We Remember, We Rise, We Resist: Naomi Weintraub And Ami Weintraub

We talk about reclaiming Jewish ritual, Jewish antifascism, and creating safety without police in Jewish communal spaces with two members of the RAYJ (Rebellious Anarchist Young Jews) Collective.

Naomi Weintraub, artist, educator, Artist-in-Residence at the Jewish Museum of Maryland, production assistant for Disloyal

Ami Weintraub, teacher, organizer, writer, rabbinical student in the Aleph Ordination Program, founder of Ratzon: Center For Healing And Resistance, and made the podcast art for Disloyal

Transcript

(Please note that this transcript may contain errors.)

Ami Weintraub: We wanted to just really remind Jewish people like, "Hey, we've actually been in this antifascist fight for a long time as Jews." And we actually have a very important place within this movement. So, we are bringing in the histories of our antifascist struggle as Jews felt like a really important way to anchor our continued visioning.

Mark Gunnery: Welcome to Disloyal, a podcast from The Jewish Museum of Maryland. I'm your host, Mark Gunnery. Today on the show, we're continuing our series on A Fence Around The Torah, the Jewish Museum of Maryland's latest contemporary art exhibit. It explores how Jewish communities navigate the concepts of safety and unsafety in traditional, contemporary, and futuristic ways. I'm speaking with the artists and curators who made the exhibit possible. You can experience the art from this exhibit at afencearoundthetorah.com.

And today I'm talking to two people who contributed quite a bit to A Fence Around The Torah and to this podcast. I'm joined by Ami and Naomi Weintraub, who together are RAYJ collective, or the Rebellious Anarchist Young Jews collective. Art by both Ami and Naomi is featured in A Fence Around The Torah. Ami Weintraub is a teacher, organizer and writer. They are a rabbinical student in the Aleph Ordination Program, and founded and runs Ratzon: Center for Healing and Resistance. Ami, thanks for joining us.

Ami Weintraub: Thanks for having me.

Mark Gunnery: Naomi Weintraub is an artist, an educator currently working as a community artist in residence here at the Jewish Museum of Maryland in Baltimore. And I will note, is also production assistant on this podcast. Hi, Naomi.

Naomi Weintraub: Hey, Mark.

Mark Gunnery: Ami, I'm going to start with you. First, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your art and the RAYJ collective and why you wanted to get together with your sibling to make this collective?

Ami Weintraub: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I'm Ami. So I created this art, but I also do primarily a lot of writing as well. And a lot of the themes that I work with is, how do you love land, love yourself, love your community in the midst of antisemitism? And I connect a lot to the antisemitism that I've experienced in Pittsburgh and using that as a sort of through line to connect to the antisemitism that my ancestors experienced in Eastern Europe prior to immigrating to the US, and upon immigration as well here.

So I think that desire to know what was their life like, how could it help me to form a strong Jewish life now, has been a main motivation behind my art and my writing, and my organizing generally. We are both part of a youth movement called Habonim Dror, which is revolutionary, socialist, youth movement that's also Zionist. And for a long time, we were learning how to organize, how to connect to our Jewish culture in this revolutionary way. And then slowly and slowly, we started to interact more with this Zionism pillar as they called it.

And over and over, we kind of ran into push back whenever we tried to critique or shift or talk about the prominence of Zionism within our movement. And that led to us ultimately breaking with the movement with Habonim Dror which was emotional for both of us. But in that absence, we didn't want to say, "Okay. All of this learning we've done about how to organize as Jewish people and all of this love we have for being revolutionary Jewish people. We don't want that to just disappear. So, what do we create in that wake?"

And at the same time, both Naomi and I were getting involved in anarchist organizing as well. And in those spaces, we were feeling that there wasn't that much space for us to be Jewish, and for us to show this part of ourselves that came from Habonim which was we know how to be revolutionary Jewish people. So RAYJ kind of came about at this moment of, how do we be anarchist in Jewish spaces? And how do we be Jewish in anarchist spaces? And who else wants to do this with us?

Mark Gunnery: Well, Ami, do you mind telling me about how RAYJ started and what you all were doing in your early days?

Ami Weintraub: We started like how most collectives start. A lot of people kind of get involved and want to talk and have ideas. And then after some amount of time, maybe a year or two, people just dropped off and me and Naomi even stopped organizing essentially around the sub-concept. And then with the Tree of Life shooting, Naomi created this beautiful poster that says "Care not cops" and put it on Facebook, and it went viral all over. People were sharing it. And that started to kind of bring us into this awareness of, "Hey, there's people out there who want anarchist Jewish art, and they want anarchist Jewish culture and thought."

