Art

Content type
Collection
Animal drawings by Liana Finck on orange gradient background

Making Space

Judy Ruden

In Liana Finck's exploration of the kabbalistic concept of Tsimtsum, the idea of God's contraction as a means of creation, I find the beginnings of a Jewish feminist future. 

Letter from Nāzuk bat Yosef

A Millennium of Jewish Women’s Voices

Sarah Bunin Benor
Abby Graham

HUC-JIR's Jewish Language Project shares their recent exhibit highlighting Jewish women’s voices throughout history in twenty Diaspora Jewish languages.

Anita Brenner

Anita Brenner, an anthropologist, journalist, and art historian, was born in Aguascalientes, Mexico, to Jewish immigrants from Latvia and grew up in Mexico and Texas. She was an important part of the Mexican Renaissance cultural scene, and the internal tension she experienced as Mexican, American, and Jewish provided her with insight into both Mexican and Jewish identity.

Collage with Image of Molly Picon from "Yidn Mitn Fidl," Background of Wallpaper of Shooting Stars

Activism Through Art: Molly Picon's Legacy

Abigail Gilman

I think about Molly Picon, and how she utilized her love of storytelling to bring laughter to those who needed it, to foster pride and compassion in the Jewish community, and to fight to keep Yiddish theater alive.

Vera Frances Salomons

An elusive figure, Vera Salomon, who belonged to the interconnected network of Anglo-Jewish families known as “the Cousinhood,” is best remembered for founding and funding the L.A. Mayer Museum of Islamic Art in Jerusalem. This was the culmination of a longstanding philanthropic commitment to Jewish life in what would become the State of Israel.

The Berber Bride in the Salon, by Esther Benmaman, 2002

Rethinking the Canon: Today's Moroccan Jewish Women Painters

Tamara Kohn

Who belongs in the canon? And who gets to tell the stories of Moroccan Jews?

Topics: Art, Jewish History

Gertrud Bing

Art historian Gertrud Bing was a key figure at the Warburg Institute, a research library focused on the afterlife of antiquity in the art of the Renaissance. Beginning as personal assistant to the Institute’s founder, Aby Warburg, and ultimately becoming its director, Bing helped develop and disseminate iconology, a methodology that investigates the social, historical, and cultural meanings of themes and subjects in artworks and that transformed twentieth-century art history.

Ruth Adler Schnee wins the Kresge Eminent Artist Award

January 28, 2015

On January 28, 2015, at the age of 91, Ruth Adler Schnee was honored with the prestigious Kresge Eminent Artist Award in recognition of her influential career as one of the founding figures of contemporary textile design in the United States.

Jewish Women’s Comics and Graphic Narratives

The history of Jewish women’s comics and graphic novels can be traced back to early and mid-20th-century progenitors. With the underground comics scene of the late 1960s/early 1970s, several Jewish women laid the groundwork for the themes, styles, and communal ties that would be taken up by the post-underground. In the 21st century, the works of Jewish women in comics and graphic novels is booming.

Mirta Kupferminc

Mirta Kupferminc (b.1955) is an internationally recognized contemporary Argentine Jewish artist. For the past four decades, she has explored memory, culture, history, and language, in a variety of art media.

Cover Illustration from Micah Bazant's "TimTum: A Trans Jew Zine": an illustrated figure with horns, and a star of David drawn on their chest, holds a needle and scissors connected to thread stitched across the figure's chest.

How “TimTum: A Trans Jew Zine” Taught Me to Be a Sexy, Smart, Creative, Productive Jewish Genderqueer

Avivit Ashman

I discovered Micah Bazant’s “TimTum: A Trans Jew Zine” in early high school, at a critical juncture (read: identity crisis).

Topics: Art, Religion
2019-2020 Rising Voices Fellows Zine Cover Page Cropped

An RVF Zine: Reflecting on the 2019-2020 Rising Voices Fellowship

Rising Voices Fellows

The 2019-2020 Rising Voices Fellows reflect on their time in the Fellowship and on their collaborative zine-making process.

