The Art/Lab Podcast: Conversations About Jewish Arts and Culture

Anyone who takes Jewish sacred texts seriously has to care about how we interpret these stories, which means how these storeis and myths are re-told, invested with new dimensions and meanings, in each generation. The stories would get old and become dead, useless, if we insisted that they mean to us what they meant to a jew who lived 1000 years ago. They gain life when we renarrate them, so to speak. We are grappling in America and Israel both, with the collapse of earlier narratives about what those nations mean. The people who make up these nations do not share an overarching narrative that binds them. Our stories seem broken, and disfunctional. This week's guest, Tom Haviv, thinks about narratives, how they work and what it means when they break - when they stop working. Tom is the co-founder and Executive Director of Ayin Press, an independent publishing platform and interdisciplinary creative studio rooted in Jewish culture. He is also an artist and a poet in his own right. With Ayin Press Tom and his co-founder Eden Perlstein have created an outlet and inspiration for superb Jewish work, and work that reaches beyond the Jewish world as well. Ayin published Daniela Molnar's Protocols: An Erasure, which you've heard about on this podcast and a visit to their website ayinpress.org will reveal an impressive range of new works, from philosophy, to mysticism, to a Jewish tarot deck and more. But Tom's own life story and his poetic work digs deep into myth and narrative, and what they mean for our lives and our world. He was the perfect partner for an exploration of this topic which is perhaps more relevant now than it has been in at least a generation. Enjoy the conversation with Tom Haviv. Links----- www.tomhaviv.com www.ayinpress.org

My guest today is journalist Rebecca Clarren . Her work has appeared in Mother Jones , High Country News , The Nation , and Indian Country Today . For her reporting, she's won a Hillman Prize, received an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellowship, and earned multiple grants from the Fund for Investigative Journalism. But as you'll hear in our conversation, she's much more than a journalist. Her debut novel, which we touch on, is Kickdown , which was shortlisted for the PEN Bellwether Prize. Clarren is also a published poet; her work has appeared in North American Review , Catamaran , CutBank , and Poetry Northwest . We spend most of our time talking about The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance , an extraordinary book in which she turns her journalistic eye on her own story—and her family's. It was named a Best Book of 2023 by several publications, won the Will Rogers Medallion Award, and was shortlisted for the High Plains Book Award and the Great Plains Book Award. Rebecca and I talk about Jewish identity and values, and how those shape her work. She has a passion for amplifying marginalized and silenced voices—and for uncovering the stories that get buried beneath the dominant narrative. We talk about storytelling, contested truth, and what it means to hold multiple perspectives at once. We also talk powerfully about grief and loss, and how they've informed her life and her work. Israel and Gaza come up because we're talking about competing narratives and moral urgency—and she offers a striking framework for balancing truth and compassion , rooted in learning with her rabbi. It's a rich conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it. This is my conversation with Rebecca Clarren . The Art/Lab Podcast is created, produced and edited by Rabbi Joshua Rose and is supported by Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture. Theme music composed by Rabbi Joshua Rose ---- Links & Show Notes Art/Lab: artlabpdx.org Rebecca's website: https://www.rebecca-clarren.com/ Indian Land Tenure Foundation: https://iltf.org/ Peter Beinart's Being Jewish Adrer the Destruction of Gaza: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/775348/being-jewish-after-the-destruction-of-gaza-by-peter-beinart/ This is a re-release of S3E28, originally titled "Can We Find Truth Amidst Competing Narratives?"

A Reflection by Rabbi Josh

In this episode, I sit down with multi-instrumentalist David Rosman — guitarist, violinist, and klezmer devotee — to talk about how he found his way into klezmer music not through inheritance, but through a winding path: John Zorn's avant-garde Jewish compositions, a deep dive into Zohar and Jewish mysticism, and an eventual hunger for community that led him back to tradition. We discuss what "appropriate innovation" looks like inside a musical tradition whose continuity was violently severed, the fidl-pauk-kapelye (the poorer, older, more melancholic wedding-band repertoire he drew on for his latest album), the push-and-pull rhythmic elasticity he compares to Charles Mingus, and the influence of ethnographer S. An-sky, who saw preserving Jewish folk tradition as inseparable from creating something new with it. It's a conversation about grounding innovation in real fluency with a tradition, rather than skipping straight to reinvention. Enjoy my conversation with David Rosman. The Art/Lab Podcast: Conversations About Jewish Arts and Culture is conceived of and created by Rabbi Josh Rose, and is a program of Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture. ------ Links *Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture: artlabpdx.org *David Rosman's Music on Bandcamp: dancedancejews.bandcamp.com/music *On S An-Sky's The Dybbuk: yiddishbookcenter.org/educational-programs/resources-teachers/resource-kits-teachers/yiddish-theater/dybbuk *YIVO Institute article on Walter Zev Feldman's Klezmer: Music, History, and Memory: yivo.org/Klezmer-Music-History-Memory *Publisher's page on the Pritzker version of the Zohar: sup.org/books/series/zohar-pritzker-edition