So we started to create... Naomi would create art and I would create writing primarily. And we just posted on Facebook and started to slowly, slowly build up a community of people who were engaging with our work and excited about it. And that's kind of how we grew into a artistic, creative culture making group. And we also would create these Shabbat guides as well and ritual guides. So, one of our ideas is to use existing cultural frameworks that we have within the Jewish community to disseminate new ideas. So, we would take Shabbat or Pesach or Purim, and kind of see that as a site of community gathering that we could shine new ideas into.

So, our Shabbat guides were an antifascist Shabbat. Like how do you bring antifascist history and ideas and dreaming into your Shabbat? And Naomi made this beautiful kids Passover coloring book that brought kids into these kind of revolutionary ideas about Passover. So that's primarily how we've organized and slowly meeting people through that as well to make it more material in the real world too.

Naomi Weintraub: Yeah. And this is Naomi speaking. I wanted to add. When we started, we definitely saw ourselves as trying to create content that we wanted to see that we weren't seeing online about Jewish anarchism. We had a lot of love for Jewdas, which is a Jewish anarchist collective in the UK, but we didn't see that happening in North America. And as the years have gone, we've slowly moved out of the social media world. We don't have a Facebook, we don't have an Instagram because the need to be on those platforms wasn't prominent anymore. There were other people sharing that work, and we really wanted to focus on our creations and putting them out when they need to be.

And one thing that the pandemic really stirred for us was our desire to connect with other Jewish anarchists in a social way. So, during the pandemic, we led about two months of online, weekly Havdalah and conversation about Jewish anarchism. And that was an amazing way to just see who was out there and who was interested in these topics and really grow the community of people who are just confident about saying, "I want to learn about Jewish anarchism."

Mark Gunnery: Can you explain though, what exactly you mean by Jewish anarchism? I'm curious what you both mean by that. Whether you can talk about the history or contemporary incarnation of it. Can you, yeah, share what you mean by Jewish anarchism?

Naomi Weintraub: Well, one piece that I hold very close is the belief that following Jewish time, which is to say following the Jewish condor, practicing Shabbat every week is an act of resistance to Christian hegemony and capitalism. And I think that that was a big starting point for me, at least, in understanding my Jewish anarchism. And how can I take specifically from Jewish practices that I've already been taught and see them as a way of guiding my anarchist ideology. Ami, do you want to add onto that?

Ami Weintraub: Yeah, that was beautiful, Naomi. Yeah. Because I think that's... Yeah. A big thing, I think, when we were thinking is we don't want our anarchist organizing to just kind of come from the foundation from nowhere or often primarily Christian whiteness like unexamined Christian whiteness. So, by rooting our anarchist organizing deeply within our Jewish tradition like Naomi says, it helps to make sure that everything is growing from this Jewish place, which as Naomi described, is for us a way of challenging Christian hegemony, et cetera.

So I think one of the parts of my exploration of Jewish anarchism has been the question that I think anarchists ask all the time like, what is the world that we want to build? How do we imagine ourselves in the future? How do we build a world that allows us to live fully and to be ourselves as fully as we can be? And I'm also queer and trans and those were questions that I was asking a lot and my trans circles. And I wanted to ask that to Jewish people too to say, "Hey," Jewish people like, "what does our liberation look like? What does our safety look like? What does our future look like?" And I think we've been giving a lot of options for what that can look like. Assimilate into American culture, go to Israel and have your safety and future there, but none of those answers are satisfying to me, and that none of those also accomplish my anarchist dreams of a revolutionary caring world.

So kind of asking myself like, "No. What is actual liberation for myself and for Jewish people?" Is one of the core questions that I bring up and what's stopping us from getting that. And that brings me into places of the ancestral trauma that we carry. Are disenfranchisement from the lands that for Ashkenazi Jews that we came from in Eastern Europe are being forced into this relationship with Israel are being pushed into assimilation in America. So kind of positioning from that angle and having analysis of a lot of Indigenous folks and Black folks and trans and queer folks to say like, "What does it mean to liberate ourselves from hegemonic society?" That has definitely been a core aspect of what Jewish anarchism means to me.

Mark Gunnery: And let me ask you Naomi. Like I said, you're both part of rebellious anarchists, young Jews. You both also were recently featured in the anthology, There Is Nothing So Whole as a Broken Heart: Mending the World as Jewish Anarchists that was edited by Cindy Milstein. There seems to be a lot of Jewish anarchist culture happening these days. And I'm wondering if you could speak on that and why you think it's important to be making explicitly Jewish and anarchist culture and art.

