The Jewish Innovation
Itamar joined Hillel in LA in March 2015 to paint three murals around the city, at the Silverlake JCC, AJU, and in Venice. We hosted art talks, workshops, and a street party to engage with the community. Now we want to paint more murals around Israel this fall, and hopefully with more artists in more places and inspire more Jews with art!
The Impact
In cities like Los Angeles, one of the most ethnically rich and also one of the most segregated cities in the US, street art tends to reflect very localized communities. Neighborhoods like Little Tokyo and East LA unabashedly display their cultural heritage through murals that promote their communal identity–national, ethnic, religious, political, etc.–and beautify their surroundings. Creating contemporary murals with Jewish content ties the Jewish community to the artistic fabric of the city, promotes intra-city travel and cultural exchange, and demonstrates the vitality of Jewish culture.
Additionally, American Jews don’t often get the opportunity to interact with Israelis in a context outside of politics. Israelis, living in a Jewish state, don’t always understand what it means to be a Jewish minority in a diverse population. We want to use art as a way to bridge that gap and start a conversation about what it means to be Jewish in the 21st century.
The project is made possible through grants from Asylum Arts, and from the NextGen Engagement Initiative of The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, and with support from The Mosse/Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison and The University of Southern California Initiative for Israeli Arts and Humanities.
What Will You Do with the Money?
Our initial goal is to cover the costs from our first set of murals in Los Angeles, and bring Hillel to Israel to paint with Itamar there in the fall. Possible locations include the Jerusalem Biennale, Jerusalem’s First Station (Tachana Rishona) and the town of Shacharut in the Negev. Should we raise enough money, we want to keep the collaboration going, bringing in more Jewish artists to create work in places like Minneapolis, Baltimore/DC, and wherever there’s a community with blank walls waiting to be brightened!