This is a re-release of Season 3 Episode 43. Welcome to The Genesis . If you heard my episode with Eric Stern, then you already know that today's guest will be performing at the Portland Jewish Music Festival on Saturday, May 16. If you have not heard that episode, go back and listen to it—you will hear about all the remarkable things happening at this year's festival. I was especially grateful to have the chance to speak with today's guest, Yair Dalal. Because I was able to talk with Yair before he comes to Portland next month, I thought it was only right to include a little of his music after our conversation. If you are watching on The Genesis YouTube channel, you will see Yair performing live in a video from his YouTube channel. If you are listening to the audio podcast, you will hear some of his beautiful music. Either way, I wanted to give you a sense of the kind of artist he is. Yair Dalal is a composer, violinist, oud player, singer, and teacher. Over the last several decades, he has released 12 albums that traverse a wide cultural landscape, drawing on Israeli, Jewish, and Middle Eastern musical traditions. His work reflects deep roots in classical European, jazz, and Arabic music, and we talk in this conversation about how he moved among those worlds and, in some sense, returned to his own roots. Dalal's family came to Israel from Baghdad, and his Iraqi heritage is deeply embedded in his music. Alongside his work as a performer and composer, he has devoted himself to preserving endangered musical traditions, especially the Babylonian Jewish-Iraqi musical heritage and the music of the Bedouins. We speak about his time with the Bedouins, and about the desert, which seems in many ways to be his truest home. Over the years, Dalal has performed in concerts and festivals around the world, including at major venues such as Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, at world music festivals from England to Australia and New Zealand, and also in far more intimate settings, including playing with Bedouins in their tents. Beyond his musical life, Yair Dalal is also a peace activist who has devoted much of his energy to building bridges of understanding and creativity among different cultures, especially between Jews and Arabs. In 1994, he performed at the Nobel Peace Prize Gala Concert honoring Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, and Yasser Arafat. Dalal has received numerous Israeli awards in recognition of both his music and his contribution to Israeli culture. In 2021, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Israeli Ministry of Culture. He has also been honored by other organizations for his dedication to the oud and for his role in bringing its musical traditions to audiences in Israel and abroad. He was also nominated for a Grammy. He has made a profound impact on Israeli music, Israeli culture, and what we now call world music. I think you are really going to enjoy this conversation with Yair Dalal. And you do not want to miss him—or the other musicians performing at the Portland Jewish Music Festival, which is co-sponsored by Art/Lab along with a host of Portland Jewish organizations. Enjoy my conversation with the remarkable Yair Dalal. The Genesis: Conversations About Jewish Arts and Culture is conceived of and created by Rabbi Josh Rose, and is a program of Art/Lab: Jewish Arts and Culture. Theme music by Rabbi Josh Rose. Links Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts & Culture: www.artlabpdx.org Yair Dalal: https://www.yairdalal.com Portland Jewish Music Festival: https://ejcpdx.org/pjmf26 Documentary About Yair, "Ain't Got no Jeep and My Camel Died": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AOSmzIPG7g Documentary about Iraqi-Israeli music and musicians (recommended by Yair): https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=baghdad+bandstand

In this episode, Rabbi Josh sits down with Portland-based dancer, choreographer, and Jewish educator Jen Gwirtz to explore the meeting place of Judaism, language, and the body. Gwirtz's 2022 work Kol b'Isha reimagines the ancient rabbinic phrase kol isha erva—"the voice of a woman is nakedness"—through wordplay, dance, and lived experience. Their conversation ranges from the poetic depths of Hebrew to the invisibility of middle-aged women, from rabbinic trauma after the destruction of the Temple to the embodied practice Jen calls "dancing Torah." Along the way, they discuss how Hebrew's verb-driven structure lends itself to movement, why improvisation has a distinctly Jewish resonance, and how the body itself can be read as a kind of text. What emerges is a vision of Judaism not just as a religion of study and words, but as something enacted through voice, gesture, and choreography. Links and Notes www.artlabpdx.org www.jennifergwirtz.org www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/546694/on-tyranny-by-timothy-snyder www.annahalprin.org

