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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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Trump defends Tucker Carlson, whose interview with antisemite Nick Fuentes split Republicans
(JTA) — President Donald Trump defended Tucker Carlson’s recent interview with avowed antisemite Nick Fuentes, weighing in on a debate over antisemitism that has roiled the Republican party.
“I’ve found him to be good. He’s said good things about me over the years,” Trump told a reporter over the weekend who asked about Carlson’s interview. “You can’t tell him who to interview. If he wants to interview Nick Fuentes, I don’t know much about him, but if he wants to do it, get the word out.”
The president’s comments were his first on a growing divide within the Republican party over Carlson giving a platform on his top-rated podcast to Fuentes and over the growth of the antisemitic Fuentes-led “groyper” movement on the right.
Jewish conservatives and some of their allies have expressed alarm at explicit antisemitism within the movement. Conservative writer Rod Dreher recently estimating that as many as 40 percent of young GOP staffers in Washington, D.C. are followers of the 27-year-old Fuentes, who complained to Carlson that “organized Jewry” undermines American unity.
Yet neither Trump nor Vice President J.D. Vance has joined the chorus of condemnation for Fuentes’ brand of white supremacy. Vance, who employs Carlson’s son Buckley on his staff, in recent days defended Buckley from a right-wing Jewish activist’s accusations of antisemitism without directly addressing the Fuentes controversy. The vice president was also criticized for responding to a college student’s question about Israel and Jews without acknowledging the question’s antisemitic underpinnings.
The debate over Carlson was stoked when the president of the right-wing Heritage Foundation defended Carlson. A growing number of Heritage Foundation staffers and associates, both Jewish and not, have since distanced themselves from the think tank. Legal fellow Adam Mossoff, who is Jewish, and former board member Robert George, a Princeton University professor and prominent public intellectual, recently left Heritage, citing its handling of Carlson.
And in the cultural sphere, the actress and podcaster Dasha Nekrasova was also dropped by her agent on Friday over a weeks-old interview with Fuentes that she and her co-host conducted on the podcast “Red Scare.” “Nekrasova had a recurring role on HBO’s “Succession,” and “Red Scare” was initially a thought leader on the young left before lurching hard to the right in recent years.
Carlson campaigned with Trump for his 2024 reelection and has significant influence within his administration, while Trump dined with Fuentes and the antisemitic rapper Ye in Mar-a-Lago in 2022, an incident that prompted criticism from staunch Jewish Republican allies. Trump has since claimed he didn’t know who Fuentes was at the time.
Meanwhile, Paul Ingrassia, a Trump administration staffer who attended a Fuentes rally last year and recently withdrew his nomination from a Cabinet-level post over the revelation of texts in which he said he had a “Nazi streak,” remains in the administration. Instead Ingrassia found a new position as deputy general counsel of the General Services Administration.
Carlson, for his part, has doubled down, even as some sponsors have quietly exited his show. Last week he disparaged Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the anti-Nazi pastor who was executed in 1945 for his involvement in the German resistance movement. Carlson also compared the Israel Defense Forces to Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann.
The GOP’s fault lines over Fuentes and antisemitism aren’t breaking as cleanly as those over other issues. Even a newly minted Trump adversary on the right, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, declined to condemn Carlson or Fuentes in a recent CNN interview.
“I defend every single person’s free speech rights. I think that’s incredibly important. So I don’t apologize for that. And I don’t believe in cancelling people. And I think it’s important for people like Tucker Carlson and yourself to interview everyone,” Greene told Dana Bash over the weekend.
On CNN Greene noted that she had spoken at a Fuentes-led conference in 2022, but claimed, “I don’t know Nick Fuentes. He’s someone I’ve never exchanged text messages with or phone calls.”
Asked specifically about Fuentes’s past antisemitic comments, Greene continued, “You should have Nick Fuentes on your show, and you can ask him questions about that. I myself am not antisemitic. I have never criticized the Jewish people or said anything about them in particular. I am critical of the government of Israel.”
The post Trump defends Tucker Carlson, whose interview with antisemite Nick Fuentes split Republicans appeared first on The Forward.
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How Mussolini’s Jewish lover changed Fascist art and design
Not even 70 years after Italy unified, Benito Mussolini’s staged march on Rome so unnerved the government that King Victor Emmanuel III named him prime minister, opening the door to Fascist rule. “And so then began the task of selling Italy: at home, abroad, and as an idea in itself,” according to “The Future Was Then: The Changing Face of Fascist Italy.”
Now on view at Manhattan’s Poster House, the exhibition examines the intersection of propaganda and art in Mussolini’s Italy. Featuring 75 works on loan from the Fondazione Massimo e Sonia Cirulli in Bologna and curated by photographic artist and author B.A. Van Sise, the show explores how the regime used bold design, vivid color and modernist imagery to shape the nation’s self-image and fuel the Futurist movement.
But beyond the bombast, the sleek typefaces and arresting compositions lies a deeper, more complicated story. At its heart is Mussolini’s longtime lover and muse, Margherita Sarfatti, a Venetian Jew whose aesthetic sensibilities helped define the visual language of Italian Fascism.
“It’s not a Jewish show, though a person could argue it has a huge Jewish element since everything goes back to Margherita Sarfatti, who’s as Jewish as they come,” Van Sise said. “Fundamentally, Sarfatti’s the core of the show. The entire Italian art establishment changes gears because Mussolini’s girlfriend likes Futurism.”
