Uncategorized
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.”
—
The post In Brooklyn, a shared studio empowers Mizrahi women artists appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Armed attacker arrested after lunging at Ohio Jewish gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton
(JTA) — Ohio gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton, a Jewish Democrat, was unharmed following an attack by an armed individual at the sprawling Canfield Fair on Sunday.
Police arrested 38-year-old Patrick Havas, who had pushed his way through a crowd in a Democratic Party fairgrounds tent where she was speaking, the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office announced on Sunday evening.
“While attending the Canfield Fair, an armed individual lunged at Dr. Acton, injuring multiple people,” Addie Bullock, communications director for the Acton campaign, said in a statement.
“This kind of violence has no place in Ohio,” Bullock added. “Dr. Acton will always stand up to the chaos, hate and vitriol that pits us against one another.”
Acton, who would be Ohio’s first Jewish governor if elected, is a former director of the Ohio Department of Health and completed residencies in both pediatrics and preventative medicine.
Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, Acton’s opponent in the upcoming election, released a statement condemning the attack on Sunday. His communications director, Connie Luck, stressed that “candidates should be able to meet with voters without having to worry about threats or violence.”
“What happened today is completely unacceptable and has no place in politics, and we hope that no one was hurt,” she added.
Havas had at first entered the fairgrounds tent and began recording Acton’s speech on his cell phone, but when he began pushing, Ohio State Highway Patrol troopers confronted him, according to the sheriff’s office. During the confrontation, two people were knocked to the ground and Havas was taken into custody by Canfield Fair police.
Following Havas’s arrest, police said they found two handguns and a set of brass knuckles in his possession, although no weapons were ever brandished or removed from their holsters.
Detectives on Sunday night added that they’d be continuing the investigation and would be filing charges after consulting with the Mahoning County Prosecutor.
The Canfield Fair, established in 1846, describes itself as the third-largest county fair nationwide. The fairgrounds, located about 75 miles southeast of Cleveland, sits on 353 acres of land and houses more than 60 buildings.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Armed attacker arrested after lunging at Ohio Jewish gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Far-right win in Germany regional race sends shockwaves through Europe
(JTA) — A victory for Germany’s far-right party in an eastern federal state has reverberated across the globe, exposing the widening rifts between alarmed centrist leaders and insurgent nationalist movements in Europe.
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party won 43.8% of the vote in an election in Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday, crushing the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s party, which held 17.2% support, according to preliminary figures.
The AfD is now heading toward 39 seats in Saxony-Anhalt’s 83-seat state parliament. It’s expected to fall 3 seats short of an outright majority, leaving open the question of whether it can form Germany’s first far-right state government since World War II. The party has proposed a sweeping nationalist agenda that includes deporting immigrants, defunding “anti-German art” and teaching children less about the country’s Nazi past.
Merz told reporters in Berlin on Monday he was “deeply shocked” and “unsettled” by the results, which he said rippled through the rest of the country and the world. He added that it was impossible for Germany to “go back to business as usual” after so many voters in Saxony-Anhalt chose a party that “questions the democratic institutions in our country.”
The results dealt the CDU its “most severe defeat” in decades, conceded Merz, who leads the party once headed by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Merz said that he was searching for answers to “why far-right populism and far-right extremism was able to rise in such a rapid manner,” suggesting that his party may have underestimated the “fears of our population” amid economic crises and rapid technological change. He said that minorities in Saxony-Anhalt would be particularly vulnerable under an AfD government, but noted that the state would still have obligations to follow federal law, including regarding immigration policy.
Merz also directed his message to the rest of Europe, saying that Germany had a “special responsibility because of its history” to keep its political order “deeply anchored in Europe.”
Despite the scale of the CDU’s defeat in Saxony-Anhalt, Merz ruled out stepping down, saying, “Giving up is not an option.”
Though Saxony-Anhalt is one of Germany’s smallest regions, home to some 1.7 million voters, its election results quickly sent shockwaves through other European countries whose leaders, like Merz, are fighting to fend off far-right, anti-immigrant parties in national elections next year.
French Europe Minister Benjamin Haddad called the AfD’s regional win a “grave moment in Europe” and said that “nationalism and xenophobia will never be a solution.”