S3E11 Tom Haviv Anyone who takes Jewish sacred texts seriously has to care about how we interpret these stories, which means how these storeis and myths are re-told, invested with new dimensions and meanings, in each generation. The stories would get old and become dead, useless, if we insisted that they mean to us what they meant to a jew who lived 1000 years ago. They gain life when we renarrate them, so to speak. We are grappling in America and Israel both, with the collapse of earlier narratives about what those nations mean. The people who make up these nations do not share an overarching narrative that binds them. Our stories seem broken, and disfunctional. This week's guest, Tom Haviv, thinks about narratives, how they work and what it means when they break - when they stop working. Tom is the co-founder and Executive Director of Ayin Press, an independent publishing platform and interdisciplinary creative studio rooted in Jewish culture. He is also an artist and a poet in his own right. With Ayin Press Tom and his co-founder Eden Perlstein have created an outlet and inspiration for superb Jewish work, and work that reaches beyond the Jewish world as well. Ayin published Daniela Molnar's Protocols: An Erasure, which you've heard about on this podcast and a visit to their website ayinpress.org will reveal an impressive range of new works, from philosophy, to mysticism, to a Jewish tarot deck and more. But Tom's own life story and his poetic work digs deep into myth and narrative, and what they mean for our lives and our world. He was the perfect partner for an exploration of this topic which is perhaps more relevant now than it has been in at least a generation. Enjoy the conversation with Tom Haviv. Links----- www.tomhaviv.com www.ayinpress.org

div]:bg-bg-000/50 [&_pre>div]:border-0.5 [&_pre>div]:border-border-400 [&_.ignore-pre-bg>div]:bg-transparent [&_.standard-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pl-2 [&_.standard-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,ul,ol,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pr-8 [&_.progressive-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pl-2 [&_.progressive-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,ul,ol,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pr-8"> _*]:min-w-0 gap-3 [&_>_*:last-child]:mb-0 print:block print:[&_>_*_+_*]:mt-3 standard-markdown"> Summer schedule update: Art Lab is slowing down for the summer — fewer new episodes (about one a month), plus some re-released favorites. Behind the scenes, we're prepping for our Jerusalem Biennale exhibition this September and developing our next fellowship and artist workshops. Note: in re-released episodes you'll hear the old name, "The Genesis" — same podcast, we just changed our name to the Art/Lab Podcast. Support Jewish art and artists at artlabpdx.org/donate. ------ I sit down with Art/Lab director Shoshana Gugenheim—my longtime collaborator—to clarify what changed since Co/Lab went on hiatus and Art/Lab spun out as its own org and we tackle the basic question: why a Jewish contemporary arts fellowship, and why now? We talk about creativity as core to being human and Jewish, and how Art/Lab serves artists and audiences who don't always find a home in synagogues or legacy institutions. We reflect on October 7 and the year that followed: how Jewish artists across the country were censored or sidelined, and how our cohort became a rare room where people could bring divergent views, grief, and complexity without an ideological litmus test. That experience also shaped the (paused-for-now) gallery vision: a space for experimentation and public-facing work by contemporary Jewish artists in the Pacific Northwest. Then we lay out what Art/Lab looks like today: the flagship nine-month fellowship (this year's theme: memory), public workshops drawn from our growing network of 38 artists, this podcast, deep partnerships with the Oregon Jewish Museum and Eastside Jewish Commons, and new educators joining our text study series. We also share two big updates: Art/Lab's selection for the 2026 Jerusalem Biennale and fresh support from CANVAS—along with the real-world fundraising trade-offs arts programs face. Finally, Shoshana name-checks what she's loving right now and we close with some breads-and-spreads talk and an open invite to learn more, get involved, or support the work. The Art/Lab Podcast: Conversations About Jewish Arts and Culture is conceived of and created by Rabbi Josh Rose, and is a program of Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture. Links from the Show Art/Lab website — artlabpdx.org CANVAS — bycanvas.org Jerusalem Biennale — jerusalembiennale.org Oregon Jewish Museum & Center for Holocaust Education — ojmche.org Eastside Jewish Commons — ejcpdx.org Guerrilla Girls at the Getty — "How to Be a Guerrilla Girl" (Getty Research Institute) — getty.edu

