In the video above by the Jewish Channel, Foundation for Jewish Culture’s President and CEO Elise Bernhardt and a few other heads of state in the Jewish non-profit world discuss the way the landscape changed in 2010 and how they expect it to change further in 2011.

Elise stresses our focus on supporting superlative individual artists and scholars and notes that the Foundation has continued to move forward even during the recent recession. We are launching two new programs: a New Music Initiative — about which more very soon — and the American Academy in Jerusalem, the extension of the highly successful pilot program at Mishkenot Sha’ananim last summer.

1.  What kind of work did you do prior to the Foundation for Jewish Culture?

I worked at The Jewish Museum for thirteen years. That’s a long time. I held numerous roles there as archivist for the Museum’s National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting, and as a producer of concerts, talks, and other public programs.  More recently I organized exhibitions of video art, produced a two-week artist residency called Off the Wall (featuring Six Points Fellows Alina Bliumis and Alicia Jo Rabins), and served as  project manager/selection committee member for the New York Jewish Film Festival, a collaboration between The Jewish Museum and The Film Society of Lincoln Center. The Festival has hosted New York and U.S. premieres for many FJC-funded documentaries including In Search of the Bene Israel, Leap of Faith, Orthodox Stance, Praying With Lior, The Rape of Europa, and Waiting for Armageddon. I hope to continue my relationship with The Jewish Museum at the Foundation.

I am also finishing up as the part-time Interim Director of Independent Media Arts Preservation. We provide artists, filmmakers, and organizations with information and tools to care for their audiovisual collections.

2.      Can you tell us about your interest in documentaries?

Aside from my work on the New York Jewish Festival, I have been deeply immersed in docs this past year as a selection committee member for the 2010 Documentary Fortnight, MoMA’s International Festival of Nonfiction Film. In addition I had the privilege of attending the 57^st Annual Flaherty Film Seminar, an intensive week-long conference for filmmakers, curators, and scholars featuring three screenings a day and heated post-screening discussions.  It’s named after Robert Flaherty (Nanook of the North, 1922), who is considered by many to be the father of American documentary. The documentary genre is exciting because filmmakers use it to tell stories in so many ways. Some use the style of direct cinema and others are scripted with fictional elements. Some docs have educational objectives, others treat the genre as an artistic medium, and some use it as a tool to affect social change. Documentaries also have diverse audiences such as public television, festivals, community centers, and the Internet. Particularly in the past decade, visual artists in galleries and museums are adapting documentary forms in video and other time-based media.

3.      Besides the Kroll Fund for Documentary Film, what else are you working on?

I will develop the Foundation’s New Jewish Music Initiative which launches in Fall 2011 with a national tour by Six Points Fellow Galeet Dardashti, an extremely gifted singer and scholar. I will also assist in launching the Jerusalem Cultural Fellowship next Fall. It’s very exciting to take part in the early stages of these projects.

4.  Ok, last question: what are you listening to nowadays?

Great question!  Here are some of my current faves.

Emil Zrihan “Kochav Tzedek”

Galeet Dardashti “Sheba”

Gilfema “Akwe”

Shye Ben Tzur “Gathering”

Abbey Lincoln “Avec le Temps”

Antony & The Johnson “For Today I Am a Boy”

Billy Bragg “Greetings to the New Brunette”

Regina Spektor “Us”

Lone Voice in the Written Void

Even Nicole Krauss says that there’s nothing like this city. Creative guests at Mishkenot Sha’ananim sum up their stay here

Last month, five outstanding guests were hosted at Mishkenot Sha’ananim: Novelist couple Nicole Krauss and Jonathan Safran Foer (who will be staying for another month), visual artist Shelley Jordon, choreographer and dancer Reggie Wilson and urban planner Josh Sirefman. Bonding with local cultural institutions, they were both inspired and inspiring. The project began through cooperation between Mishkenot Sha’ananim Director-General Uri Dromi and Elise Bernhardt, President of the Foundation for Jewish Culture in New York. Following the project’s impressive success, Mishkenot Sha’ananim plans to invite similar groups in the coming year.

Participants told Time Out about their stay at Mishkenot Sha’ananim:

Shelley Jordon – visual artist specializing in animation and professor of art at Oregon State University, Portland:

This is my first visit to Israel. Obviously, I did not know what to expect. I asked to have a studio set up where I could work and was offered lovely premises at the Jerusalem House of Quality. But I soon realized that every moment I spend closed up in the studio will take away an opportunity to learn something about this astounding city and to meet its unique people. That’s why I dedicated myself to a fascinating, month-long journey that I will never forget in my life.

