Description
The Drisha’s Arts Fellowships Program aims to revitalize the
Jewish community by producing Jewishly knowledgeable artists. Women
who are creative writers, visual artists, musicians, and performers
are invited to apply. Drisha encourages the Arts Fellows to
integrate their work with their Jewish learning and experience.
Arts Fellows who learn full time at Drisha receive a tuition waiver
and a stipend. Arts Fellows who learn part time receive a tuition waiver
and a financial award at the end of their year of learning.
Artists come from a range of diverse backgrounds in Jewish learning
and have the opportunity to select a group of classes appropriate to
their level. Some artists take skill-based classes in Biblical
Hebrew and Bible. Those with a more extensive background in learning
may join our Beit Midrash program and study Talmud and halakha
as well as Bible.
In addition to committing to a select group of regular Drisha classes,
all of the arts fellows attend a dynamic text class once a week designed
to enrich their work and deepen their relationship with the Torah.
This class also gives fellows the opportunity to spend time in the
Beit Midrash (library) doing research for independent projects.
Arts fellows meet at “salons” once a month to share and
discuss their work. A series of lunches take place in the spring semester
where each fellow presents her work to the Drisha community. In addition, the
artists perform, read, or showcase their work at an event that takes
place at the end of the year.
2007-2008 Arts Fellow and poet Carly Sachs has written:
This year it dawned on me that until I arrived at Drisha
I had never found this type of community in all of my writing or
Jewish experiences. I was always the lone writer or the lone Jew
depending on which group I found myself in. Being at Drisha has
strengthened my passion for integrating who I am as a Jew into
my writing. Drisha has given me a rich context that inspires and
informs my poetry. I'm very grateful to be part of this kind of
program where we are encouraged to share our passions, fears, processes,
and help each other as we learn and grow as Jews and as artists.
As a writer, I'm very excited to be learning Biblical Hebrew which
allows me, finally, to engage in texts that I would have
otherwise thought were closed to me. |
Drisha Arts Fellows 2007-08
Nancy Abraham is a singer and composer. She teaches
Hebrew, Jewish Studies, and cantilation at the Westchester-Fairfield
Hebrew Academy and
at the Westchester Reform Temple. She is in training to be a cantor
with the Renewal Movement. She received a BA from Tufts University
in French Studies and an MA in Education from Sarah Lawrence College.
She has studied at Cambridge University and at the WUJS Institute in
Arad, Israel.
Etta
Abramson graduated with honors from Toronto's York University
with a BA in Theatre Studies, finishing an undergraduate degree that
included
one year at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. Etta is a first-class honors
voice student with the Royal Conservatory of Music. She founded and
directed York University's first Hebrew a cappella choir, Kol Neshama.
Etta has worked as an arts educator for the past two summers at BIMA,
a Jewish arts program for high school students, where most recently
she led a workshop in interpreting Jewish texts through drama. Currently,
Etta sings with the Zamir Chorale and Avir, an a cappella group. She
teaches Torah cantillation at Drisha and is writing a one-woman show.
Elana Bell was selected as the winner of the 2004
Stephen Dunn Poetry Award. She has been a featured poet at Bar 13,
the NuYorican Poets
Cafe, Hunter College, Teachers and Writers Collaborative, The Bowery
Poetry Club, Wow Café Theater, Cornelia Street Café,
the Bronx Council on the Arts’ First Wednesday Series, and at
the Indian Institute for Advanced Studies in Simla, India. Her poems
have appeared in Words and Images Magazine, Houston Poetry Festival
Journal, Parse, Clamor, and Poetz.com. She has published two chapbooks:
Dreaming of Doorways and Name Carvings. She serves as the writer-in-residence
for the Bronx Academy of Letters, and she sings with the a cappella
trio, Saheli.
Lise Brown attended
the Berklee School of Music where she was an arranging major and performer
on flute
and saxophone. She has performed with
Celia Cruz, Mongo Santa Maria, and many other luminaries on the Latin
music scene including the Harp Band, an all-women Latin jazz band featuring
a concert harp. She is the band leader of Big Bandemonium,
which is a nine piece band featuring her own original tunes and arrangements.