One of our recent guests, David Winitsky, was asked to recommend a work of art he loves — he chose Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. I found myself returning to its insomnia plague scene: a plague that causes forgetting so total that the community must label everything just to function ("this is a cow, you must milk it") — a meditation on what happens when a society tries to forget its political violence and darker episodes. The novel insists that memory is essential to identity, individual and collective. America feels like it's walking into a forgetting plague of its own making — asked to forget the norms of democracy, and asked to forget the harder parts of our past. Memory and forgetting have been on my mind. Jews are commanded to remember, but being Jewish has also always meant forgetting — every generation, ours included, has had to let go of some of what came before in order to recreate itself. I wanted to talk through all of this, so I sat down with Rachel Atias — a wonderful writer with a fertile mind — on day one of her Art Lab alumnihood. (This cohort of Art Lab artists just completed the program; she's the first to be interviewed, with more voices to come.) Rachel recently taught a workshop on forgetting and on writing the pieces of our forgotten selves, at The Shuk, the Jewish Day of Learning sponsored by Art/Lab along with the Jewish Federation here in Portland. Forgetting came up a lot in our conversation — but so did hope, and whether hope is warranted. I think you'll enjoy this one, and enjoy getting to know Rachel's writing. Links in the show notes as usual. Enjoy the conversation. The Art/Lab Podcast: Conversations About Jewish Arts and Culture is conceived of and created by Rabbi Josh Rose, and is a program of Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture. Links Art/Lab: artlabpdx.org/ Rachel's Website: rachelattias.com Gefilte Fish — Portland Review: portlandreview.org/gefilte-fish-by-rachel-attias/ Pond Scum — Does It Have Pockets: www.doesithavepockets.com/fiction/rachel-attias A Fish in the Bathtub: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fish_in_the_Bathtub

Judy Margles, longtime director of the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education, joins me to talk about the institution she spent a career building — and the tensions built into its dual mission of Jewish cultural memory and Holocaust education. We discuss how Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education (OJMCHE) "third leg," pluralism, became the connective tissue between those two mandates, and how October 7th has complicated that commitment both toward the broader world and within the Jewish community itself. Judy shares a story about discovering that every parent in her friend group had a child at the Gaza rallies, and what that revealed about generational change. The conversation moves into the state of Jewish arts and culture right now — from the fight over the Israel Pavilion at the Venice Biennale to the movement of art across borders during wartime — and into bigger questions: what makes art endure, whether artists owe the Jewish community anything, and where Jewish culture actually comes from. Enjoy. The Art/Lab Podcast: Conversations About Jewish Arts and Culture is conceived of and created by Rabbi Josh Rose, and is a program of Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture. Theme music by Rabbi Josh Rose. Links Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture: artlabpdx.org Our podcast on Youtube: @theartlabpodcast Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education: https://www.ojmche.org/ Rothko Chapel, Houston: https://rothkochapel.org/ The Jewish Museum, New York — current exhibitions (including the Walter Benjamin photography show Judy references): https://thejewishmuseum.org/exhibitions/ Portland Art Museum: https://portlandartmuseum.org/

I think about language a lot. Understanding and translating Hebrew is a core part of what keeps me busy and engaged, and in my study of Kabbalah I often confront the limits of what language can convey. But language isn't just a philosophical puzzle — in our broader culture it's being used and abused, deployed in culture wars, for political division and demagoguery. Language can also be a form of self-determination, of pushing back against oppression. Think of how Jews in the late 19th century reclaimed Hebrew — turning it from a sacred religious tongue into a living secular language. In doing so, they largely turned away from Yiddish, the vernacular of diaspora Jewish life. Hebrew was the language of return; Yiddish was the language of exile. But in recent decades, Yiddish itself has undergone its own reclamation — not as a language of exile, but of resistance. For many Jews outside or critical of the Zionist mainstream, Yiddish carries a different kind of Jewish identity: diasporic, radical, rooted in solidarity and working-class organizing. You may recall my conversation with Mark Rubin, who draws on some of that same tradition in his own protest music. Today's guests are very much in that spirit. Maia Brown and Stefanie Brendler of Brivele are a Seattle-based Jewish duo making Yiddish music rooted in anti-fascist, anarchist, and labor organizing. Their latest album draws from the Proletpen — radical Yiddish writers working in New York between the 1920s and 1950s — and the music is as urgent as anything being made today. We talk about what drew them to Yiddish, how punk shaped their sound, and what it means to perform this music in Jewish spaces right now, when the community is so fractured. It's a rich, sometimes challenging conversation. I'll say upfront: my guests hold strong views on what's happening in Gaza — views I don't entirely share, and said so during our conversation. I think that exchange is worth hearing, and I'll let you draw your own conclusions. Enjoy the episode. The Art/Lab Podcast: Conversations About Jewish Arts and Culture is conceived of and created by Rabbi Josh Rose, and is a program of Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture. Theme music by Rabbi Josh Rose Notes Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture: artlabpdx.org https://www.brivele.com/ YIVO Encyclopedia entry on Yiddish: encyclopedia.yivo.org/article/235 Information on Dora Teitleboim: hcongressforjewishculture.org/people/4097/Taytlboym-Dora