I already felt the intensity of this experience on opening night, when I presented my exhibit at Mishkenot Sha’ananim – in the presence of leading Jerusalem cultural figures – and subsequently at the laboratory. Prof. Milly Heyd invited me to lecture on postmodern art and I was amazed at the vitality her students displayed.
I was invited to present projects at the Musrara School and was treated to a guided tour of the Israel Museum that is soon to [re]open. When I visited Yad Vashem’s Holocaust History Museum, my personal guide was none other than its curator, Yehudit Inbar. What impressed me most of all was the burst of energy that emanated from all the people I met, their human warmth, their desire to create and inspire and their belief that everything is possible.

Amir Heshin took us on our first tour, explaining the complex realities of this city and all Israel. Having noticed that Israel has no defined borders, the little time I spent in the studio was devoted to creating a series of animated maps of the Land of Israel, from ancient times until the present. I am waiting eagerly for my next opportunity to return to Jerusalem.

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Reggie Wilson, choreographer and dancer, New York:

I visited Israel many years ago and was even privileged to dance with Ohad Naharin, whom I consider my spiritual mentor. My visit here is part of a personal quest and I will be proceeding from here to Egypt.

The moment I set foot in Jerusalem, I was invited to the Higher Academy of Dance. Choreographers and dancers need no introductions. The moment I walked into the classroom, we all began moving in our international language. There are extraordinary talents here – but I’m not telling you anything new.

We spent Friday nights at the homes of Jerusalemites. One such evening was traditional, with prayers and blessings, while the other was secular. We were also invited to a party in Tel Aviv – what a difference! There is no doubt about it – Jerusalem is special, although I did take a few trips to Tel Aviv on my own to get a taste of something different. I also went to Haifa to meet with the Beta troupe of immigrants from Ethiopia. They did not want to let me leave and to tell the truth, it was also hard for me to part from them. Members of the Vertigo troupe hosted me at their village at Netiv Halamed-Heh. We danced, sang and ate together.

I leave behind friends that I feel I have known for years. For me, as a music, rhythm and movement person, Jerusalem is a dream. I sat with the whole group in the Mahaneyuda Restaurant. No choreographer could ever arrange such a celebration of tastes, human affection, sounds and colors.

For me, it was also a spiritual experience of the highest order. In such a complex city, with a multiplicity of faces and opinions, the focus of world attention, there is only one question: Can people listen to one another?

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Josh Sirefman, urban planner who assisted New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg with several major projects:

From the outset, I felt like a foreign implant among creative people, artists and writers, but the intensive time period spent with them enriched me with new, more complex outlooks regarding reality. I was surprised that the busy Jerusalemites were so willing to make time and talk to me, presenting me with their fascinating projects. While it’s true that I spearheaded extensive projects in New York, I came here with the intention of hearing more than being heard. People showed such interest in New York, however, that when I lectured at Mishkenot Sha’ananim I tried to find similarities between urban planning elements in New York and Jerusalem.

I was very impressed by the tour of Ariel Sharon Park in Hiriya and especially by its overall conception, that takes environmental quality and leisure into account. I learned a lot from meetings with Ir Amim Association members and Bimkom Association planners. Essentially, I realized how little I knew about the situation in eastern Jerusalem and the settlements. Here, everything, including urban planning, originates in conflict. I traveled to Ramallah on my own and was surprised by its economic growth, although I know that it does not provide a complete picture of what is going on in the West Bank.

My discussions with Deputy Mayor Naomi Zur, Richard Lester and others led me to examine the special complexity of urban planning in Jerusalem, in which the true source of authority is uncertain. During my tours of the city, I saw open areas that were not being used for the public good. I thought that French Hill Junction, for example, could be turned into a park that would serve all population groups in the city, as we did in New York when we turned the abandoned High Line into a bustling multicultural park.

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Jonathan Safran Foer – author of Everything Is Illuminated, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Eating Animals – and his wife Nicole Krauss were recently designated by The New Yorker as two of the world’s 20 most influential novelists under 40:

Nicole and I have been guests of cultural institutions throughout the world. Recently, we were hosted at the American Academy in Berlin, where we were treated royally and could create to our hearts’ content. When we were invited to Mishkenot Sha’ananim, I was pleased to be given another opportunity to take time and write. I must say that your hospitality has exceeded all expectations. People have really gone out of their way to make our stay pleasant – and that’s no easy task because we’ve got two small children.

