The New Jewish Culture Fellowship (NJCF) brings together an interdisciplinary cohort of groundbreaking Jewish artists to share work, discuss issues and texts, and learn from and with each other over the course of an academic year. Fellows come from all creative fields—visual arts, writing, performance, music, and more—and apply with projects that would benefit from the feedback and support of peers similarly drawn to exploring the rich, complex inheritance of Jewish life and identity in all its forms. In 2022, NJCF was featured in an Artforum article proposing “an alternative future for Jewish art.” 

Our first three cohorts were comprised of New York-based artists, but in 2022, NJCF went national. Artists from across the US now come together for virtual meetings. With breaks for holidays, fellows meet weekly for nine months: once a month with fellowship director Leora Fridman; once a month for text study with Hadar Ahuvia, our rabbinic educator; and once a month in one-on-one (chevruta) pairings with another fellow in the cohort. Artists receive support in the form of a modest production stipend of $1,000, accountability and feedback, advocacy and promotion, and access to a growing audience. They’re invited to propose classes or events that showcase their work—screenings, concerts, exhibitions, workshops, and more—to NJCF’s local and national audience. 

NJCF is an artist-led and artist-oriented project. We prioritize attention to process and generative critical inquiry. Our leadership style comes out of non-professionalized, collective arts organizing; instead of a top-down approach, we treat each cohort as a group of working artists supporting each other and co-creating their experience with us. The NJCF schedule is designed to allow artists to remain engaged in their personal, professional, and home lives without disruption, while developing meaningful relationships through regular meetings and programming.

Since 2018, 65 fellows have participated in the program across six cohorts. They continue to engage with each other through our alumni network both formally and informally. Many NJCF fellows develop ongoing professional collaborations. In spring of 2023, 30 NJCF fellows and alumni were featured in Material/Inheritance: Contemporary Work by New Jewish Culture Fellows, an exhibition and festival at the Jewish Museum of Maryland in Baltimore curated by NJCF alum and current director Leora Fridman. 

As NJCF co-founder Maia Ipp wrote in her widely shared 2019 essay Kaddish for an Unborn Avant-Garde:  “Making art, like Jewish practice, is premised on the belief that a careful attention to process itself is necessary to imagine and ultimately reach an unknown, but desired, outcome. Artmaking and Jewish life both demand surrender and determination; precision and wild abandon; patience and urgency; solitude and community. And at the very center of both Judaism and experimental artmaking is a generative tension between modernity and tradition; between a commitment to the lineage that formed us, and the desire to see and represent the world anew.”

Artists are inheritors and generators of this prophetic tradition. The New Jewish Culture Fellowship celebrates that creative birthright by supporting, challenging, and advocating for the next generation of Jewish artists.

Connect with us at info@newjewishculture.org