Jewish artists have always found themselves in relationship with the world around them. Sometimes that relationship is generative. Sometimes it is uneasy. Often it requires artists to negotiate Jewish identity alongside broader ideas of citizenship, Americanness, Western culture, inherited artistic forms, and the cultural languages in which they work. That tension has become a recurring theme of the Art/Lab Podcast. But it is not new. Jewish artists and Jewish culture have always been shaped by the surrounding world — responding to it, resisting it, borrowing from it, arguing with it, and transforming it. In this episode, Rabbi Josh Rose speaks with David Winitsky, founder and Executive Artistic Director of the Jewish Plays Project, the nation's leading development house for contemporary Jewish theater. David has spent years thinking about how Jewish theater has changed over time, what questions Jewish artists are asking now, and what it means to create serious Jewish culture in the 21st century. David has directed and assisted on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and regionally, with work connected to institutions including Paper Mill Playhouse, Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre, New World Stages, and others. Through the Jewish Plays Project, he has helped develop 49 plays, 27 of which have gone on to production or further development in New York, London, Tel Aviv, and across the United States. This conversation explores what makes a play Jewish, how contemporary Jewish theater moves beyond inherited mid-century stories, and why Jewish culture needs not only institutional support but active participation. David is a sharp and generous thinker about Jewish art, theater, identity, and the role of culture in shaping Jewish meaning today. The Art/Lab Podcast: Conversations About Jewish Arts and Culture is conceived of and created by Rabbi Josh Rose, and is a program of Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture. Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts & Culture artlabpdx.org Jewish Plays Project: jewishplaysproject.org/ Jewish Playwriting Contest: jewishplaysproject.org/jewish-playwriting-contest/ One Hundred Years of Solitude: broadwaybooks.net/book/9780060883287

Hi friends, and welcome to the Art Lab podcast. I'm Rabbi Josh. My guest this week is Brontë Grimm, an Art Lab alum and multimedia artist whose work wrestles with difficult Jewish and other themes, including disability, grief, pain, and suffering. In this conversation, Brontë and I talk about work that is visually striking and sometimes difficult to behold, but that also carries its own kind of tender beauty. We also discuss her experience as part of the Art/Lab cohort that began just after October 7th, how that moment affected her work, and how different aspects of her identity — including her Jewish identity — find their way into her creative process. You can find this episode, along with our other conversations, on YouTube. Our channel's new name is Art Lab Podcast , and our handle is @theartlabpodcast , where you can watch this and other conversations about Jewish arts and culture on video. In this case, Brontë does not appear on screen, but throughout the conversation we've woven in examples of her work. As we speak, you'll be able to see images of the pieces we're discussing. I think you'll appreciate this conversation with Brontë Grimm, and I hope you'll give it a listen. And again, please make a note of our new YouTube home: the channel is Art Lab Podcast , and the handle is @theartlabpodcast . Thanks so much for listening and watching. The Art/Lab Podcast: Conversations About Jewish Arts and Culture is conceived of and created by Rabbi Josh Rose, and is a program of Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture. Theme music by Rabbi Josh Rose. Links Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts & Cultulre: artlabpdx.org Art/Lab Podcast at Youtube: @theartlabpodcast Bronte Grimm's Website: brontegrimm.weebly.com Shoshana Gugenheim Kedem: shoshanagugenheim.com/ Expressionism at the Tate: tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/expressionists/exhibition-guide