“We cannot forget our history,” said Haddad, an ally of centrist President Emmanuel Macron. “That is the meaning of the choices made by France and Germany.”
France’s government faces its own fears of a right-wing populist wave. Marine Le Pen, the head of the far-right National Rally, has dwarfed all other candidates in polls heading into France’s presidential election in 2027, when term limits force Macron to step down.
Across the Channel, British Chief Secretary to the Treasury Emma Reynolds said in an interview on Times Radio that the U.K.’s Labour government “will not be reaching out to a right-wing populist party.” She added that she put the AfD in “the same political bracket” as Reform UK, the far-right party that surged in local elections earlier this year.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk also condemned the AfD’s victory. The far-right party has alarmed Poland, Ukraine’s neighbor, with its pro-Russia stance, as it seeks to halt Germany’s military aid to Ukraine and sanctions against Russia.
“In Poland, only idiots or traitors can rejoice at the triumph of the AfD in Germany,” said Tusk.
Meanwhile, the AfD was cheered by nationalist, anti-immigration party leaders in Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands, all of whom have sought to capitalize on economic and social grievances similar to those that contributed to the AfD’s victory Sunday.
Santiago Abascal, the head of Spain’s far-right Vox party, called the result “a great hope for Germany and for Europe.”
André Ventura, the founder of Portugal’s far-right Chega party, said that “the Germans too are opening their eyes against illegal and uncontrolled immigration, corruption, and the capture of our freedom and identity.”
And in the Netherlands, the AfD received a “Congratulations” from the far-right Party for Freedom’s leader, Geert Wilders.
While President Donald Trump has yet to officially respond to the Saxony-Anhalt election, he posted a screenshot of the results without comment on his Truth Social account Sunday night.
Trump’s post was shared by Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian presidential envoy and businessman, who said the AfD scored a “historic win” that would “put migration under control.”
Elon Musk, the billionaire and former Trump adviser who campaigned for the AfD last year, gave his support to the national party leader Alice Weidel on X, which he owns, writing “Well done” in German.
Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD’s candidate in Saxony-Anhalt who hopes to become the state premier, responded by praising Musk.
“Thank you, @elonmusk, for your support and for your clear and highly important perspective on the political developments of our time — including here in Germany,” he wrote.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Far-right win in Germany regional race sends shockwaves through Europe appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
How synagogues and Southern Jews came to mourn Robert E. Lee
In October 1870, mourning covered New Orleans.
The doors of the St. Charles Theater and Academy of Music were draped following the death of Robert E. Lee. Along St. Charles Street, saloons displayed signs of grief. Black and white cloth appeared on private homes, stores, banks and warehouses. The New-Orleans Weekly Times reported that “the rich and the poor vied with each other in their outward manifestations of grief.”
On Carondelet Street, the synagogue was draped too. Here at the Congregation Dispersed of Judah, the main door “presented a cloud of white and black draping.” Inside, the congregation’s spiritual leader, Rabbi Henry S. Jacobs, delivered a eulogy for Lee. He turned to Zechariah 11:2 and compared the dead Confederate general to a fallen cedar.
In Galveston, Texas, another Southern Jewish congregation went further. At what a newspaper described as an “Orthodox congregation of Israelites,” a prayer was offered for Lee’s soul. It asked God, “who resteth in the highest heavens,” to grant Lee rest beneath the wings of divine providence.
“We pray to the Almighty that He shall keep him under His wings forever,” the congregation prayed, so that “at the resurrection” Lee’s soul would be among those “prepared to live again.”
The synagogue memorials were not isolated expressions of grief. Many Southern Jews had supported the Confederacy, served in its army and shared their neighbors’ admiration for Lee. Lee had also developed a reputation among Jewish soldiers for respecting their religious practice during the war. Their mourning reflected both a Jewish community deeply embedded in the society around it and a particular memory of Lee that would endure for generations.
Fighting for the Confederacy, observing Yom Kippur
For Jewish soldiers, loyalty to the Confederacy and religious observance could exist side by side. Confederate officers sometimes accommodated those needs, and Lee himself corresponded with a Richmond rabbi about allowing Jewish soldiers to observe their holidays.
