Grants for Jewish Art & Writing in the Upper Midwest

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

This grant opportunity nearly makes me wish I lived in Minnesota or elsewhere in the “Upper Midwest” (keep reading!):

The Howard B. Brin & Ruth F. Brin Jewish Arts Endowment Fund, a designated fund of the Jewish Community Foundation, serves to encourage artistic creativity within a Jewish context. The Fund is meant to aid a broad range of individual artists and institutions in creating and producing works with a Jewish theme. The Howard B. & Ruth F. Brin Jewish Arts Endowment Fund has supported artists and institutions in the creation of art with Jewish content for the past 20 years. Awards have ranged from $500 to $3,000.

It is the funders’ intention that these artistic endeavors would reach both Jewish and general audiences within Minnesota, with a possible reach to the upper Midwest. (The upper Midwest is considered to be Minnesota, Iowa, western Wisconsin, and the Dakotas.) The arts experience is broadly defined and grants may be given for music, dance, literature, theatre, visual arts and film as long as the projects are not for commercial use. Emphasis will be given to applications from individual artists and agencies within the Minnesota artistic and Jewish communities.

I don’t see a deadline indicated, but clicking through to the guidelines, I note this: “Generally a request for proposals goes out in late spring with a deadline in mid-summer; the committee meets in late summer and an announcement about winning proposals goes out by the Jewish New Year.”

Good luck to any and all who may apply! And thanks to @TCJewfolk for the tip.

Jewish Literary Links for Shabbat

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled
Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen
  • The latest Rockower Awards–for excellence in Jewish journalism–have been announced. Mazel tov to all of the honorees. Special kudos to some bylines/pubs/websites you’ve seen me reference here on My Machberet: Judy Bolton-Fasman, Andrew Silow-Caroll/New Jersey Jewish Week, The Jewish Week, Jewish Women’s Archive, & JTA.
  • Coming in 2015: a new Jewish arts festival.
  • Much sooner, the house in Brazil where refugee author Stefan Zweig and his wife committed suicide together in 1942–the Casa Stefan Zweig–will open as a museum. Benjamin Ivry revisits this author’s history for The Forward.
  • The Jewish Journal‘s Jonathan Kirsch offers some suggestions for summer reading.
  • Themed “Translation/Transformation,” the new Ilanot Review features work by Etgar Keret and Margot Singer and an interview with Evan Fallenberg, among other wonderful items. (I’m thrilled that “Lebensraum,” a story from Quiet Americans, is also part of this issue.)

    • Shabbat shalom!

    Recent Reads: The Liberal Case for Israel, by Jonathan Miller

    by Erika Dreifus on
    2

    Disclosure: I’ve been impressed by Jonathan Miller‘s intelligence and leadership for 25 years, since the long-ago Shabbat when, as a pre-freshman, I visited Harvard Hillel for the first time and met him at the Reform minyan service. At the time, Jonathan was a sophomore, but, with the NFTY presidency behind him, he was already chairing the full Hillel community–while also gearing up to run the national “Students for Gore” effort. I’ve expected great things from him ever since, and his new e-book, The Liberal Case for Israel: Debunking Eight Crazy Lies About the Jewish State, meets (if not exceeds) those high expectations.

    Moreover, the text provides a clear and documented guide for those of us who want to join in this effort, those of us who are so frequently frustrated and infuriated by those “crazy lies” about Israel that we see so often in the media (and, for those of us in literary and/or academic communities, among our colleagues). You can review all eight of the “crazy lies” if you take up Amazon‘s “Look Inside” offer. For now, I’ll simply cite the first two: “Imperialist” and “Apartheid.” (You can also read about another one, “Pinkwashing,” in an excerpt from the book that appeared on The Huffington Post this week.)

    Time prevents me from writing an in-depth review of Jonathan’s e-book, and I hope I’ll be forgiven for not giving The Liberal Case for Israel the detail it deserves. But I’m so eager to let others know about it. I’ve made no secret of my own wish to be able to do pretty much precisely what Jonathan has done here. I am most grateful–though, given what I recall about him, utterly unsurprised–that Jonathan got there first.

    Jewish Children’s Books at BEA

    by Erika Dreifus on
    Disabled

    Our regularly scheduled “Jewish Literary Links for Shabbat” will return next week. But I’ve been on “staycation” this week here in New York City, and I haven’t been keeping up with the online offerings quite as assiduously as usual.

    On the other hand, I did have the chance to stop by the Book Expo America (BEA) trade show yesterday. I expected to be entranced by all of the new and forthcoming books for adults (and I was), but I’m not sure I was fully prepared for the enormous appeal of the displays of books for children.

    Including the displays set up by Kar-Ben Publishing, a wonderful source for Jewish-themed books for children. The Kar-Ben displays were among the first I saw, and my chat with publisher Joni Sussman was my first BEA conversation of the morning. Take a peek at some of the books she told me about (Aunt Erika is already preparing that Chanukah gift list!) and find others on the Kar-Ben website.

    Shabbat shalom!

    J-Job Alert: JTA Seeks Feature Writer/Blogger

    by Erika Dreifus on
    Disabled

    “JTA, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, is seeking a high-energy, self-directed, deadline-oriented individual to work as a full-time feature writer/blogger. The ideal candidate will write profiles and feature stories pertaining to trends in American Jewish life and report and blog with a Jewish perspective on arts, entertainment, sports and the hottest news topics of the day. The candidate must have journalistic experience; familiarity with Jewish sensibilities and interests; the versatility and creativity to come up with a compelling Jewish angle on a wide variety of topics. The successful candidate will have excellent research and writing abilities and a conversational, engaging style.”

    The complete announcement for this full-time job in NYC is available on JournalismJobs.com.