Naomi Weintraub: That's a great question, Mark. I first off want to say that there's a lot of ways to answer that question. This is just one of the ways that I've found an answer to that. So, I think especially during the pandemic in this hard time, a lot of people have turned to everyday rituals to find some kind of balance and grounding in their life. And I think for a lot of Jewish people that means coming back to their Jewish ritual. I think that this is really similar to my concept of building the world to come, which is that rebellion and being rebellious is about making everyday choices at a path that's rooted in values of justice, love, and collective liberation. So, I've really understood this as partaking in ritual requires us to pause, reconnect with our history, and revel in our present. Ritual is a full body expression of hereness.

When we look to our ancestral rituals, whether this is Jewish ritual or any ancestral ritual, we learn more about the survival connection and transformation that people in the past have gone through. And I think a lot of people are doing that now because we're in such a weird situation of how do we move forward when we don't see any path that we've ever looked at before? I think Ami was saying this earlier, but as a Jewish queer person living in America, when I choose to continue my ancestral traditions, I'm turning back on assimilation in the world of normalcy and choosing a path of rebellion. So, I think it really is about reconnecting people with those rituals that are not just ancestral, but also are a part of this world that they hope to see. And that concept of reinventing ritual, it's not new. It's been a part of artists' work for centuries. So, I think that's a huge reason it's impacting culture.

Mark Gunnery: Yeah. And I think that that ties in really nicely to the piece that you submitted to A Fence Around The Torah, which is called Jewish Ritual As Rebellion. Can you tell us about that piece?

Naomi Weintraub: Jewish Ritual As Rebellion is actually was first created as a multimedia installation for my senior thesis art show in college. In that form, it was a video which included also a table of virtual objects. And I hosted a ton of public events in that space, but at the museum, it exists just as in its video form. The video features sounds, music, and interviews from my mom, my friends, and then a sound recording from our great-grandmother singing a Yiddish song and featured as different pieces of Jewish ritual that have helped guide me on a rebellious path. The piece is very autobiographical. I'm in conversation with artists and family, but it's also hopefully trying to create sort of a example of how we can rethink Jewish life as a organizing project, almost as a resistance.

Ami Weintraub: Can I say one thing on that, Naomi, real quick?

Naomi Weintraub: Yeah.

Ami Weintraub: And one thing that I love also about the piece so much is it's really showing the generations as well. That's like when we do this work in the present, it's bringing in our great-grandparents. It's bringing in... There's little voices of kids running around and that recording of our great-grandmother, it's bringing in those children, it's bringing in our mother, it's bringing in Naomi as this new... The one today, but it's not like Naomi stands there alone. And I think that that's what's so powerful about Jewish anarchist organized and specifically is we're doing it with and for our ancestors and we're doing it with and for our future generations. Yeah. That gives me chills to feel that power and to know that we are continuing their work, even if they weren't specifically anarchists. They schlepped all the way over to America to try to create a better life for them, and what we can do is uplift their voices as well and continue to build that world for them.

Naomi Weintraub: Right. And I think too like making the work was extremely intimate in some ways. So, sometimes when I see people listening to the video in the exhibit, I get a little self-conscious, but I think it's also very healing for myself, and my past generations are ancestors before. The Fence Around The Torah exhibit opened, there was an interview on WYPR of Liora and Saul speaking about the exhibit and they played a piece of my video and we got some feedback from a woman who had never engaged with her Judaism before, but she wrote and said that just listening to the sound of my great-grandmother singing it, her songs made her weep. And it was such an intense realization for me that... I mean, that was my reaction too when I first heard it, but it was this idea that through my own cultural healing and through my creative expression, I'm able to help other people access and figure out how they want to express parts of themselves as well. That was really meaningful.

Ami Weintraub: And one thing that makes me think of too is when you said intimacy is like your willingness to go there and have that vulnerability and have that intimacy allows other people to go there too. And I think that's one of the things that is so beautiful about doing this Jewish anarchist work is that seeing people go to those places inside themselves that maybe they've put aside because of family difficulties or antisemitism or assimilation, and start to go back into that place. That's very vulnerable and very intimate and helping people bring that back out into the world. And so, I just hear that reflected in that story, Naomi, as well.

Mark Gunnery: Ami, I want to ask you about the pieces that you submitted to A Fence Around The Torah. Can you tell me about the poster, L'dor V'dor, both the poster itself and the photos of it that are on view in the gallery?

