our movement internationally, broadly addressed questions around intermarried couples and families. We have learned over time that those intermarried couples who choose to embrace Jewish life are integral to the fabric of Conservative/Masorti communities.
We invite these couples to engage meaningfully in Jewish practice at home and in community, and, if they are having children, to raise them as Jews. Sometimes they may even choose to convert to Judaism at some point.
We do so because, as rabbis, we enjoy the privilege of being invited into people’s lives, and our role is both pastoral and educational. As people figure out their own identities and relationships, our role is to help them integrate Jewish tradition. As couples turn toward each other and seek to integrate Judaism into their lives, we are here to help them chart a course and to bring Torah into the conversation and observance of mitzvot into their lives.
We aim to inspire the couple to grow in Jewish living, observing mitzvot, studying Torah and searching for God in daily life. To do so, we must create gateways so everyone can find a place to learn and find joy and inspiration in our traditions, within the boundaries of halachic standards and principles.
Many of the practices in the teshuvah are already in place in some communities. Some offer solutions that speak most directly to realities in North America, and we call on local rabbis to interpret them in light of the circumstances in their local communities.
In the days of the Mishnah and the Talmud, when faced with new and challenging circumstances, our rabbis found creative and often beautiful solutions to embody the Torah as they understood it. As we follow in their footsteps, we use the wisdom we have inherited to both uphold and transform those values and honor the halachic principles that are central to our rabbinates and communities.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.
The post As Conservative rabbis, we’re rethinking our communities’ policies toward interfaith families appeared first on The Forward.
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I was a reluctant Yiddishist. Here’s what converted me.
I couldn’t understand my peers’ embrace of Yiddish culture. Now I’m fascinated –– by the world evoked in Yiddish music and literature, and the leaders of its revival. My conversion began at Yidstock: a Festival of new Yiddish Music.
The post I was a reluctant Yiddishist. Here’s what converted me. appeared first on The Forward.
