Dear friends,

For the past seven months, I’ve been lucky to participate in Art/Lab, a creative laboratory that each year enables a cohort of ten Portland area contemporary Jewish artists to explore the intersection of Judaism, creative expression and contemporary culture in order to inspire new works. Each year has a theme and for this year, the third, the theme is מַתָנָה / matanah / “gift.”

The laboratory is facilitated by two people: Shoshana Gugenheim Kedem, an American/Israeli multidisciplinary artist who was one of the first women in modern times to train as a Torah scribe; and Rabbi Joshua Rose, a Portland rabbi who left congregational life behind and founded an organization called Co/Lab (which hosts Art/Lab) to reimagine what Jewish life in Portland could look like beyond the shul. At our monthly meetings, Rabbi Josh led us on deep dives into ancient Jewish texts——Torah, Talmud, medieval poetry——related to the concept of “gift,” while Shoshana guided explorations and discussions of what it means to be a Jewish artist, especially in the here and now. More on Art/Lab below, but it’s been just a brilliant time, and it all culminates in a group show that runs from Tuesday June 3rd to July 6th at the Eastside Jewish Commons in Northeast Portland. There’s an opening reception on Thursday June 6th at 6:30 PM. If you’re in Portland, I would love to see you there.

I’m so enthralled with the work of each of my Art/Lab fellows, and hope you’ll come out and witness their brilliance for yourselves. There will be paintings, installations, and performances (including one by me). And some wine and some nosh, obviously.

Our first cohort meeting took place on October 15th, which was, as you can imagine, intense timing. We all——writers, painters, playwrights, sculptors, multimedia artists——arrived in various states of distress/devastation/numbness in the immediate wake of Hamas’s attacks and abductions at Israeli kibbutzim on October 7th. It was in the shadow of that day that we launched out on our ship of exploration together, and in all the long months since then the seas around us have been filled with war, devastation, famine, and heartbreak as Israel has rained devastation down on Gaza. The war hasn’t defined our experience in Art/Lab but it’s undoubtedly been part of it.

Each Art/Lab participant exists at a different nexus of Jewish identity. In one exercise, Shoshana had us stand in a wide circle and presented us with different statements about aspects of Jewish identity. If a statement resonated with our self-concept, we could step to the center of the circle, or partway to the center, or just put a single foot in, whatever felt right. We ran through thirty or forty questions and came away with a deep appreciation for one another’s Jewish complexity. We saw how different our upbringings were, how we had each experienced Judaism and antisemitism differently, how we each related to Judaism in terms of theology and in terms of cultural practice differently, and, also, how we each related to Israel and to Zionism in our own way.

At the show in June, each of us will be exhibiting art that we’ve developed as a result of these conversations and explorations. Some of us will be grappling directly with Israel-Palestine, while in some folks’ work that connection may not be so explicit. I’ll be reading (or, if I can get my shit together and finish it in time, reciting from memory) a piece that is trying, woefully, to sum up a lot of what I’ve been thinking about the last seven months——centering on, to no one’s great shock, my mother.

Art/Lab came around at an interesting time in my life. Back in June of last year, just before applications opened, I turned forty, and realized I wanted to invest more of myself in Jewish learning. I began more regularly attending Torah study on shabbat mornings at Shir Tikvah, an unaffiliated shul here in Portland, learning from a brilliant rabbi. I made some stilted moves towards learning Hebrew, which I hope to resume soon. But mostly I just opened a space in my heart filled with a question: what does it mean to me to be Jewish? It’s been a fertile place to explore from, and it’s a question whose answer I hope is always evolving.

I am going to miss Art/Lab so much! Having this dedicated container, in not-very-Jewish-Portland, has been life-giving. After our second meeting I told my partner, “I think this will be one of the most important things I’ve ever done.” It felt a bit hyperbolic, but as our group show approaches and with it the end of our dedicated months together, I feel that Past Daniel was on to something.

I applied for Art/Lab thinking of myself as an artist who happened to be Jewish, even though my memoir (still being revised, still hoping for a publisher!) is suffused with Jewishness. And maybe now, coming out of the other end of Art/Lab, I think of myself moreso as a Jewish artist. Is this just a semantic distinction? I don’t know! It’s a fun question.

If you’re in Portland, I hope to see you on Thursday June 6th at 6:30pm at the Eastside Jewish Commons. I’m excited to read you a story.

Until then,

I remain,

Daniel