The Genesis: Conversations About Jewish Arts and Culture

Joshua Rose
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  • UPDATED WEEKLY

We are right at the beginning of what some have called "The 21st Century Jewish Cultural Renaissance," and The Genesis is the podcast watching it unfold, in real time and up close. Each week Rabbi Josh Rose has a conversation with a different Jewish artist or cultural figure to explore questions of artistic creativity, individual Jewish identity, Jewish expression and how Jewish arts are reshaping what it means to be Jewish. Our main focus in on the artists from Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture, and Jewish artists in the Pacific Northwest. Rabbi Josh also engages national leaders (Rabbi Shai Held of Hadar, Seth Pinksy of New York's 92nd Street Y) about the broader world of Jewish culture. So, if you're interested in 21st century Jewish life, Jewish ideas, Jewish arts or just good conversation, you're in the right place. *The Genesis was originally a podcast of Co/Lab, founded by Rabbi Josh. Today the Genesis is a production of Art/Lab where Rabbi Josh continues to shape its unfolding.

  1. 6D AGO

    S3 E33 What You Get When You Combine Witchy Spirituality, Jewish Community & Radical Creativity (Dana Lynn Louis Part II)

    In this second part of my conversation with Dana Lynn Lewis, she reflects on how art can be  "political" even when it isn't issuing explicit slogans: in a culture that underfunds artists and treats art as decor, simply insisting that creative work matters is political.  We get into the difference between message-forward political art and art that opens a capacious vessel—inviting people to express through their shared humanity without hammering them with ideology. A centerpiece is Dana's participatory project "Clearing"—hundreds  of tiny anonymous envelopes people filled out with whatever they wanted to "clear," sent from around the world, then ritually burned unopened.  We also talk about "witchy" earth-based spirituality: daily contemplative walks, attention to river/trees/wind, and the moment a tree became her realtor (!)  We connect that to creativity, to the feeling of being small in the face of the gorge and the river's deep time, and to the trickster energy of making community in public. Dana Lynn Lewis is truly a one-of-a-kind - enjoy part two of our conversation.  The Genesis is created, produced and edited by Rabbi Joshua Rose and is supported by Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture. Theme music composed by Rabbi Joshua Rose Links Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture - www.artlabpdx.org/ Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education - www.ojmche.org/ Dana Lynn Louis: CLEARING" (2014) —www.lclark.edu/live/news/26500-dana-lynn-louis-clearing

    38 min

  2. FEB 3

    S3E32 Does Art Have a Role In Helping Repair Civic Life? (W/ Dana Lynn Louis - Part I of II)

    My guest this week is Dana Lynn Lewis, a Portland artist whose work is fabulous but does not stay politely inside the gallery by any means. Dana is the founder of Gather:Make:Shelter, a long running collaborative project that brings professional artists together with people experiencing houselessness and poverty making work side by side, sharing meals. Paying participants for their time and then bringing those stories and objects into public view in a way that refuses the kind of usual us and them bifurcation that so many cities dealing with homelessness confront. She really breaks that down with her incredibly beautiful work  approach. In this conversation, we go back to the moment that this work really ignited Dana's time in Senegal during the 2016 election. She discusses the kinda strange clarity that came from being far away looking in on the United States, people around her with every reason to be cynical, insisting that something important was happening and something good would come out of this. And she embraced that idea. She talks about her return to Portland in a very important human moment under the steel bridge that became the seed of an idea. It quickly became gather, make shelter through the beautiful work that she does. We also talk about connection and the central role that plays in her life and work.  We venture into her background and her Jewish upbringing and the role that Jewish summer camp played in her work, and we also talk about the idea that there's Dana, the artist, and Dana, the activist. For her, it's all emergent out of this sense of connection. Finally, we do talk about her beautiful, beautiful, multimedia artistic work, and there are links for you to encounter her work up online, including the link to Gather:Make:Shelter. This is a two-parter because we had so much to talk about. The second part of the conversation will be out next week. Enjoy my conversation with the one and only Dana Lynn Lewis The Genesis: Conversations About Jewish Arts and Culture is conceived of and created by Rabbi Josh Rose, and is a program of Art/Lab: Jewish Arts and Culture. Theme music by Rabbi Josh Rose.   Links: Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture: www.artlabpdx.org Gather:Make:Shelter www.gathermakeshelter.org/ Dana Lynn Louis: www.danalynnlouis.com/ Russo Lee Gallery: www.russoleegallery.com/exhibitions

    37 min

  3. JAN 28

    S3E31 How Jewish Mysticism - and Pain - Inform One Artist's Work (W/ Cara Levine)