In Berlin, no one expects you to come into contact with the local cultural community, but Jerusalem was different. Ostensibly, writers, unlike visual artists or choreographers, do not really need to commune with their environment. But when you’re staying in the same room in which Saul Bellow wrote To Jerusalem and Back and Amos Oz wrote chapters of A Tale of Love and Darkness, you’re placed within a special context. Then you roam the streets and the special Jerusalem atmosphere entices you to leave your shell.
At Mishkenot Sha’ananim last week, I participated in a discussion with Etgar Keret. He and I have a lot in common: Not only did we watch the World Cup matches together but also shared the feeling of being two young authors who cannot write literature but do so nonetheless. I also attended the opening of the Jerusalem Film Festival at Sultan’s Pool. I’ve never been in the company of so many Jews!

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Nicole Krauss, author of Man Walks into a Room and The History of Love:

This is not my first visit to Jerusalem. My family has deep roots here. But I always felt that I need to stay in this city for some time, to learn more about local literary activity here and examine the sources of my own creativity. In 2008, during the First International Writers Festival, I suggested to Uri Dromi that I and my family come to Mishkenot Sha’ananim, in keeping with Teddy Kollek’s tradition of hospitality that I had heard so much about. The dream came true and now – without revealing everything about my next book – I can tell you that I am actually in the place I’m writing about.

At the Writers Festival, I was privileged to speak with Amos Oz. This year, I met Aharon Appelfeld, an author I greatly admire. As a young writer who devoured his books, the opportunity to sit next to him on the dais, before a literature loving Jerusalem audience, facing the captivating landscape of the Old City walls, was an unforgettable experience. Last week, I spoke with another author at Mishkenot Sha’ananim whom I hold in high regard, Yoram Kaniuk. It was a fascinating conversation with a creative artist whom I feel has not been given the worldwide recognition he deserves.

Generally speaking, I find the close familiarity among people here to be enchanting. Who sat in the first row at the meeting with Kaniuk? Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer. When I needed to speak to a judge because I have such a character in my book, people referred me to one who was eager to talk to me. When I needed an architect to explain a neighborhood to me, a most enthusiastic candidate was found at once. All in all, I have never been to any other city whose residents speak about it with such warmth and love. There is nothing like Jerusalem anywhere else in the world.

Natan Meir, one-time recipient of an FJC doctoral dissertation fellowship and currently assistant professor of Judaic Studies at Portland State University, just published his first book: Kiev, Jewish Metropolis: A History, 1859-1914. He sits down with CultureShuk to answer the 4 Questions.

1.  Where did you grow up and how did you end up where you are now?

I grew up mostly in suburban New Jersey (with a few years in Jerusalem and Montreal thrown in for good measure).  After completing my undergraduate and graduate degrees at Columbia and a few years living in Washington, D.C., I found my first full-time position teaching at the University of Southampton in the U.K.  My partner and I decided that we want to leave England and it was at that point that I found my current job teaching Jewish Studies at Portland State University. It was my good fortune that an academic position became available in Portland that year, as I have found “the Rose City” a very good match for my interests and temperament.

2.  What has been the most pivotal experience for you in the last five years?

That’s a tough one, but I’d have to go with the half-year that I spent living in Utrecht, Holland in 2005. In addition to being a fabulous opportunity for me to get to know my partner’s home city, extended family, and culture, it also gave me tremendous insight into a very different kind of western society and a very different Jewish sensibility.  The Dutch have created a social compact that embraces – indeed, requires – tolerance, but it’s also a society that places a high value on conforming. It’s a much more civilized place than the U.S., but can feel stifling at times to an American.  Being Jewish there is also a world apart from living as an American Jew: the shadow of the Holocaust looms large, and I would go so far to say that the community is permanently scarred by trauma, which is understandable given its losses (75% of Dutch Jews were murdered by the Nazis).  We feel the loss in our family; my partner’s grandmother was placed with a Christian family during the war and, for reasons unknown to us, did not return to her family of origin afterwards.  To this day she refuses to speak about her Jewish past.

3.  If you weren’t a scholar, what would you be doing?

I would probably be working in the field of museology. I’m a member of the academic advisory board of the Russian Jewish Museum, which is now under construction in Moscow, and it’s been a fantastic experience. I love translating academic knowledge into a hands-on museum experience for regular folks: it challenges you to make complex historical patterns accessible to people of all backgrounds and to think of new and exciting ways to communicate ideas of history, religion, society, and so on.

