GHIORA AHARONI founded his multi-disciplinary studio for art and design in New York City in 2004, and his work has been exhibited internationally in museums, institutions and galleries. A graduate of Yale University, Aharoni’s work is in the permanent collection of The Pompidou Center, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Vatican, The Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., The Morgan Library & Museum and The Anu Museum in Tel Aviv—as well as numerous private collections in North America, Europe, Australia, Israel and India. Aharoni’s artworks are characterized by engaging time and text as a medium, and an interest in exploring dualities, such as the intersection of religion and science, and the intertwined relationships of seemingly disparate cultures. Much of his work involves traditional objects or symbols—such as cultural artifacts or sacred texts—that have been recontextualized and imbued with meaning that asks the viewer to question or reconsider their conventional social/cultural significance. Aharoni created Hebrabic© (a combination of Hebrew and Arabic that he conceived in 1999 while at Yale), employing the shared etymology of the word “home” in Hebrew and Arabic as a metaphorical framework for exploring personal, intercultural and spiritual relationships. Hebrabic© is an integral element of Aharoni’s work in free-standing sculptures, works on paper, glass-engraved assemblage sculptures and site-specific installations. https://www.ghiora-aharoni.com/
LIZ AESCHILMANN - I was raised in a Reform Jewish home in Madison, Wisconsin. A semester in Thailand learning from communities who were organizing to fight for their land, water, and self-determination was a political awakening. I spent the next 3 years organizing faith communities in Southeastern Massachusetts. A desire to go deeper sent me to Harvard Divinity School, and a career as a Jewish chaplain with students at Vassar and Tufts. In recent years, reckoning with my own access to wealth and beginning the process of redistribution has ignited a passion for supporting other Jews in this work. As a money coach, I work with Jews to face our complex inheritance around money, and claim some of Judaism's radical, transformative teachings to guide our financial lives. I live outside of Boston, where my wife and I share a three-family home with her twin sister, two dear friends, and a very anxious dog named Widget. lizaeschlimann.com
RA’ANAN ALEXANDROWICZ is a director, screenwriter and editor. He is known for the documentary The Law in These Parts (2011), for which received the Grand Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival, a Peabody award, and numerous other prizes. His earlier documentaries, The Inner Tour (2001) and Martin (1999), were shown in the Berlin Film Festival's Forum section and MoMA's New Directors / New Films series. Alexandrowicz's single fiction feature, James' Journey to Jerusalem (2003), premiered in Cannes Directors' Fortnight and at the Toronto International Film Festival and received several international awards. He also directed the 2019 documentary film The Viewing Booth. Alexandrowicz's films have been released theatrically in the United States and Europe, and broadcast by PBS, Arte, the BBC, as well as other television channels. He served several times as an editing adviser for the Sundance Documentary Fund.
SYLVIE BLAUSTEIN - I am a first generation American, the daughter of Holocaust survivors from Eastern Europe. I grew up in a culturally Jewish but secular home. I was lucky enough to become a midwife and to have had a 32-year career that I loved, providing pregnancy and birth care in various settings in New York and New Jersey. After closing my own practice, Midwifery of Manhattan, which I ran for 14 years, I spent my last active working years at St. Josephs Hospital in Paterson NJ, caring primarily for women of color, teenagers and documented and undocumented immigrants. I retired in March of 2020 and live in Nyack with my husband. I have 3 daughters, 3 grandchildren, and like many retirees am as busy as ever doing volunteer work, knitting, baking, walking and reading.
YONATAN GUTFELD grew up in Jerusalem, where he studied music composition. He was active in the Tel Aviv singer-songwriter scene and toured the country with his band after re- leasing his debut album. Since 2012 Yonatan lives in NYC where he records his songs, teaches and writes music for theatre productions. In 2017 he released Time’s Tyranny, an album of new compositions to Shakespeare sonnets in He- brew translation. In 2019 he released In Exile Even In His Own Room, a selection of songs set to lyrics by poet Ory Bernstein. In 2020 he released Acht U Shtaim, an album of original Hebrew children songs. Yonatan is the Music Director of The New Shul. https://yonatangutfeld.bandcamp.com/album/--2
Professor David Kretzmer is a renowned Israeli expert in international and constitutional law. Prof. Kretzmer established the Centre for Human Rights at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and was a founding member of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, the Minerva Centre for Human Rights, and B'Tselem. He has also been vice-chairperson of the UN Human Rights Committee. Before becoming a Professor at Hebrew University, he worked under several justices of the Israeli supreme court, and his writing greatly influenced the film The Law in These Parts.
