Uncategorized
One was born Catholic, another was a West Virginia Protestant — now they’re all making Jewish art
In artist Yona Verwer’s “Immersion VIII,” a nude woman in a fetal position floats in a swirl of water. The image is at once ethereal and surreal, not unlike Verwer’s first mikveh experience, a purification ritual, and central to conversion, the transition from non-Jew to Jew.
“It is the joy of weightlessness and the feeling of being spiritually elevated,” said Verwer, the co-founder of the Jewish Art Salon, who was born Catholic in the Netherlands and converted to Judaism in 1995.
“Five years after my conversion I started including Jewish subject matter in my paintings, that is to say contemporary visual interpretations of ancient texts,” she added. “I also examine contemporary themes like identity, ecology, antisemitism and more through a Jewish lens.”
“Immersion VIII” is one of 17 works in an original and perhaps unprecedented exhibit, “Children of Ruth: Artists Choosing Judaism,” currently running at the Heller Museum at Hebrew Union College. The thought provoking display features the paintings, drawings, collages, found objects and sculptures created by artists who have discovered a home through conversion. Some of the pieces are abstract, others representational and still others combinations thereof or not readily definable at all. None of it is kitschy, reductive or derivative.
Hailing from across the globe and representing an array of ethnic, social and religious backgrounds, all the artists have forged work informed by various aspects of their conversions. There is commentary on biblical texts, illustrations of Jewish rituals and others that merge imagery from the artists’ early backgrounds with representations of and metaphors for Judaism and Jewish life. In more than a few pieces, the Golem — the ultimate outlier who is nevertheless the mystical protector of the Jewish people — makes an appearance.
“I wanted to be Jewish from the time I was 11 despite knowing almost nothing about Judaism, and not meeting a Jew until I was 19,” Verwer said. “It felt irrational, but later, the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s words resonated — that sincere converts to Judaism possess an inherent Jewish soul, even prior to their formal conversion. In other words, converts are not outsiders but returning kin.”
The reasons for the artists’ conversions run the gamut. Kate Hendrickson grew up in West Virginia, the child of Protestants. Her mother was a choral director and organist and her father sang in the choir in both Presbyterian and Methodist churches. Neither parent was doctrinaire in their beliefs.
“I couldn’t buy Christian dogma at all or the idea that Jesus was the savior,” she said. “I married a Sephardic Jew who was raised in Morocco. His family embraced me, especially his mother. I used to follow her around in the kitchen, studying her recipes. When she died at 97, I felt ungrounded and wanted to explore Judaism. The rabbi suggested I do independent study and I attended services. Still, I wondered when I would become Jewish. A friend, another convert, said that she just woke up one morning and knew she was a Jew. The rabbi said, ‘Anytime will be a good time for you.’ I love Judaism because it feels so open-ended. It feels like home.”
In “Concealed Faith,” Hendrickson’s first series of post-conversion drawings, Hebrew letters, which are an integral part of her Cubist designs, are concealed. In the series that followed, “Faith Revealed,” Hebrew letters are even more central to the aesthetic and more clearly visible, at least to the attuned eye. Further, Hebrew letters inform the way she creates her art.
Hendrickson translates the title of each work into Hebrew, then creates cut-outs of each Hebrew letter.
“I rub graphite over the cut-outs and then randomly drop them onto my paper and rub them across the drawing, their edges and curves serving as structures for the composition.”
A number of the artists said Judaism appealed to them because of its openness to interpretation and reinterpretation, adding how much they valued the chance to express unexpected or even controversial viewpoints in their imagery.
Artist Mike Cockrill, a social justice advocate who has studied Torah for two decades, puts forth a feminist vision in his piece, “Excavation,” which reinvents Judaism’s patriarchal tradition.
Here, two women, posed in a manner that hints at Egyptian forms, are engaged in a metaphorical excavation. One holds a book, while the other, paintbrush in hand “is ready to repaint, rewrite, the traditional history from which she may have been excluded or been misrepresented,” he said. “Patriarchy lies at the women’s feet in the form of a blindfolded and disembodied head.”
Before Cockrill’s formal conversion, many of his paintings embodied an Americana vernacular, at times a tad mocking. During his Torah study period, his paintings made a radical shift, embracing an aesthetic that addressed the human condition, “the existential man, the meaning of life, which is funny but also dark,” he said.
“The rabbi who converted me was concerned that conversion would affect my painting in a negative way, that I would be doing Jewish kitsch,” he recalled. “I want to embrace my Judaism without pandering or being obvious and corny.”
Other artists combine ethnic or cultural elements of their pre- and post- conversion lives. Carol Man forged a design that couples Hebrew and Chinese calligraphy. Vicky Vogl, the daughter of an Ecuadorian mother and Czechoslovakian Jewish father, created an exquisitely detailed puppet theater depicting a Golem in a setting that also embraces a Latino aesthetic.
“The clock has Hebrew letters and the hands move counterclockwise,” she said. “The colors and craftsmanship are Ecuadorian and European.”
