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!
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.
Rachel Gluski’s mural is now live at the Downtown Synagogue at Griswold and Clifford Streets. Big thanks to the Downtown Synagogue for being such an amazing partner!
Rabbi Yitzchok Moully’s huge (76 ft x 20+ ft) mural, #ShareYourLight, is now up at 569 Myrtle Ave, Brooklyn, NY (the corner of Myrtle and Classon). Everyone is invited to visit the mural and share your light: there is a basket of bright markers for everyone to come and share a positive message on the wall.
A few of our murals will be “lit” each night by members of the community. Here are photos of events from the first night.
Shlome J. Hayun and Sheina Dorn painted on the side of the Mamilla restaurant in the heart of the “kosher corridor” in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood on Wednesday, December 9, in a day-long celebration with the community. More photos coming soon!
Hillel finished his mural at the Edlavitch JCC today after a few days of painting, including in unexpected snow! The fallen leaves were painted by the JCC’s preschoolers, faculty, and staff. Daily candle lightings by local VIP guests will be at 2pm daily, weather permitting (except Saturday).
Mike Wirth’s #RBGMenorah mural is ready for lighting at Queens University of Charlotte! They have a full schedule of candle lightings each night. Click to read more and see the whole line-up.
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.
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 […]
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.
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.
Bareket Kezwer is a Toronto-based visual artist, muralist, curator, community organizer and eternal optimist. Her work is motivated by a desire to spread joy, cultivate gratitude, and foster new social interactions.
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.
Chicago-based Anshie Kagan’s ironic and often dark artwork covers a variety of motifs and themes and is influenced by the Pop Art movement of the 1950s.
Sheina Dorn 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.
Email us at info@jewishstreetart.com.