This is a Greatest Hits episode - a re-release of the second part of my conversation with Lou Cove, from Season 2 Episode 21 (the interview spanned episdoes 20 & 21). Lou Cove is the director of CANVAS, an organization that is very important to Art/Lab, in terms of funding, guidance, netwworking iwth other Jewish creative organizations, and inspiration. Art/ Lab is part of the CANVAS network. Lou heads up CANVAS, but his impact is far greater than that. He's an author, a speaker, and really a maven in the field of nonprofit fundraising. But his professional life has been about standing at the center of Jewish creativity and the kind of renewal in Jewish arts and culture that's been such an important part of the story of the last generation. Lou is a champion fundraiser. He has raised more than $75 million for the causes he cares most about, and he has really used that skill and his insights into how to get people connected to one another and how to motivate people and to how to inspire people to really breathe new life into the Jewish world. He was the former executive director of Reboot, a network of leading young Jewish creatives devoted to rebooting modern Jewish culture such as digital entrepreneurs at Google and YouTube, creators of TV shows and films like Lost, Orange is the New Black, Transparent, Anchorman and Star Trek, journalists in the New York Times, et cetera. I am actually part of reboot myself. So that's another thing that Lou and I have in common. Besides music and many other things, it was a total joy to talk to him. So this is the second part of the conversation. I'm re-releasing this one today in part because it touches upon some of the themes that will show up in upcoming episodes. So. Enjoy my conversation with Lou Cove. Thanks so much for listening. Links Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts & Culture: artlabpdx.org CANVAS: bycanvas.org Lou's personal website: loucove.com

Welcome to The Art/Lab Podcast: Conversations About Jewish Arts and Culture (previously The Genesis). Mark Rubin is a multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter, bassist, tuba player, bandleader, producer, and educator whose work sits at the crossroads of American roots music and Jewish culture. Mark has spent more than three decades moving across musical boundaries: bluegrass, country, western swing, Tex-Mex, polka, klezmer, Roma brass, Cajun music, punk, and old-time American string-band traditions. His own shorthand for his recent work is "Southern Americana from a Jewish POV." He first became widely known as a co-founder of the Austin-based Bad Livers, one of the defining bands of the 1990s alternative bluegrass/proto-Americana scene. Mark helped create an old school rootsy sound with punk energy. Rubin has been described as a "legend from back in the alt country days," known for his pioneering work with Bad Livers in Austin, a band that helped usher in a generation of alternative bluegrass and acoustic bands. Mark and I talk about how his Americana punk creativity feeds his Jewish identity and vice versa. Alongside his Americana work, Mark has built an equally substantial reputation in Jewish music, especially klezmer and Yiddish cultural revival circles. He has performed and collaborated with major figures and ensembles including Frank London's Klezmer Brass All-Stars, The Other Europeans, and Andy Statman, and he spent two decades on the faculty of KlezKamp. He has appeared as a performer and teacher at many significant major Jewish and klezmer festivals, including Toronto's Ashkenaz Festival whose Director, Eric Stein, appeared on this podcast back in season two - episode 23. Over the last decade Mark Has stepped forward under the moniker Mark Rubin, Jew of Oklahoma. That project brings together the strands of his career: Southern roots music, Jewish memory, political protest, gallows humor, and personal identity. Mark and I talk about his being the Jew from Oklahoma - both in terms of his personal biography and how it's relevant to his worldview, but also as an in-your-face stage name and what that has to do with his own personal brand of Jewish expression. Parts of Mark's story as a Jewish artist are very much particular to his experience as a Southern Jew. But as you'll hear, he is working through, overcoming and singing about the kinds of challenges faced by so many Jewish artists all over the world, especially after October 7th. I had a lot of fun talking to Mark, and I hope you enjoy listening to this person who the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History has called him "one of the great American Jewish musicians of our time." Finally, if you like what you hear on this podcast, and especially if you are a regular listener - please give back just briefly by going to our show to follow or subscribe and even better - offer a comment about what you appreciate. It helps us broaden our audience and supports the work we do at Art/Lab. Thank you. The Art/Lab Podcast: Conversations About Jewish Arts and Culture is conceived of and created by Rabbi Josh Rose, and is a program of Art/Lab: Jewish Arts and Culture. Theme music by Rabbi Josh Rose. Links: Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts & Culture artlabpdx.org Mark Rubin's Website: https://www.jewofoklahoma.com/ The Weitzman page on Rubin: https://theweitzman.org/events/mark-rubin-concert/ Mordecai Gebirtig: https://encyclopedia.yivo.org/article/1076

Here's one of my favorite stories from the Talmud. I hope you find some inspiration in it. Please note that starting next week the podcast will have a new name: The Art/Lab Podcast: Conversations About Jewish Arts and Culture . If you are a subscriber you don't need to change a thing. You will notice some changes in the artwork for the podcast (see below), but everything else will remain the same. But do make a note about the new name so you can tell other folks what to look for when they need great podcasts! The Genesis: Conversations About Jewish Arts and Culture is conceived of and created by Rabbi Josh Rose, and is a program of Art/Lab: Jewish Arts and Culture. Theme music by Rabbi Josh Rose. Links: Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture: artlabpdx.org The Art/Lab Podcast on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheGenesisJewishPodcast The original story: Talmud, Sukkah 53a https://www.sefaria.org/Sukkah.53a.12?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en