The genesis of this exhibit was almost a fluke. Curator Nancy Mantell recalled that at an earlier exhibit about the Torah, one artist revealed that she was Norwegian, had converted to Judaism, and was working on a textile project based on Torah portions. “We were so impressed by her commitment to her Jewish learning it made us start thinking, ‘Wow, are there other artists who have joined the Jewish people and have Jewish themes in their art?’” Mantell recorded.
She and Susan Picker, the assistant curator, put out a request for submissions. Throughout the process of choosing submissions, Picker says she was taken with the artists’ “love of Judaism and a sense of return to their deepest souls, with a love of grappling with Jewish texts.”
Alan Hobscheid, who grew up in Chicago, the son of a lapsed Catholic father and Japanese mother, became exposed to Judaism in college through friends and later married a Jewish woman. To some degree his conversion was expedient and, simultaneously, an expression of osmosis, he admitted. But, also, he stressed he always had a curiosity about Judaism.
As a convert he was especially drawn to the way that “Judaism doesn’t sugar coat or obfuscate God’s relationship to man,” he said. “The doubt and skepticism spoke to me. So does the duality in many of the customs, such as the cleaning up and preparation for Passover. It’s very serious, but there are fun elements.”
Still, in his oil painting, “Bedikat Chametz,” the literal darkness of that pre-Pesach ritual especially spoke to him. The painting portrays a man on the floor in a darkened space, scrounging around, searching for the last bits of leavened bread in order to dispose of it.
“It’s not despairing at all,” said Hobscheid. “There’s a beauty in it and conversion is a similar process. You must leave something behind in order to move on to something else.”
“Children of Ruth” runs through Feb. 26 at the Heller Museum at Hebrew Union College.
The post One was born Catholic, another was a West Virginia Protestant — now they’re all making Jewish art appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
German Antisemitism Commissioner Targeted With Death Threat Letter After Arson Attack on Home
Andreas Büttner (Die Linke), photographed during the state parliament session. The politician was nominated for the position of Brandenburg’s anti-Semitism commissioner. Photo: Soeren Stache/dpa via Reuters Connect
Andreas Büttner, the commissioner for antisemitism in the state of Brandenburg in northeastern Germany, has been targeted the second attack in under a week after receiving a death threat, sparking outrage and prompting local authorities to launch a full investigation.
According to the German newspaper Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten (PNN), the Brandenburg state parliament received a letter on Monday threatening Büttner’s life, with the words “We will kill you” and an inverted red triangle, the symbol of support for the Islamist terrorist group Hamas.
State security police have examined the anonymous letter under strict safety measures, determining that a gray substance inside was harmless. Authorities are now probing the incident as part of an ongoing investigation into threats against the German official.
Ulrike Liedtke, president of the Brandenburg state parliament, condemned the latest attack on Büttner, describing the death threats and harassment as “completely unacceptable.”
“Threats and violence are not a form of political discourse, but crimes against humanity,” Liedtke said. “Andreas Büttner has our complete support and solidarity.”
A former police officer and member of the Left Party, Büttner took office as commissioner for antisemitism in 2024 and has faced repeated attacks since.
On Sunday night, Büttner’s private property in Templin — a town located approximately 43 miles north of Berlin — was targeted in an arson attack, and a red Hamas triangle was spray-painted on his house.
The home of Germany’s antisemitism commissioner, Andreas Büttner, was set on fire overnight in a targeted attack.
His family was inside the house at the time.
This is the second attack against Büttner in the past 16 months. His car was previously vandalized with swastikas. This… pic.twitter.com/cAbFnMIwQ7
— Combat Antisemitism Movement (@CombatASemitism) January 5, 2026
According to Büttner, his family was inside the house at the time of the attack, marking the latest assault against him in the past 16 months.
“The symbol sends a clear message. The red Hamas triangle is widely recognized as a sign of jihadist violence and antisemitic incitement,” Büttner said in a statement after the incident.
“Anyone who uses such a thing wants to intimidate and glorify terror. This is not a protest, it is a threat,” he continued.
Hamas uses inverted red triangles in its propaganda videos to indicate Israeli targets about to be attacked. The symbol, a common staple at pro-Hamas rallies, has come to represent the Palestinian terrorist group and glorify its use of violence.
In August 2024, swastikas and other symbols and threats were also spray-painted on Büttner’s personal car.
Uncategorized
Harvard President Blasts Scholar Activism, Calls for ‘Restoring Balance’ in Higher Ed
Harvard University President Alan Garber speaks during the 374th Commencement exercises at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Harvard University president Alan Garber, fresh off a resounding endorsement in which the Harvard Corporation elected to keep him on the job “indefinitely,” criticized progressive faculty in a recent podcast interview for turning the university classroom into a pulpit for the airing of their personal views on contentious political issues.
Garber made the comments last week on the “Identity/Crisis Podcast,” a production of the Shalom Hartman Institute, a Jewish think tank which specializes in education research.
“I think that’s where we went wrong,” Garber said, speaking to Yehuda Kurtzer. “Because think about it, if a professor in a classroom says, ‘This is what I believe about this issue,’ how many students — some of you probably would be prepared to deal with this, but most people wouldn’t — how many students would actually be willing to go toe to toe against a professor who’s expressed a firm view about a controversial issue?”
