The CANVAS Compendium: Dispatches from the New Jewish Renaissance
A 2021 Brandeis University study estimated there are 7.6 million Jews in the US, or 2.4% of the total. That’s not a lot, relatively speaking. But ever since a group of bedraggled Jewish refugees arrived in New Amsterdam in 1654, we’ve been making significant contributions to American life. Arguably one of the community’s biggest contributions has been to arts and culture. Any list of influential Jewish writers, visual artists, designers, performers, and musicians would take up several newsletters.
Nevertheless, May is Jewish American Heritage month (JAHM), and CANVAS supports Jewish arts and culture. So here are a few ways to enjoy the cultural output Jewish Americans—so that we can honor the contributions of those who came before us and look toward a vibrant, tolerant, and creative future for all.
Featured image: from left to right, Matt Darriau, Frank London, and Brian Drye. Screen capture from Frank London’s Klezmer Band Allstars Rooftop Concert 2020.
Go to a Jewish museum. If you’re looking for an excursion, see the member’s list of the Council of American Jewish Museums (a CANVAS grantee), which has links to museums, galleries, and collections across North America and beyond. There are tons in the obvious cities like New York and LA, but also really great institutions in places like Oregon, Tulsa, and New Orleans.
Speaking of museums, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History is celebrating JAHM with a gallery talk. Curators will showcase notable Jewish-related artifacts from areas including business, history, medicine, numismatics and philanthropy. May 15 @ 1:30pm ET in DC. Register here.
Go to the theatre. The Alliance for Jewish Theatre’s calendar of events lists plays on Jewish themes going up across the nation. There are also several upcoming stagings of Jewish storytelling from the Braid in LA and the Bay Area. And check out the latest results from Jewish Play Project’s current Jewish Playwriting Contest. (All three organizations are CANVAS grantees.)
Catch some music. An exciting JAHM concert is coming to the Kennedy Center in DC in partnership with the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History. (See their additional JAHM offerings here.) Frank London’s Klezmer Brass Allstars will kick off the evening and serve as the house band for Susana Behar, whose performances blend her Sephardic, Cuban and Venezuelan roots, and Yoni Battat and Yosef Goldman, whose influences include the musical traditions of Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. In person and online from the Kennedy Center, May 15 @ 5pm ET. Register here.
The patron saint of Jewish-American arts and culture. Henry Koerner, Barbra Streisand (1964), oil on canvas. Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery; gift of Time magazine.
More arts and culture from CANVAS grantees. The New Jewish Culture Fellowship is hosting “Abundant, Rich Lives: Returning to the Lesbian Herstory Archives Slideshow,” a conversation with NJCF fellow Ariel Goldberg and Alexis Danzig and Deborah Edel of the Archives. Online and in-person, May 14 @ 6:30pm ET at the Center for New Jewish Culture in Brooklyn. Tickets here.
Yetzirah’s Jewish Poetry Book Club will discuss Paradise by Victoria Redel, June 5 @ 12:30pm PT at Eastside Jewish Commons, Portland, OR. More info here.
Paper Brigade, Jewish Book Council’s annual literary journal, is out. This year’s journal includes writings from Allegra Goodman, Dani Shapiro, and Idra Novey, and a Jewish literary map of LA. Purchase here.
But wait, there’s still more. The National Archives has an interesting page of JAHM links including the World War I-era draft card of Irving Berlin, who wrote God Bless America, and A Mitzvah to Serve, a 1969 doc about Jews in the armed forces.
The New York Public Library’s AJC Oral History Collection makes for interesting reading. Highlights include:
- Congresswoman Bella Abzug: “People come to this country trying to escape persecution…and somehow in my mind if I became a lawyer I could set everything right.”
- Comedian Jackie Mason: “I think of myself as a great revelation to people.”
- Actress and singer Kitty Carlisle Hart: “My grandfather fought in the Civil War on the Monitor.”
Finally, the Smithsonian website has a fascinating article on 6 Jewish American objects for JAHM, and you can find local JAHM celebrations in Kansas City, Memphis, San Diego, and Los Angeles.
Let us know what Jewish arts and culture you partake in this month—we’d love to hear from you.
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