    In this episode I sit down with artist Cara Levine and we discuss how grief informs her work in tangible ways. Cara's work is on exhibit right now at the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education. She lives in California now, but was a Portlander for a time. Her multi-media work is in a sweet spot between engaged in real world problems and ethereal other-worldliness. Cara is also influenced by mysticism, and is a student of it. So I was eager to sit down with her and learn more about her and the work she's brought into the world. Cara describes Carve; The Mystic Is Nourished From This Sphere, a large-scale "bowl / hole" that doesn't just hold people's words, but amplifies them—turning the gallery itself into an instrument and a vessel for community care. That opens into a conversation about what happens when an artwork accidentally (and then intentionally) becomes a structure for collective ritual and shared vulnerability. From there we go into pain. We cover the surprising role that migraines play in her creative thinking and what she learned about surrender. The conversation dips into the worldliness of her work as we touch on her piece This Is Not a Gun. And of course, we finish off with her sharing something she loves and her opinion on the best Jewish food. Enjoy the conversation.   Links Art/Lab: artlabpdx.org Cara Levine caralevine.com Oregon Jewish Museum & Center for Holocaust Education OJMCHE.org Beit Kohenet —https://www.beitkohenet.org/ Rabbi Jill Hammer —https://jillhammer.net/ Bruce Nauman https://www.artdex.com/bruce-nauman-the-art-and-irony-of-revealing-mystic-truths/ Brian Eno's Apollo: https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Apollo:_Atmospheres_…   The Genesis: Conversations About Jewish Arts and Culture is conceived of and created by Rabbi Josh Rose, and is a program of Art/Lab: Jewish Arts and Culture. Theme music by Rabbi Josh Rose.

    52 min

  4. JAN 20

    S3E30 Curating Jewish Culture in a Fractured Moment (with Rebekah Sobel)

    This episode takes a different tack on one of this podcast's central themes; Jewish culture—how it's made, displayed, argued over, and lived. In this episode, I sit down with Rebekah Sobel, the Director of the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education (OJMCHE), for a conversation that treats museums not as neutral storehouses, but as active cultural engines: places where communities decide what gets remembered, how it gets framed, and who gets to speak. Rebekah comes to this work through anthropology and archaeology. She says that objects don't "tell the truth" on their own—people interpret them. One of the through lines of our conversation is that Jewish culture is always being curated, whether it's in a gallery, a classroom, a feed, or a synagogue. And right now—especially post–October 7—the Jewish communal conversation is being curated by outrage and polarization more than by the tradition's own capacity for multi-vocal debate. Rebekah describes the museum's work in light of this moment: holding public trust while admitting that every exhibit is perspectival; creating spaces for people to be together again before they make declarations; and pushing access to Holocaust education statewide.  Finally we talk about what it looks like when Jewish culture is presented in real time to a real public—like OJMCHE's programming around Steve Marcus's "Psychedelicatessen," where religious symbolism collides with counterculture humor. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Rebekah Sobel. Links: Art/Lab www.artlabpdx.org More on Rebekah Sobel here: www.linkedin.com/in/rebekah-sobel-5321b75/ Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education: www.ojmche.org/ Polin Museum (Warsaw) polin.pl/en/about-museum   The Genesis: Conversations About Jewish Arts and Culture is conceived of and created by Rabbi Josh Rose, and is a program of Art/Lab: Jewish Arts and Culture. Theme music by Rabbi Josh Rose.

    38 min

  5. JAN 8

    S3E29 How 17th Century Yiddish Prayer Shaped a Modern Jewish Writer (w/ Eve Bernfeld)

    In this episode I sit down with writer, poet, and Alexander Technique teacher Eve Bernfeld to talk about what it means to sustain a creative life in the middle of parenting, teaching, and everyday obligations. We talk about discipline and devotion — daily writing practices, working through creative resistance, and what happens when you take yourself seriously as an artist even when time, energy, and certainty are in short supply. Our conversation moves through Jewish prayer, fairy tales, and Jewish magic as living creative resources rather than abstract traditions. Eve reflects on discovering tkhines (vernacular women's prayers), writing contemporary poetic prayers that emerge directly from domestic life, and finding her way back to speculative and magical fiction rooted in Jewish sources. Along the way we talk about vulnerability, belonging, the body as part of artistic practice, and how creativity can be a way of reclaiming parts of ourselves we thought we had left behind.   Show Notes  Art/Lab (Portland) — https://artlabpdx.org/ Eve Bernfeld's Website: http://www.evebernfeld.com/ Tkhines (Yiddish women's prayers) — YIVO Encyclopedia — https://encyclopedia.yivo.org/article.aspx/Tkhines The Artist's Way (Morning Pages origin) — Julia Cameron — https://juliacameronlive.com/the-artists-way/ "S****y first drafts"  https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/10332/bird-by-bird-by-anne-lamott/ Alexander Technique (general overview) — AmSAT — https://www.amsatonline.org/alexander-technique/what-is-the-alexander-technique/ Omer: A Counting https://www.ccarpress.org/shopping_product_detail.asp?pid=50132 Grimm tale "The Jew in the Thorns https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm110.html   The Genesis is created, produced and edited by Rabbi Joshua Rose and is supported by Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture. Theme music composed by Rabbi Joshua Rose