We are re-releasing this episode recorded back in February because our guest is coming to Portland for a residency starting May 18th. But even if you're not here in the City of Roses the conversation is worth re-visiting. It's one of my favorites and Cara offers a lot to think about in her approach. ------------------ Original Introduction: In this episode I sit down with artist Cara Levine and we discuss how grief informs her work in tangible ways. Cara's work is on exhibit right now at the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education. She lives in California now, but was a Portlander for a time. Her multi-media work is in a sweet spot between engaged in real world problems and ethereal other-worldliness. Cara is also influenced by mysticism, and is a student of it. So I was eager to sit down with her and learn more about her and the work she's brought into the world. Cara describes Carve; The Mystic Is Nourished From This Sphere, a large-scale "bowl / hole" that doesn't just hold people's words, but amplifies them—turning the gallery itself into an instrument and a vessel for community care. That opens into a conversation about what happens when an artwork accidentally (and then intentionally) becomes a structure for collective ritual and shared vulnerability. From there we go into pain. We cover the surprising role that migraines play in her creative thinking and what she learned about surrender. The conversation dips into the worldliness of her work as we touch on her piece This Is Not a Gun. And of course, we finish off with her sharing something she loves and her opinion on the best Jewish food. Enjoy the conversation. The Genesis: Conversations About Jewish Arts and Culture is conceived of and created by Rabbi Josh Rose, and is a program of Art/Lab: Jewish Arts and Culture. Theme music by Rabbi Josh Rose. Links Art/Lab: artlabpdx.org Cara Levine caralevine.com Oregon Jewish Museum & Center for Holocaust Education OJMCHE.org Beit Kohenet —https://www.beitkohenet.org/ Rabbi Jill Hammer —https://jillhammer.net/ Bruce Nauman https://www.artdex.com/bruce-nauman-the-art-and-irony-of-revealing-mystic-truths/ Brian Eno's Apollo: https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Apollo:_Atmospheres_…

Rabbi Josh hosts Amitai Man and Talia Erdal of Jerusalem's Zamru Ensemble, a Fuchsberg Center project, ahead of Zamru's June 8–10 Portland residency presented with ArtLab. They describe Zamru as a network that began as a fellowship for prayer leaders and musicians and grew into weekly prayer circles and a touring ensemble creating participatory musical-prayer spaces rather than performances. Amitai (Jerusalem-based clarinetist/singer/composer with Orthodox Mizrachi roots) and Talia (cellist/composer/prayer leader, principal cellist of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, raised secular and later Orthodox) discuss bridging Israeli religious–secular divides, finding spirituality and ecstasy in prayer, and how post–October 7 trauma intensified the need for communal vulnerability. They explain circle-based listening, facilitation, and music as living prayer, preview Portland workshops, movement improvisation, and a circle at East Side Jewish Commons, and Amitai recommends his album "Simanim," improvisations on Torah cantillation. Hey Portlanders: Don't miss Zamru live in Portland on June 9th at the Eastside Jewish Commons. Ticket links are below! The Genesis: Conversations About Jewish Arts and Culture is conceived of and created by Rabbi Josh Rose, and is a program of Art/Lab: Jewish Arts and Culture. Theme music by Rabbi Josh Rose. Links Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture: artlabpdx.org Tix for Zamru: https://events.humanitix.com/zamru-or-jerusalem-sound-portland-night Zamru: https://fuchsbergcenter.org/zamru/ Amitai Mann: https://www.amitai-mann.com Talia Erdal: https://www.taliaerdal.com