Garber continued, saying he believes higher education, facing a popular backlash against what critics have described as political indoctrination, is now seeing a “movement to restore balance in teaching and to bring back the idea that you really need to be objective in the classroom.”
He added, “What we need to arm our students with is a set of facts and a set of analytic tools and cultivation of rigor in analyzing these issues.”
Coming during winter recess and the Jewish and Christian holidays, Garber’s interview fell under the radar after it was first aired but has been noticed this week, with some observers pointing to it as evidence that Harvard is leading an effort to restore trust in the university even as it resists conceding to the Trump administration everything it has demanded regarding DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), viewpoint diversity, and expressive activity such as protests.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Garber has spent the past two years fighting factions from within and without the university that have demanded to steer its policies and culture — from organizers of an illegal anti-Israel encampment to US President Donald Trump, who earlier this year canceled $2.26 billion in public money for Harvard after it refused to grant his wishlist of reforms for which the conservative movement has clamored for decades.
Even as Harvard tells Trump “no,” it has enacted several policies as a direct response to criticisms that the institution is too permissive of antisemitism for having allowed anti-Zionist extremism to reach the point of antisemitic harassment and discrimination. In 2025, the school agreed to incorporate into its policies a definition of antisemitism supported by most of the Jewish community, established new rules governing campus protests, and announced new partnerships with Israeli academic institutions. Harvard even shuttered a DEI office and transferred its staff to what will become, according to a previous report by The Harvard Crimson, a “new Office of Culture and Community.” The paper added that Harvard has even “worked to strip all references to DEI from its website.”
Appointed in January 2024 as interim president, Garber — who previously served in roles as Harvard’s provost and chief academic officer — rose to the top position at America’s oldest and, arguably, most prestigious institution at a time when the job was least desirable. At the time, Harvard was being pilloried over some of its students cheering Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel and even forming gangs which mobbed Jewish students wending their way through campus; the university had suffered the embarrassment of its first Black president being outed as a serial plagiarist, a stunning disclosure which called into question its vetting procedures as well as its embrace of affirmative action; and anti-Israel activists on campus were disrupting classes and calling for others to “globalize the intifada.”
Garber has since won over the Harvard Corporation, which has refused to replace him during a moment that has been described as the most challenging in its history.
“Alan’s humble, resilient, and effective leadership has shown itself to be not just a vital source of calm in turbulent times, but also a generative force for sustaining Harvard’s commitment to academic excellence and to free inquiry and expression,” Harvard Corporation senior fellow Penny Pritzker said in a statement issued on behalf of the body, which is the equivalent of a board of trustees. “From restoring a sense of community during a period of intense scrutiny and division to launching vital new programs on viewpoint diversity and civil discourses and instituting new actions to fight antisemitism and anti-Arab bias, Alan has not only stabilized the university but brought us together in support of our shared mission.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
Uncategorized
Holocaust Survivors Sent Care Packages to Oct. 7 Hostages for Hanukkah
The Menorah for Hanukkah on the Square 2025 in Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom, Dec. 14, 2025. Photo: Matthew Chattle/Cover Images via Reuters Connect
Survivors of the Holocaust spread holiday cheer this Hanukkah by delivering care packages to a group of 20 hostages whom the terrorist group Hamas recently released from captivity to fulfill the requirements of a ceasefire which suspended hostilities with Israel.
The gifts, dropped off at the Israeli consulate office in New York City, was made possible by The Blue Card, the only US-based charity organization which provides financial assistance and other services to survivors of the Holocaust. Originally founded in 1934 to assist Jews who had fled Germany to escape Hitler’s persecution of the country’s Jews, it has operated ceaselessly for nearly a century.
Over the past two years, the world has seen a revival of antisemitism unlike any since the period in which The Blue Card was founded, sparked by the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre that claimed the lives over of 1,200 Israelis and stole years and even more lives from 251 more who were kidnapped and held hostage in Gaza.
Some of the hostages who survived captivity have been released in stages since Israel and Hamas agreed on a ceasefire in October, and on Monday, Blue Card executive director Masha Pearl said the organization felt it necessary to reach out to them due to their having experienced a plight that is painfully familiar to what its clients endured in Europe during the Holocaust. Pearl also discussed the Bondi Beach mass shooting, in which a father and son inspired by Islamism opened fire on Jews celebrating the start of Hanukkah, murdering 15 people and injuring 40 others.
“Holocaust survivors and former hostages share a uniquely painful bond shaped by survival and resilience,” Pearl said. “After witnessing a mass shooting at a Chanukah event in Sydney, it felt even more urgent for our survivors to deliver these care packages now, spreading light at a moment that feels dark for the entire Jewish world. The resilience of the Holocaust survivors we assist, the former hostages, and now the survivors of the attack in Australia remind us that even in the face of hatred and violence, the Jewish people remain united.”
In a press release Blue Card said the care packages “carried profound meaning,” being filled to the brim with goods of all sorts, from blankets and water bottles to chap stick and even handwritten notes from the Holocaust survivors who sent them.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.