She has performed at many music festivals and camps throughout the
U.S. including Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, Old Songs Folk Festival,
Swannanoa Gathering, Pinewoods, and Dance Flurry Festival. Most recently,
she has been performing, arranging and writing klezmer and Jewish music.
She
plays in a traditional format, and has also been incorporating Jewish
music into contra dance, swing, and Latin music. Her work can be heard
on recent recordings including “The Big Bang,” “Between
Two Worlds,” and “A Little Shop of Horas.”
Miriam Leah Droz has a BA in English and Theater from Barnard College
and an MA in Jewish Studies from Touro College. She performed and trained
in Pennsylvania in musical theatre, and has begun to create opportunities
for religious Jewish women to perform in the New York area. She is
currently working as a producer creating ATARA (Torah and the Arts),
a professional organization for Torah observant artists.
Amy Gottlieb has a BA from Clark University and an
MA in comparative literature from The University of Chicago. Her short
stories and essays have appeared in Lilith, Forward, Midstream, Puerto
del Sol, Other Voices, Country Living, and elsewhere; her poetry is
forthcoming in Nashim. She works at the Rabbinical Assembly, where
she is director of publications and editorial director of Aviv Press.
She is currently completing a novel.
Sarah Heller received her BA from Bard College and her MFA in poetry
from NYU. She currently works as the Executive Director of the Authors
League Fund. She has work published or forthcoming in Painted Bride
Quarterly, Pembroke Magazine, RealPoetik, The Temple/El Templo, Thin
Air, and Hayloft, and she is on the board of directors of Nightboat
Books. She has received fellowships or awards from the MacDowell
Colony, Virginia Council for the Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center,
and the Soul Mountain Retreat. She was the recipient of the Nadya
Aisenberg Fellowship at the MacDowell Colony for 2005-2006.
Susan Kaplow received a doctorate from Columbia University in history
and has taught at Empire State College and The University at Albany. In
her thirties, she made a career shift, returning for an MSW at SUNY/Albany. She
has been in full-time private practice since 1983. Kaplow is a jewelry
maker who has studied with various teachers at the JCC in Manhattan.
She works with both metal smithing and glass fusing, creating pieces
that include images from Jewish tradition.
Dages Keates is a professional dancer and choreographer. She received
her BA from Bard College, attended Interlochen Arts Academy, and performs
dance theater works spanning musicals, contemporary ballet, and the
avant-garde. She has most recently been seen in venues such as New
York's Saint Mark's Church, Construction Company, The DUMBO Dance Festival,
Dance Across Borders, and Bulldog Studios in works by choreographers
Susan Osberg, Noemie Lafrance, and The Highcliffe Project, of which
she is a founding member. Dages is certified to teach both Hatha Yoga
and Kundalini Yoga and is a member of Yoga Alliance, IKYTA, and the
Association of Drugless Practioners with five years of experience teaching
individuals, workshops and retreats nationally and internationally.
Nicole Raphael received
her BA in Theatre from Smith College and her MA from The Actor’s
Studio. She is currently the Director of the Aish NY Hebrew School,
and she is the Artistic
Director
of The Mesaper Theatre. She has worked as an actor for ten years. She
appeared in the independent feature film, House of Women,
and has appeared in numerous theatre productions including Glyn Maxwell’s Wolfpit with
The Phoenix Theatre Ensemble, The New World Theatre Project’s production of Carcass, and Bonnie Culver’s
award winning play, Sniper. She played the role of Anne Frank three
times (for Meadow Brook Theatre, New American Theater, and Penobscot
Theatre); Juliet twice (New American Theater and Riverside Shakespeare
Festival.); and Alice in You Can't Take It With You at The
Arkansas Repertory Theatre. She is currently performing in Ellen W.
Kaplan’s With Dream Awakened Eyes, a one-woman play
about the German Jewish painter, Charlotte Salomon. She was invited
as a
guest artist at Manhattan Day School where she held the workshop "Anne
Frank in Performance" and recently she also ran a theatre
club for students at Ramaz Lower School which culminated in "A
Shabbos Play".