Topics: Activism, Art, Writing
Collage by Lila Goldstein

Collaging in Quarantine

Lila Goldstein

Collaging is an old hobby of mine that has taken on new value during this pandemic.

Topics: Art, Crafts
Sneaker with butterflies on it

Butterflies and What They Mean to Me

Lila Zinner

I love butterflies because, to me, butterflies represent freedom and bliss.

Siona Benjamin

Born in Mumbai, India, Siona Benjamin is an artist now living in the New York City area.

Olga Shmuylovich

An artist whose work is rooted in Jewish identity, Olga Shmuylovich spent the first part of her life trying unsuccessfully to emigrate from the Soviet Union, until finally resettling in Boston with her husband, also an artist, in 1992.

"The Liberation of G-D Proclamation," by Helene Aylon, 1990-1996

Helène Aylon: Rescuing G-d from the Patriarchy

Peri Levin

As far as I was concerned, religion was a conservative cult, and Abrahamic faiths didn’t seem to be interested in powerful women expressing themselves. I recently discovered Helène Aylon, an artist whose projects and story bring these struggles of faith and feminism into focus.

Episode 15: A Day at the Met with the Mixed-Up Files

Beloved children’s book From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler turns 50 this year. E.L. Konigsburg’s best-selling novel tells the story of two suburban children who run away to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. To celebrate the book’s anniversary—and to gear up for summer reading—Can We Talk? took two ten-year-old girls to the Met for an official tour retracing Claudia and Jamie Kincaid’s week in the museum. Tune in to join us on the tour and to hear an interview with Konigsburg’s daughter and a conversation with the girls about why the proper yet rebellious Claudia Kincaid still resonates with today’s young readers.

Liana Finck

Liana Finck finds new angles of approach into her life and Jewish history through her whimsical and expressive autobiographical cartoons.
Lynne Avadenka in Yeshiva University Museum

Will You Hear My Voice: Artist Lynne Avadenka Revisits Rahel

Adina Kay-Gross

I first heard the lyrics of Zemer Nugeh, a poem by seminal pre-state Israeli poet Rahel, as a 14-year-old at summer camp in the early 90’s. I had no experience with heartbreak or loss, and yet the haunting words affected me. I’d spend the evenings walking through open green fields, kicking up dust at sweaty folk dancing sessions, feeling inspired by nature and Hebrew culture and pining for the summer when I’d get to spend six weeks in Israel.

Topics: Art
"Lotte Lenya" and Delaney Hoffman's Photo

Bravery In Negatives And Movement: Lotte Jacobi

Delaney Hoffman

Art as a form of healing. Art as a form of escape. Art as a form of human connection, or livelihood, or emotional fulfillment. Art as everything that you need it to be. 

Helene Aylon's Self Portrait, 2004

Artists For A Cause

Ariela Basson

While my Jewish views are different from Helène’s, she and I have similar artistic views. Just like Helène, I think art can be utilized as a powerful weapon to fight various forms of oppression and injustice. I believe that art ought to be used more often in the everlasting fight for gender equality. 

Topics: Feminism, Art
Elisheva Cohen

Icons for the New Year: Elisheva Cohen

Tara Metal

This Rosh Hashanah, I’m thinking about change. We look at transformation as something that happens overnight, but if the women I learn about every day at JWA are any indication, change happens in surprising ways and at unexpected times. It can be sudden or slow, a product of one determined action or years of effort.

Topics: Art
Illustration from "The Body Journey"

Body Talk: Delving into The Body Journey with Creator Miriam Ross

Julia Rubin


In a society where we’re constantly told what we should love and what we should hate about ourselves, we can forget that our bodies belong to us. There is little space for women to create their own narratives, express their own fears, and admire their own features. Artist Miriam Ross gives women the opportunity to do exactly this in her project, The Body Journey.

Topics: Feminism, Art

Hilary Price

At age 25, Hilary Price became the youngest-ever syndicated cartoonist when King Features Syndicate bought her comic Rhymes with Orange for distribution in 1995.

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