The Jewish Street Art Festival gathers together for the first time Jewish street artists from around the Diaspora and Israel who make street art with Jewish themes. These artists come from diverse backgrounds: Ashkenazi and Mizrachi, secular, religious, and in between. This array of perspectives exemplifies the richness of the Jewish world and creates the stage for a broader conversation about Jewish art and identity.
The first ever Jewish Street Art Festival was held Jerusalem in October 2019. We retooled the 2020 Festival to bring light to our communities with Chanukah murals in eight cities across the US and Canada. For 2021, we brought the same decentralized model to Passover, bringing awareness to crucial issues in three cities in North America.
The 2019 Jewish Street Art Festival took place as part of the 2019 Jerusalem Biennale in October and November. We partnered with First Station (Tachana Rishona), the Artists’ Colony (Hutzot Hayotzer), and the Schechter Institute in the heart of Jerusalem to create site-specific pieces at all three locations.
Due to travel restrictions, we reimagined the 2020 Festival as a way to bring art to our local communities. Our artists each painted Chanukah murals in their own cities for eight murals around the US and Canada.
The Jewish Street Art Festival presented a series of murals as a part of Dwelling in a Time of Plagues, a coast-to-coast Jewish artistic response to contemporary plagues. The works for Dwelling in a Time of Plagues reinterpret the themes of Passover in response to our times.
Watch along throughout the Festival as our artists paint their masterpieces!
“Koach” by Mike Wirth at Hillel at UC Irvine captures strength through vibrant imagery. The Hebrew word koach means strength. The letter “K” takes the form of a kosher symbol, grounding the mural in faith and tradition. “O” appears as Mike’s signature “peace pom,” a circular burst of color hovering above the scene. “A” is […]
Eureka by Louis Barak in Downtown Santa Ana pays tribute to Orange County’s long Jewish history. Nathan Fainbarg established a shoe store called Eureka at 315 E. 4th Street in Santa Ana during the 1920s. The mural features Nathan and his wife Rose, and overlooks the stretch of E. 4th St. that their family helped build.
Shalom by Hillel Smith in Downtown Santa Ana. Standing at the very edge of the historic Downtown Santa Ana district, this vibrant mural greets all comers to the neighborhood with a greeting of peace and welcoming. Hillel uses his distinctive experimental lettering to spell out the word Shalom in Hebrew in bright colors that stand […]
Potential Revealed by Yitzchok Moully at Chabad of Newport Beach.
Learning Comes Alive by Yitzchok Moully at Chabad of Irvine.
Together at Sinai by Yitzchok Moully & Sheina Yarmush at Hebrew Academy Community Day School of Orange County.
Havtacha (Promise) by Mike Wirth at The Stan Greenspon Center for Peace and Social Justice, Queens University of Charlotte highlights the struggle that individuals face on a daily basis on the streets brought on the pandemic and other systematic plagues that befall the Queen City.
Bareket Kezwer’s mural “Both&” at the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre in Toronto inspires us to consider the plague of binary thinking. Passover is a holiday celebrating the duality of freedom and slavery, a time when we intentionally hold the paradox of life—the inseparability and interdependence of seemingly contradictory phenomena.
JCC Harlem – 318 W 118th St, New York, NY 10026 Current circumstances have exacerbated the existing crisis of food insecurity in this country. Meanwhile, an unexpected consequence of the pandemic has been reconnecting us to how and what we eat as we spend more time at home. In Hillel Smith’s paired murals, What Sustains Us, […]
Hillel Smith’s paired murals at Repair The World NYC and JCC Harlem, What Sustains Us, offer fun and whimsical encouragement to think about all that connects our bodies to what we eat.
Combining decorative details that adorned the walls and ceilings of now vanished wooden synagogues with her dancing body and the Unicorn, an ancient symbol of death and rebirth, Maya’s mural project at New York’s 14th St. Y and video installation “This Place Has a Body,” creates new fantastical spaces out of the residue of loss of what came before.
Adam’s mural was painted at the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta. He teamed up over Chanukah with other local organizations including The Blue Dove Foundation (addressing the issues of mental illness and addiction in the Jewish community and beyond), the Breman Museum, and OneTable.
Click on their names to learn more about our incredible team.
CURATOR | Hillel Smith is an artist and designer focused re-imagining the potential of Judaica by utilizing contemporary media to create new manifestations of traditional forms. Seeing Hebrew as the visual glue that binds Jews together across time and space, he explores Jewish typographic history, using print as a lens for Jewish life and culture.
Dede Bandaid is a Tel-Aviv based, multidisciplinary urban artist, who utilizes various mediums to communicate within the public arena. Nitzan Mintz is a visual poet. She began working a decade ago in the streets of Tel Aviv, where she would create visual poetry for specific locations in the city. As partners in life and practice, they find inspiration in the vibrant pulse and constant flux of urban environments.
2020 CO-CURATOR | Yitzchok Moully is a conceptual artist whose work explores the intersection of spirituality and the material world we live in. Moully brings together the disparate colorful worlds of his hippie upbringing and Hasidic culture, resulting in a unique palette of colors and ideas.
Mike Wirth is a street artist, graphic designer, and an associate professor of art based in Charlotte, NC. His work reflects his blended Jewish upbringing and his experience of adulthood in the American South through pop art inspired Jewish iconography and typography.
louisbarak.com Louis Barak is an Israeli American Jewish artist based in Chicago, known for his vibrantpaintings, murals, and tattoos that celebrate Jewish identity and history with a modernflair. Following the October 7th massacres and subsequent rise in antisemitism, he feltcompelled to redefine Judaica, moving away from traditional melancholicrepresentations to showcase a more proud and dynamic […]
AlexanderGolobArt.com Alexander Golob is a Jewish and Italian first-generation public artist with a practice rooted in joy, dialogue, curiosity, and technical experimentation. Golob’s work uses materials like wood, metal, and paint to explore social dynamics, traditional craft, complicated histories, and layered meanings.
Adam Podber is a full time artist and muralist operating out of Southwest Atlanta, concentrating on modern, clean, and bold murals as well as signage and logo work. With a product design background, he enjoys the design process and makes sure all of his work not only fits the space but is executed cleanly with an attention to detail.
Sheina Yarmush is a self taught variety artist. She started off as the only female Orthodox caricature artist, to become one of the very few female Orthodox muralists.
As a Los Angeles native and self-taught artist, Shlome has developed an unmistakable signature that bridges beautiful colored abstract design with elements of street and pop art. With strong ties to his Israeli heritage, he draws from his spirituality and cultural roots to develop his own pieces infused with love and light.
Email us at info@jewishstreetart.com.