Lia Lynn Rosen is
a potter and art educator specializing in custom-made ceremonial clay
objects. Her work fuses traditional
Jewish aesthetics,
ancient pueblo pottery, and evolving women’s rituals. She earned
an MA in Art and Art Education at Columbia Teachers College, and she
is a licensed K-12 Art teacher and works as a consultant with schools,
museums, arts organizations and congregations. She teaches at the Manhattan
Jewish Community Center.
Carly
Sachs has an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School
University. She has taught creative writing at George Washington University
among
other places. Her book of poems, the
steam sequence
on the 2006 Washington Writers' Publishing House first book prize,
and
she is the editor of
the anthology of poems, the why and later, (deep cleveland
press, 2007).
Read Carly’s blog
Anna Schön has a BA in dance and European History from Barnard
College. She also studied African dance in South Africa. Anna is currently
dancing with Michel Koukaou and Reggie Wilson, and has danced with
Gabri Christa, Danielle Gwirtzman, and Ori Flomin in the past.
Basya
Schechter is
a Drisha Arts Fellow for the second year in a row. She grew up in Boro
Park
and received her BA in English Literature
from Barnard College. Schechter is the band leader of Pharaoh's
Daughter,
which blends a psychedelic sensibility and a pan-Mediterranean sensuality.
She leads her band through swirling Hasidic chants, Mizrachi, and Sephardi
folk-rock, and spiritual stylings filtered through percussion, flute,
strings and electronica. Her sound has been cultivated by her Hasidic
music background and a series of trips to the Middle East, Africa,
Israel, Egypt, Central Africa, Turkey, Kurdistan and Greece. Pharaoh's
Daughter has toured extensively through the U.S., Eastern and
Western Europe, as well as Greece and the United Kingdom, and has had
the honor
of debuting at Central Park's Summer Stage series. The band has played
on such prestigious stages as Lincoln Center's Damrosch Park and Queen
Elizabeth Hall in London. Over the past two years, she was the recipient
of numerous compositional and project grants from the New York State
Council of the Arts, American Composers Forum, and the American Music
Center. She collaborated with educator and Sephardic composer, Galeet
Dardashti, and visual artist, Siona Bengamin, on a song cycle recording
project of compositions about biblical women. She is now recording
Pharaoh's Daughter's fifth album, Hagar.
Joelle Wallach (Fall
2007) grew up in Morocco and now lives in New York City where she composes
music for orchestra,
chamber
ensembles,
choruses, solo
voices, and instruments. She earned bachelors and masters degrees at
Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University. Her String Quartet
was the American Composers Alliance nominee for a Pulitzer Prize in
Music. The New York Philharmonic Ensembles premiered her octet, “From
the Forest of Chimneys,” written to celebrate their 10th anniversary;
and the New York Choral Society commissioned her secular oratorio, “Toward
a Time of Renewal,” to commemorate their 35th Anniversary Season
in Carnegie Hall. Wallach's ballet, “Glancing Below,” a
Juilliard Dance Theater showcase production, was commissioned by the
Carlisle Project, premiered in Philadelphia, and quickly became part
of the repertory of the Hartford Ballet. Her choral work, “On
the Beach at Night Alone,” won first prize in the Inter-American
Music Awards. The Manhattan School of Music, where she studied with
John Corigliano, granted her its first doctorate in composition. She
is a pre-concert lecturer for the New York Philharmonic where she speaks
on a broad range of musical subjects.
Sonia Gordon-Walinsky is a Judaic artist working in New York City. She
creates original ketubot and artistic renderings of blessings, prayers,
and verses from Tanakh and other Jewish texts. Her unique artwork
is an integral component of life cycle experiences, deepening and enriching
the meaning of these events as well as promoting a spiritual process
of learning, reflection and growth. She is a graduate of List College,
the Joint Program between Columbia University and The Jewish Theological
Seminary where she earned a BA in American History and in Jewish literature
with a focus on liturgy.