Welcome to The Genesis . I'm Rabbi Josh. My guest this week is Yankl Falk . We've been on a bit of a tear interviewing musicians—Michelle Alany, Yair Dalal, and now Yankl Falk, who is a fabulous klezmer musician and a wonderful person. If you live in Portland, Oregon, you may have heard Yankl playing around the city with his fabulous band. We talk not just about klezmer, but about growing up Jewish and growing up in a particular kind of Jewish world. We talk about Yiddish and Yiddish culture, and then, of course, we talk about music. One of the things that's wonderful about Yankl is that he is one of those artists who was an important part of creating the very scene he now inhabits: the klezmer music scene in Portland, Oregon. And that scene, it turns out, was an important part, in some ways, of the klezmer revival that went far beyond Portland. So we talk about all of that, and I think you'll enjoy this conversation with the wonderful Yankl Falk. Make sure to go to the show notes, where you can find out more about him and his great band, and where you can catch him playing around Portland. Yankl Falk will also be part of the Portland Jewish Music Festival , hosted by the Eastside Jewish Commons and co-sponsored by Art/Lab, along with several other Jewish organizations. So that should be on your radar—and this excellent musician and excellent person should be on your radar, too. If you love Jewish music, Jewish creativty and Jewish stories you will enjoy this conversation. The Genesis: Conversations About Jewish Arts and Culture is conceived of and created by Rabbi Josh Rose, and is a program of Art/Lab: Jewish Arts and Culture. Theme music by Rabbi Josh Rose. Links Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts & Culture: www.artlabpdx.org Carpathian Pacific Express (Yankl's Band): www.facebook.com/carpathianpacific Yiddish Book Center interview with Yankl: https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/collections/oral-histories/interviews/woh-fi-0001647/jack-yankl-falk-2024 Musicians mentioned in this episode: Naftule Brandwein Dave Tarras The Klezmorim / East Side Wedding Mickey Katz The Barry Sisters Don Byron / Don Byron Plays the Music of Mickey Katz Frank London / The Klezmatics Robert Johnson Howlin' Wolf

Welcome to The Genesis . If you heard my episode with Eric Stern, then you already know that today's guest will be performing at the Portland Jewish Music Festival on Saturday, May 16. If you have not heard that episode, go back and listen to it—you will hear about all the remarkable things happening at this year's festival. I was especially grateful to have the chance to speak with today's guest, Yair Dalal. Because I was able to talk with Yair before he comes to Portland next month, I thought it was only right to include a little of his music after our conversation. If you are watching on The Genesis YouTube channel, you will see Yair performing live in a video from his YouTube channel. If you are listening to the audio podcast, you will hear some of his beautiful music. Either way, I wanted to give you a sense of the kind of artist he is. Yair Dalal is a composer, violinist, oud player, singer, and teacher. Over the last several decades, he has released 12 albums that traverse a wide cultural landscape, drawing on Israeli, Jewish, and Middle Eastern musical traditions. His work reflects deep roots in classical European, jazz, and Arabic music, and we talk in this conversation about how he moved among those worlds and, in some sense, returned to his own roots. Dalal's family came to Israel from Baghdad, and his Iraqi heritage is deeply embedded in his music. Alongside his work as a performer and composer, he has devoted himself to preserving endangered musical traditions, especially the Babylonian Jewish-Iraqi musical heritage and the music of the Bedouins. We speak about his time with the Bedouins, and about the desert, which seems in many ways to be his truest home. Over the years, Dalal has performed in concerts and festivals around the world, including at major venues such as Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, at world music festivals from England to Australia and New Zealand, and also in far more intimate settings, including playing with Bedouins in their tents. Beyond his musical life, Yair Dalal is also a peace activist who has devoted much of his energy to building bridges of understanding and creativity among different cultures, especially between Jews and Arabs. In 1994, he performed at the Nobel Peace Prize Gala Concert honoring Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, and Yasser Arafat. Dalal has received numerous Israeli awards in recognition of both his music and his contribution to Israeli culture. In 2021, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Israeli Ministry of Culture. He has also been honored by other organizations for his dedication to the oud and for his role in bringing its musical traditions to audiences in Israel and abroad. He was also nominated for a Grammy. He has made a profound impact on Israeli music, Israeli culture, and what we now call world music. I think you are really going to enjoy this conversation with Yair Dalal. And you do not want to miss him—or the other musicians performing at the Portland Jewish Music Festival, which is co-sponsored by Art/Lab along with a host of Portland Jewish organizations. Enjoy my conversation with the remarkable Yair Dalal. The Genesis: Conversations About Jewish Arts and Culture is conceived of and created by Rabbi Josh Rose, and is a program of Art/Lab: Jewish Arts and Culture. Theme music by Rabbi Josh Rose. Links Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts & Culture: www.artlabpdx.org Yair Dalal: https://www.yairdalal.com Portland Jewish Music Festival: https://ejcpdx.org/pjmf26 Documentary About Yair, "Ain't Got no Jeep and My Camel Died": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AOSmzIPG7g Documentary about Iraqi-Israeli music and musicians (recommended by Yair): https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=baghdad+bandstand