4.   Now that you can check ‘publish first book’ off the list, what’s next?

Publish second book! Actually, I have to write it first. Tentatively titled “Marginal Jews,” it will be a social and cultural history of marginalized groups in East European Jewish society – poor widows, orphans, and the physically and mentally disabled – in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  I’m currently doing research for the project at YIVO in New York and hope to travel to Eastern Europe next year to work in the archives there.

Be sure to check out Natan’s book, available now!

On paper, Josh Sirefman may seem like a strange inclusion in a project that hosts five artists from various fields for a month at Mishkenot Sha’ananim, during which the guests present and participate in creative activities, lectures, workshops, performances and meetings with the public and focus groups. After all, the program, which is supported by the National Foundation for Jewish Culture (NFJC), the Jerusalem Foundation and the Beracha Foundation, does cater to artists.

Sirefman, a town planner from New York, agrees and adds that his profession can involve some logistics that the “real” artists may not have to encounter. “I run my own business and last week, in the middle of this program here in Jerusalem, I had to go back to the States for a week to meet with clients.”

Then again, town planning surely has some artistic elements to it too. “I think it’s a lovely way to think about my work, even though I don’t wake up every morning thinking I’m creating art in the work that I do. But my work creates the venue for the artists to do their thing. So I suppose, in that way, there is a connection.”

Sirefman has certainly been involved in his fair share of venue creating, principally in New York.

Between 2004 and 2006 he worked alongside Mayor Michael Bloomberg, developing economic development strategies to enhance the business climate in the Big Apple. He worked on a range of heavy budget projects, including in Coney Island, New York Harbor and downtown Brooklyn. So the man has obviously paid his dues and continues to do so on the grandest and definitively street levels of ways.

Despite the seeming professional mismatch, Sirefman feels there is plenty of common ground between him and his fellow guests on the Mishkenot Sha’ananim bill and, indeed, with the public at large. “I always find that, in any context, everybody enjoys engaging in the issues of city planning. For example, some of my colleagues here have tagged along to some of the things that have been arranged for me on this program. It’s interesting stuff. You’re dealing with the world around you in a very direct way. In my experience, people are extremely cognizant of the built world around them. I call it ‘the planner within everybody.’” Mind you, the world in Sirefman’s regular vicinity is, well, a world or two away from what town planners in Jerusalem have to deal with in trying to get their work done. On a prosaic level, for example, Sirefman – a keen road cyclist – wondered whether any bicycle paths had been woven into Jerusalem’s logistically cramped milieu.

“There appears to be no evidence of that,” he notes, adding that during his time here he has become more aware of some problems his Israeli professional counterparts have to solve or sidestep when trying to get their work done. “I haven’t looked at a single place, project or issue that is not entirely informed by the conflict in the larger geopolitical issues. It is underlying everything – certainly everything I have seen and have been trying to understand. It’s different from New York and from anywhere else I have seen in the world. It’s extraordinary. You’re in this physically tight space with these historical issues, and then you layer on the fundamental underlying conflict.

It’s by far the most difficult challenge I’ve ever seen.”

Then again, urban planning is urban planning, and Sirefman sees a lot that can be achieved here.

“Even with the underlying conflict, at the end of the day it’s a real estate problem, and that infuses everything. There are certainly things that are doable in, say New York or Chicago, which can be done in Jerusalem too, for sure. New York is also a very cramped city, and every inch of land has multiple interests.”

Sirefman is also a firm believer in the powerful positive impact that town planning can have on the life of a city and the people who live and work in it. “I have had some long conversations with [Hebrew University geography professor] Shlomo Hasson, and one of the places we have looked at is the French Hill junction. That was a very compelling place to be because you have a classic nexus of everything. You keep going north and you hit Ramallah; it’s one of the boundary points between east and west Jerusalem, and it’s a massive intersection going in every direction. Then you’ve got the light rail and two huge pieces of land there that are vacant, which I think are stateowned, and you’ve got a park on a third corner and that, right there, offers an opportunity to change the experience of going through that spot.”

Open spaces and how to utilize them to the best effect are elements that occupy much of Sirefman’s working hours. During his time here, he has been taking a look at Jerusalem’s parks and considering the various ways they can benefit the public and how to draw more people to them. “I find the way that open spaces are used here is very interesting. Someone used the expression ‘geography of fear.’ I don’t know if it is that people don’t want to be in open spaces, but I don’t think the open spaces I’ve seen here are particularly inviting.”

That, Sirefman feels, is an area that also offers regional bonding potential. “I could envisage an interesting collaboration between the Hebrew University and the [Bir Zeit] university I visited in Ramallah. You could have some sort of collaborative campus on one corner of the French Hill junction.”