Laura Wiessen is a writer, producer and filmmaker
whose work has appeared on such networks as PBS, MSNBC, The History
Channel, and Bravo. She
has a BA from Wesleyan University, and she earned a Master's Degree
in History from the University of Chicago. She has spent the
last two years living in Jerusalem, where she wrote for the Jerusalem
Post and Israel21c.org while researching two upcoming documentary projects.
Highlights from 2006-07
Drisha launched the Arts Fellowships Initiative in the fall
of 2006 attracting eight women artists – writers and poets, a musician,
an actress, a dancer, and an arts educator and calligrapher – to
develop skills to interpret classical Jewish texts.
“We're committed to providing equal access to the study of classical
Jewish texts,” said Rabbi David Silber, founder and dean of Drisha
Institute. “The arts fellowships further extend the learning
opportunities to the arts community, and deepen the knowledge base
in Jewish education and leadership.”
With the help of a tuition waiver and funding, artists such as calligrapher
and arts educator, Barbara Ashkenas, are taking time off from busy
schedules to strengthen their knowledge of Judaism, to nourish their
spiritual lives, and to develop their craft. Barbara Ashkenas has written:
Being a member of the Drisha Arts Fellowships Initiative has
been an amazing educational experience. I have been privileged
to attend classes in Biblical Hebrew, Parshat HaShavua, two Talmud
courses week, a weekly Halacha class on organ donation , two Tanach
courses—Shmuel I and Exodus—Mishpatim and a Parshanut
class on the Joseph narrative.
The quality of the learning has been exceptional. Biblical Hebrew, taught by
Rabbi Yitzhak Berger, has come alive through Berger’s wit and creative
memory devices that help us remember grammatical rules. He also incorporates
readings from the Parsha and The Book of Esther enriching our textual learning
experience.
What has really been an important part of the experience is the interactions
with my fellow students. I find it interesting and exciting to be in an environment
that allows me to study with people from different backgrounds, ages and stages
of life. |
Basya Schechter, musician and composer and the band leader of Pharaoh’s
Daughter, recently wrote:
| Learning at Drisha has given me access to texts and ways of approaching
meaning and commentary that translates into working with my musical
projects. One of my projects includes songs about marginal Biblical
women, such as Hagar and Tamar, and integrating commentaries into
the compositions. A second project involves composing hip-hop music
around Biblical texts and collaborating with rappers, who will
give new and time-relevant commentary and scenarios to these words.
The last project is ethno-musicological, bringing the messages
of Pirkei Avot—in the form of a collage of Talmudic style
conversations from various cultures—to different ethnic communities
as a way of finding moral commonalities.“ |
Drisha artists such as Mara Friedman are role models for those in the
Jewish community who may struggle to blend a love of Judaism with a
passion for the arts. Mara, a dancer and educator, has said:
| The most important thing that I have found at Drisha is the supportive
community. Everyone seems very interested in the work of the artists
and in finding ways to make connections between the texts that
we learn at Drisha and art, more specifically (in my case) dance. With
the help and enthusiasm from my peers, I decided to make a dance
curriculum connecting movement and prayer. I will begin by teaching
a lesson with a Drisha student from the Scholars Circle program
to high school students this winter. |
Mara teaches regular dance classes to children at a number of Upper
West Side synagogues and has developed an educational Jewish movement
program,
Wiggling Book Worms, that has achieved great success and is
widely praised (
www.wigglingbookworms.com).