In September 1861, around 40 Jewish soldiers stationed at a Confederate army camp in Pensacola, Florida, received permission from General Braxton Bragg to observe the Day of Atonement. Newspapers across the South reported that as the soldiers prayed “to the God of their fathers,” they “forgot not the Government for which they have taken up arms.”
That same year, Rabbi Maximilian J. Michelbacher of Richmond reminded Jewish soldiers that Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur were approaching. A Richmond correspondent estimated that thousands of Jews were serving in Virginia and wrote that “no class of our citizens have responded more liberally to the treasury and army of the Confederacy than the Southern Jews.”
Michelbacher also corresponded with Lee about allowing Jewish soldiers time away from the army for religious observance.
In 1864, he asked that Jewish soldiers be allowed to return to Richmond for the High Holidays. Lee declined to grant a general furlough but told the rabbi that he would “gladly do all in my power to facilitate the observance of the duties of their religion by the Israelites in the Army.”
Individual applications, he said, could be approved when circumstances allowed.
An account recorded in the 1887 work Christ in the Camp: Or Religion in the Confederate Army by Reverend J. William Jones, a Southern Baptist minister and Confederate chaplain, described a captain rejecting a Jewish soldier’s request to attend religious services. The captain wrote that if such applications were approved, “the whole army would turn Jews or Shaking Quakers.”
Lee overruled the decision. He returned the request with advice that the captain “should always respect the religious views and feelings of others.”
In 1870, Lee visited Norfolk, Virginia. Among those who came to see him was Emanuel J. Myers, an 89-year-old Jew who had served under Napoleon I and received the French Legion of Honor.
A report in The Israelite, a Cincinnati Jewish newspaper, described Myers approaching with a “full flowing, snow beard,” his medal shining on his breast. The old soldier greeted Lee with “a hearty shake of a soldier’s hand.”
The newspaper called Lee the “brave hero” and “great chieftain.”
The Almighty, the reporter said, had allowed Myers to live long enough to “grasp the hand of one whom we all delight to honor.”
Lee died five months later.
Remembering Lee as a friend to the Jews
Decades later, Lee was still being invoked as a symbol of religious tolerance.
In 1914, Rabbi Henry Barnston of Temple Beth Israel in Houston referenced Lee’s defense of a Jewish soldier’s religious observance while speaking about the persistence of intolerance. Others used the story similarly. In 1922, The American Israelite put it on its front page beneath a simple headline: “General Lee Respected the Jews.” Four years later, Vanderbilt University professor Edwin Mims invoked Lee while arguing against religious bigotry. His words, Mims said, “ought to ring out in America today.”
Nor were these accounts confined to the South. A story about Lee’s respect for Jews appeared in The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle in 1928. In 1930, University of Wisconsin president Glenn Frank spoke about it at a memorial for Lee while condemning intolerance in the South. “You cannot fight for even one hour in the ranks of intolerance,” Frank said, “without turning traitor to the memory of the great Lee.”
The story took on new meaning after the October 1958 bombing of The Temple in Atlanta. The explosion tore through the synagogue building after Rabbi Jacob Rothschild had become an outspoken supporter of civil rights. One person claiming responsibility invoked a “Confederate Underground.”
In an op-ed published afterward in The Arizona Post and other outlets, David Schwartz, a writer with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, remembered the long history of Jews in Georgia and returned to the story of Lee defending a Jewish soldier’s religious observance.
“I don’t think Robert E. Lee would have liked to be associated with them,” he wrote, referring to the self-described “Confederate Underground” that claimed responsibility for the bombing.
Back in 1870, the synagogue memorials in New Orleans and Galveston had been part of a much wider response to Lee’s death. In Memphis, a newspaper remarked on the range of people who joined the city’s funeral procession, including Northerners, immigrants and “Hebrews,” writing that “none were found to show disrespect or even indifference.”
As plans emerged for an equestrian monument to Lee in Richmond, organizers proposed that on memorial days throughout the South, “every congregation, Christian and Hebrew,” make a contribution. The statue, erected in 1890, stood until 2021.
The post How synagogues and Southern Jews came to mourn Robert E. Lee appeared first on The Forward.