    56 min

  6. 12/30/2025

    S3E28 Can We Find Truth Amidst Competing Narratives? (w/ Rebecca Clarren)

    My guest today is journalist Rebecca Clarren. Her work has appeared in Mother Jones, High Country News, The Nation, and Indian Country Today. For her reporting, she's won a Hillman Prize, received an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellowship, and earned multiple grants from the Fund for Investigative Journalism. But as you'll hear in our conversation, she's much more than a journalist. Her debut novel, which we touch on, is Kickdown, which was shortlisted for the PEN Bellwether Prize. Clarren is also a published poet; her work has appeared in North American Review, Catamaran, CutBank, and Poetry Northwest. We spend most of our time talking about The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance, an extraordinary book in which she turns her journalistic eye on her own story—and her family's. It was named a Best Book of 2023 by several publications, won the Will Rogers Medallion Award, and was shortlisted for the High Plains Book Award and the Great Plains Book Award. Rebecca and I talk about Jewish identity and values, and how those shape her work. She has a passion for amplifying marginalized and silenced voices—and for uncovering the stories that get buried beneath the dominant narrative. We talk about storytelling, contested truth, and what it means to hold multiple perspectives at once. We also talk powerfully about grief and loss, and how they've informed her life and her work. Israel and Gaza come up because we're talking about competing narratives and moral urgency—and she offers a striking framework for balancing truth and compassion, rooted in learning with her rabbi. It's a rich conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it. This is my conversation with Rebecca Clarren. The Genesis is created, produced and edited by Rabbi Joshua Rose and is supported by Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture. Theme music composed by Rabbi Joshua Rose ----   Links & Show Notes Art/Lab: artlabpdx.org Rebecca's website: https://www.rebecca-clarren.com/ Indian Land Tenure Foundation: https://iltf.org/ Peter Beinart's Being Jewish Adrer the Destruction of Gaza: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/775348/being-jewish-after-the-destruction-of-gaza-by-peter-beinart/

    44 min

  7. 12/25/2025

    S3E27 Why it Matters that Jews Wrote The Christmas Songs You Love/Hate

    A Christmas message (!) from Rabbi Josh

    6 min

  8. 12/17/2025

    S3E26 How One Artist Balances Trauma & Jewish Humor (with/ Nikki Schulak)

    Rabbi Josh Rose sits down with writer Nikki Schulak to talk about humor as survival strategy, artistic method, and truth-telling device. What begins as a discussion of comedy quickly opens into an exploration of trauma, Jewish family life, grief, and the way humor can both conceal and reveal what hurts most. Nikki reflects on how comedy functioned in her childhood, in her eccentric Jewish family, and in the complicated dynamics between piety, cruelty, affection, and love. The conversation moves into Nikki's radical commitment to honesty on the page. Known for writing with almost no filter, Nikki talks openly about shame, depression, sex, marriage, mental health, and the personal costs of telling the truth publicly. From her seventh-grade journals to her current Substack, vulnerability wasn't a strategy she adopted—it's who she's always been. Along the way, she shares the story behind her Prozac tattoo, her experience with depression, and why making mental health visible matters to her. Josh and Nikki also dig into questions of marriage, intimacy, and unconventional family structures. Nikki speaks frankly about her long marriage, having an affair, the therapy that followed, and the surprising, hard-won equilibrium her family ultimately found. The discussion is not theoretical or ideological—it's grounded in lived experience, with all the discomfort, humor, and tenderness that entails. The episode closes with reflections on parenting, teaching preschool, politics, and why humor remains an essential tool for surviving a tragic and absurd world. It's a conversation about truth, timing, and courage—about what happens when you refuse to look away from your own life, and insist on telling it as clearly and honestly as you can. Links Art/Lab artlabpdx.org The Genesis on Youtube: youtube.com/@thegenesisjewishpodcast Nikki Schulak's Website: nikkischulak.com Her Substack: nschulak.substack.com

    54 min
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5
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9 Ratings

About

We are right at the beginning of what some have called "The 21st Century Jewish Cultural Renaissance," and The Genesis is the podcast watching it unfold, in real time and up close. Each week Rabbi Josh Rose has a conversation with a different Jewish artist or cultural figure to explore questions of artistic creativity, individual Jewish identity, Jewish expression and how Jewish arts are reshaping what it means to be Jewish. Our main focus in on the artists from Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture, and Jewish artists in the Pacific Northwest. Rabbi Josh also engages national leaders (Rabbi Shai Held of Hadar, Seth Pinksy of New York's 92nd Street Y) about the broader world of Jewish culture. So, if you're interested in 21st century Jewish life, Jewish ideas, Jewish arts or just good conversation, you're in the right place. *The Genesis was originally a podcast of Co/Lab, founded by Rabbi Josh. Today the Genesis is a production of Art/Lab where Rabbi Josh continues to shape its unfolding.

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