Here he draws on his professional experience on the other side of the pond. “One project I kept thinking of when I saw French Hill was an indoor performing arts center just outside New York City, which brings people from many different communities together. I could see a great cultural center, a sort of mini-Lincoln Center, being created on one of those corners of the junction. It’s a great venue for building a cultural facility to sort of bridge that [politicalcultural] divide. I believe the work I do in New York could definitely be applied in Jerusalem.”

After a few weeks here, Sirefman feels he has a better understanding of the types of issues that local urban planners grapple with on a daily basis. Far from being daunted, he says he relishes the prospect of working with them at some stage. “Urban planners certainly don’t have an easy time here, but I think I’d like to have a go at some things here. I like a challenge.”

Originally published on 7/16 by Barry Davis in the Jerusalem Post: http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=181515

The woman at the center of the controversy over ordaining women as Orthodox rabbis, Rabba Sara Hurwitz, joins the conversation at The Salon, sharing her perspective on the Rabbinical Council of America’s “2010 Convention Resolution: Women’s Communal Roles in Orthodox Jewish Life.”

Also on hand are author Judith Shulevitz, whose recent book “The Sabbath World” takes a historical and cultural look at the concept of the Sabbath, and President & CEO of the Foundation for Jewish Culture Elise Bernhardt, one of the few women at the helm of a major Jewish organization.

Moderated by Forward editor Jane Eisner, with Mediate.com Editor At Large Rachel Sklar, this episode’s discussion digs into the significance of the Sabbath in contemporary Jewish life, Bar & Bat Mitzvah wars, the RCA resolution and, regarding the recent controversy over a Lane Bryant commercial for a plus-sized line of lingerie, our panel considers whether full-figured but not fully-clothed women belong on a prime time television commercial.

Check out clips for yourself!

I always tell my students to find a non-profit job because non-profit means that there is no bottom line! Or some kind of municipal job. You want to work 9-5, so that when the day is over it’s over and the weekends are yours. And the best thing, which I had at a couple of jobs, is when you can lock yourself in your office and write. People would say, “Oh Shteyngart is not a team player, he is always locked in his office, God knows what he is doing in there!” I used to work at this non-profit that dealt with immigrant resettlement and I would help write directions for new Russian immigrants, like how to not get drunk, how to avoid AIDS, stuff like that. That took max a couple of days a month, really. And the rest of the time I would lock myself in my office and work on the draft of my first novel. Half of it was finished by my senior year in college and the other half was finished working that job. It wasn’t the kind of service job where I would come home exhausted. I would come home ready to write or would have accomplished the writing at the office. It was brilliant.

I didn’t work more than two years at any one given place because there’d be lay-offs or people would realize I wasn’t doing anything.

The Foundation for Jewish Culture does not, for the record, encourage this kind of behavior. It does, however, encourage you to read the whole piece.

Q&A at the Tribeca Film Festival screning

After debuting for Queen Noor and then at the Tribeca Film Festival, 09 Film Fund grantees Ronit Avni and Julia Bacha’s Budrus keeps getting bigger. Check out the coverage in the mainstream and Jewish press:

NY1: New Light on Palestinian and Israeli Conflict

ABC News: Saving ‘Budrus’ through Peaceful Resistance

WBAI Beyond the Pale Interview

New York Magazine‘s 15 Films to See at the Tribeca Film Festival

Next the film travels to Toronto and San Francisco. Check our Grantee Events Calendar to keep up!

ETA: More! A piece from the Forward, “Tribeca Offers Jewish Style and Substance,” joins the mix, as does this blog entry from the Nation, “The New Face of Palestinian Resistance.” (Resist the urge to look at the comments of the latter piece, though. The worst of human nature is on display there.)

Today, the Festival presents an in-depth interview with grantee Julia Bacha, who also received Film Fund support and a Tribeca screening for her earlier documentary, Encounter Point.

TribecaFilm.com: What inspired you to tell this story?

JB: Budrus inspired everyone at Just Vision, the organization I work for. We wanted to put this village on the map since most people have never heard about it. In this village’s story of resistance, you can see the contours of a Gandhian struggle that crosses political, gender, and national boundaries, and that is scalable, meaning it could be used for tacking the Occupation as a whole. We really believe this story can change the face of the Middle East.

The Foundation hopes so, and, like Richard Cohen of the Washington Post in his surprising column of April 13th, encourages everyone who can to see it.

ETA: Check out the review in the Jewish Week, which declares that ““Budrus” is a strong piece of work from intelligent filmmakers.” Nothing like having the mainstream media on your side.