Many of the artists who study at Drisha are already serious practitioners
of their particular craft, motivated, and accomplished. They are beginning
to make an impact on the arts world. Drisha Arts Fellow, poet and essayist,
Eve Grubin, author of the book of poems,
Morning Prayer (The Sheep
Meadow Press, 2005), wrote:
| Following the publication of Morning Prayer, I gave
readings at several venues including the Folger Shakespeare Library,
Auburn Theological Seminary, Barnard College, and NYU. I was able
to discuss the Jewish textual issues that inform my writing with
genuine fluency. I would not have been able to speak with such
confidence about Jewish subjects if it were not for my learning
at Drisha. I am looking forward to growing even more from the intellectual
and spiritual nourishment that Drisha provides and, in turn, I
hope to nourish the Jewish community and the larger world with
what I am learning at Drisha. |
Drisha Arts Fellows and Arts Award Recipients,
2006-07
Barbara Ashkenas (Drisha Arts Fellow
2006-07) has a BS in Elementary Education from Ohio State University
and an MAT in Art Education from Manhattanville College. She was an
adjunct professor at Housatonic Community College and was educational
outreach coordinator at the Stamford Center for the Arts. An art educator
and calligrapher, she has taught at SAR High School in Riverdale, at
Jewish summer camps and at adult workshops. She created the “Learning
for Peace” program at Congregation Agudath Sholom with Rabbi Daniel
Cohen to promote peace through Jewish study.
Mara Friedman (Drisha Arts Award Recipient 2006-07)
has a BA from the Jewish Theological Seminary and Columbia University
in Modern Jewish Studies and Creative Writing and Literature. She also
has an MS from Pace University in Teaching. She taught dance in public
schools for three years, and she has worked as a Hebrew school teacher
at the Sutton Place Synagogue, and founded the Wiggling Bookworms, a
dance and creative movement program for children.
Eve Grubin (Drisha Arts Fellow 2006-07) has an MFA
from Sarah Lawrence College in poetry. She teaches poetry at The New
School and at the City College of New York, and she will be The Marvin
and Edward Kaplan Lecturer in Jewish Studies at City College in the
spring of 2007. Her book of poems, Morning Prayer, was published by
The Sheep Meadow Press in 2005.
Deborah Jaffe (Drisha Arts Award Recipient Fall 2006)
has a BA in English Literature and Rhetoric from Binghamton University
and an MFA in Acting from The Actor's Studio Drama School at The New
School. She has acted off-Broadway with the Pearl Theatre Company and
the Abingdon Theatre Company (where she is a member), and in several
other theatres in New York City. She works at the Teva Learning Center,
has taught Hebrew School, and tutors Bar/Bat Mitzvah students. She
is
currently working on a one-woman show about the Bar/Bat mitzvah tutoring
experience.
Janet R. Kirchheimer (Drisha Arts Award Recipient 2006-07)
has a BS from Central Connecticut State College. A poet and essayist,
her work has appeared in Potomac Review, Lilith, Main Street, and Natural
Bridge, among other publications. She is completing a poetry manuscript
about her family and the Holocaust, and she was a finalist in the Portlandia
and the Concrete Wolf Chapbook contests. She is Director of Community
Development and Assistant to the President of CLAL. Janet leads the
Poetry Shmooze at The Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, and teaches
adults and teens at various synagogues using Jewish texts and creative
writing exercises.
Adrienne Query (Drisha Arts Fellow 2006-07) has a BA
in English and an MFA in poetry from Chatham College. She is the recipient
of the Beatrice Lewis Award for Creative Writing and the Academy of
American Poets' Walt Whitman Award. Her chapbook, After Eden, was released
by Zabadou Books in May of 2006. Her undergraduate critical thesis focused
on the "new midrash" of contemporary poetry.
Basya Schechter (Drisha Arts Award Recipient 2006-07)
has a BA in English Literature from Barnard College. She is the band
leader of Pharaoh's Daughter. She is a musician at B'nai Jeshurun, and
the music teacher at The Brotherhood Synagogue where she also leads
the Alef Bet Club. She is collaborating with educator and Sephardic
composer, Galeet Dardashti, and visual artist, Siona Bengamin, on a
song cycle recording project of compositions about biblical women.
Samantha Shapiro (Drisha Arts Award Recipient 2006-07)
has a BA in Literature and History from Washington University, St. Louis.
She was a volunteer for the American Jewish Society for Service, and
helped build community centers in Louisiana. She has written for The
Forward, Ha'aretz, Slate, The Jerusalem Report, and other publications.
She is currently a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine,
and is working on a book of essays about Sukkot.