Born in 1880 into a wealthy Jewish family, Sarfatti became a journalist, art critic and socialite who served as Mussolini’s adviser, biographer and cultural strategist. She funded Il Popolo d’Italia and was, as the exhibition text notes, “the uncrowned queen of Italy.”
“Think Gertrude Stein with better couture,” Van Sise said. “Every single thing in this show exists because of her — the Duce’s girlfriend adored Futurist art, and her taste dictated the direction of Italy’s visual culture. Artists and movements jumped ship to follow her lead, obeying in advance.”
Her influence is evident in pieces such as Marcello Dudovich’s 1936 poster “Esposizione Rhodia Albene alla Rinascente,” which depicts two elegantly dressed women striding in lockstep, evoking Sarfatti’s emphasis on fashion, modernity and movement.
The exhibit unfolds in three sections — “Italy as an Idea,” “Italy at Home,” and “Italy in the World” — each highlighting how Italian identity was constructed through imagery that linked domestic life, political messaging, and global ambition.
“Cioccolato Ali d’Italia,” a poster from 1931, depicts a sleek silver aircraft soaring across the page. Created to commemorate Minister of Aviation Italo Balbo’s transatlantic flights to South America, the image showcases Italy’s growing aviation prowess. A small rendering of Columbus’ ship tucked in the corner underscores the regime’s imperial aspirations.
The 1933 “Ardita Fiat” poster highlights the introduction of the Fiat Ardita, a streamlined, torpedo-shaped car whose name, which means “the daring one,” embodied Fascist vigor. In it a woman sits behind the wheel, her white gloves and black fez hat mirroring those worn by the Arditi, Italy’s elite assault troops.
Van Sise said it was essential to acknowledge the significant, though often overlooked, role Italian Jews played in Fascism’s early years. Among them were Gino Arias, an economist who addressed the National Fascist Party shortly before it seized power in 1922; Elisa Majer Rizzoli, who led the party’s women’s wing; and Guido Jung, an Orthodox Jew who served as finance minister.
“It was really important to include the Jewish history of the Italian Fascist period because it’s partly my own,” Van Sise said. “My family were Tunisian and Libyan Jews who came to Italy, and some branches were old-line Italian families — there for centuries, if not a millennium.”
Eventually Jews were targeted in Italy. By 1938 Mussolini had enacted racial laws, forcing thousands of Jews, including Sarfatti and Van Sise’s grandfather, to flee. Sarfatti spent her exile in Switzerland, Argentina, and Uruguay before returning after the war, only to learn her sister was among the more than seven thousand Italian Jews murdered in the Holocaust.
Van Sise’s grandfather also returned, before the war’s end, and joined the partisans.
He provides the exhibition’s stark coda: a small black-and-white photograph showing the corpses of Mussolini and others hanging by their heels in Milan’s Piazzale Loreto. The photographer was Van Sise’s grandfather.
“It’s a brutal image,” Van Sise said. “But it brings the story full circle — art, politics and identity collapsing into history itself.”
“The Future Was Then: The Changing Face of Fascist Italy” runs through Feb. 22 at the Poster House.
The post How Mussolini’s Jewish lover changed Fascist art and design appeared first on The Forward.
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Berlin to Lift Suspension of Israel Weapons Sales, but Says Ceasefire Must Hold
A German and Israeli flag fly, on the day Chancellor Friedrich Merz meets with Israeli President Isaac Herzog for talks, in Berlin, Germany, May 12, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Liesa Johannssen
Germany on Monday moved to resume weapons sales to Israel that had been suspended since August over the war in Gaza, but said the decision is subject to the observance of the ceasefire and the large-scale provision of humanitarian aid.
Germany, the second-largest exporter of arms to Israel after the United States, announced a suspension of some arms exports to Israel in August, amid mounting popular pressure over the war.
The decision affected weapons and systems that could be used in Gaza but not others deemed necessary for Israel to defend itself from external attacks.
Berlin will lift the suspension order on Nov. 24 and return to a case-by-case review of arms exports to Israel, while continuing to monitor the developments on the ground, a German government spokesperson said on Monday.
HUMANITARIAN AID MUST CONTINUE ‘ON A LARGE SCALE’
The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas “is the basis for this decision, and we expect everyone to abide by the agreements that have been made – that includes maintaining the ceasefire,” a second government spokesperson said.
“It also means that humanitarian aid is provided on a large scale and that the process continues in an orderly manner, as agreed,” the spokesperson added.
Germany remains committed to supporting a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians on the basis of a two-state solution and would continue to engage in supporting reconstruction in Gaza, the spokesperson said.
Germany is one of Israel‘s staunchest supporters, in part because of historical guilt for the Nazi Holocaust – a policy known as the “Staatsraison.”
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz came under massive criticism from his own conservatives for the decision to partially suspend the deliveries, which he said was in response to Israel‘s plan at the time to expand operations in Gaza.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Germany provided 30 percent of Israel‘s major arms imports in 2019-2023, primarily naval equipment including Sa’ar 6-class frigates (MEKO A-100 Light Frigates), which were used in the Gaza war.
ISRAEL CALLS ON OTHERS TO FOLLOW
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar on X lauded Germany for its decision to lift the order.
“I call on other governments to adopt similar decisions, following Germany,” he wrote.
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said the decision, in which his ministry was closely involved, was “responsible and correct” and that the ceasefire appeared to be sustainable.