Professor Kretzmer’s book The Occupation of Justice.
Aviya Hernstadt - I am a New York-Jewish performance artist, educator and arts administrator. In my artistic practice, I work with movement, autobiography, and comedy and am currently focusing my research on deconstructing and recontextualizing Jewish rituals, traditions, and stories. I have performed in collaboration with Carmen Caceres DanceAction, Yehuda Hyman’s Mystical Feet Company and The New Shul. My creative practice is also informed by my work as the Education Programs Associate at BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange, where I support and manage our youth education programming. I am a member of the 2022 EmergeNYC cohort, a program for emerging artists exploring the intersection of arts and activism.
SIR FRANK LONDON is a Grammy Award-winning trumpeter/composer and co-founder of the Klezmatics. His latest releases are Salomé: Woman of Valor (with Adeena Karasick) and Ghetto Songs. He leads Glass House Orchestra, Frank London’s Klezmer Brass Allstars, Shekhina Big Band, Sharabi with Deep Singh, Ahava Raba with Yanky Lemmer & Michael Winograd, and Vilde mekhaye with Eleanor Reissa. He has worked with John Zorn, Karen O, Itzhak Perlman, Pink Floyd, LL Cool J, Mel Tormé, Lester Bowie, LaMonte Young, They Might Be Giants, David Byrne, Jane Siberry, Ben Folds 5; is on over 400 CDs and was featured on Sex And The City http://www.franklondon.com/
RABBI MISHA SHULMAN, Rabbi of The New Shul, is a devoted faith leader, theater professional and activist. Born and raised in Jerusalem, he is the founding director of the School for Creative Judaism (SCJ) and has worked at Congregation Rodef Shalom, The Village Temple, the Shul of New York, the Board of Jewish Education and Educational Alliance. He is an accomplished playwright, theater director and actor, with an MFA from Brooklyn College and an extensive theatrical resume which includes performances in theatres ranging from Off Off Broadway to Lincoln Center to theaters around the globe. He was ordained by an independent committee of five rabbis and five artists after a seven year process that examined the overlap between Judaism, art and social activism.
MAIA WECHSLER is an award-winning independent documentary filmmaker. Her most recent work, If the Dancer Dances, captures the recreation of an iconic work by Merce Cunningham and was a New York Times Critic’s Pick. Previous films include Sisters in Resistance, about four friends who fought in the French resistance and survived Ravensbruck concentration camp, and Melvin & Jean: An American Story, about two young militants who hijack a plane to join the Black Panthers in Algeria. Prior to working in film, Maia was special correspondent in Paris for U.S. News and World Report, managing editor of the Paris city magazine Passion, and a reporter/writer at The Times in Trenton, New Jersey. She is a certified yoga instructor and spent two years teaching women detainees at Rikers Island. Maia devoted her early life to dance. She is a long-time member of The New Shul.
Photo credit: Shonna Valeska.
JUDI WILLIAMS is a proud educator, Jew by Choice, and native New Yorker born and raised in Queens to West Indian parents. Having grown up singing in both Catholic church and contemporary gospel choirs, Judi uses her smoky, mezzo-soprano voice to approach Jewish religious music with an element of soul. Judi is heavily involved with various social justice organizations, most notably The Jewish Vote and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ). In the summer of 2020, Judi was invited to chant Eicha as part of JFREJ's 40 Days of Teshuvah, a campaign that took place during the 40 days leading up to Tisha b'Av to cry out for justice and mourn the deaths of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and so many other people of color who have fallen victim to police violence. Judi is also an active member of the Reform Temple of Forest Hills (RTFH) in Forest Hills, Queens, where she is part of the RTFH Choir and the RTFH Racial Equity Committee.
Erica Wright - I am originally from St. Louis, MO, but I have been fortunate enough to call 9 different cities and countries home. It is through my travels that I have found many muses and storylines for my poetry and photography. I feel as if I have lived many lives but in this current one, I am a therapist and Restorative Justice practitioner. But what I really do, is read, write, spend time with my love ones, bike and enjoy the beauty of nature. I try and often fail, but I do try to live by my motto of “be like the water”, for no matter what obstacles are thrown on it’s shores it always flows back to the ocean, back to its center!