Ami Weintraub:
So I live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and I am very connected with the Tree of Life Dor Hadash synagogue. I'm a teacher there and I went there for synagogue off and on prior to 2018. And then I started teaching there in 2018, and I've been really involved in doing healing work for young adults and children and teenagers since that 10/27, 2018, last year in 2020, I think. 2021, 2020. It was the pandemic and I was like, "How are we going to do a commemoration when we can't get together?" And I also had this really big urge and yearning. I was like, "I want to make something that's beautiful. I want to create something that makes Jewish people feel worthy and feel beautiful and feel part of the city." So, just the night before like 10/26 maybe, I was at Ratzon and just cutting paper out and doing this whole thing, and a friend who works in the building helped me photocopy the piece and what it is. It's a paper-cut tree and then in the background is a letter that I wrote to myself kind of processing my feelings, and then on top of it says L'dor V'‘dor at the top and then Aleinu on the bottom. L'dor V'dor meaning from generation to generation and Aleinu meaning it is upon us. And it says, "We remember, we rise, we resist." And then there's 11 leaves falling from the tree.

And a group of friends went and we pasted it on the city, and then throughout the next few days, people were texting to group chats like, "Oh my God, did you see that art piece?" It was so cool walking outside and seeing it like, "Who did this?" And just seeing people responding with like, "Wow, something beautiful happened." That was for me, as a Jewish person, just made me really happy. And then we slowly started to notice throughout the week that first it was one poster and then it was a few posters that there had been someone going and slashing out specifically the Hebrew on the posters. And it just gave me the eeriest, creepiest feeling, but also is like and this art is living and like, "Look, we could create something beautiful for ourselves and look what happens on the street." And it became also this kind of mirror of the story that is happening in Pittsburgh. So, it's disturbing for me to look at those photos, but I'm also grateful that it actually captures the intensity of emotion that is felt here right now.

Mark Gunnery: Yeah. And the art, the poster. Well, both of your contributions to the show are in the section of A Fence Around The Torah that deals with safety in which asks the question, how does the issue of safety and Jewish spaces connect to broader conversations about safety, justice and policing and the greater community? And I'm curious how you see this poster in conversation with that question.

Ami Weintraub: I guess there's two or there's probably many aspects of it, but one aspect is this was a moment when we were very, very, very unsafe. And obviously, yeah. 10/27 has been, I think, a shattering for many people of an idea of guaranteed safety in this country. So, I think it speaks to that of, "Here's what it feels like to be very, very unsafe." And then it also offers a solution that's like we're not going to... It doesn't say L'dor v'dor, we call the police. We stop forming solidarity with others, et cetera. It's like, "No, we're going to remember. We're going to rise and we're going to resist." And it calls back to the history of our ancestors.

I've mentioned this before, but Aleinu, that prayer, was said by the first people who were killed for blood libel, Jews killed for blood libel in France. And they were being burned in a fire and they were saying aleinu and then it became part of the prayer service because of the history of meteorology becoming part of prayer services. So, like that prayer, it is upon us. Brings us back to that moment of long ago ancestors also being part of this resistance.

And for so long Jews have resisted the state and resisted the police and been enemies of the police. And I think when we're thinking of like, "How do we create safety right now?" I want us to remember that we can fight for ourselves. That we can protect ourselves, and we can do that also in community with others who are similarly trying to protect themselves without the police, which is the majority of the globe, I would say. So, those are some of the ways that it connects to my concept of safety.

Mark Gunnery: Naomi, do you have any thoughts about that? About how you and Ami's pieces are responding to these questions about safety?

Naomi Weintraub: I think when we first started RAYJ, we really thought of it as an opportunity to use creative expression to answer a question of what is Jewish safety. I feel like, in a lot of ways, we've been... I remember some of the first conversations was just a like, "Oh my gosh. There's going to be so many police at synagogues now. What are we going to do? This is horrible." And just thinking about that as an anchor a lot to some of our work of just trying to create that alternative of how to react to legitimate fear has been huge. And so, this show felt like a good opportunity to kind of show some of the work that we've been making that's in response to that question.

Ami Weintraub: And I think also the thing too of like, and how do we be safe as visible Jews? Visible in our way. And I remember Naomi, you were often talking about like... We post stuff on the internet like we're going to have trolls, and I feel like even these posters, it's like we put the posters outside and we had street trolls essentially. And so, that question too of like, no, we don't want to hide, but we don't actually want to stop creating this art and we don't want to stop being Jewish. So, that was a sense of showing ourselves as part of the resistance, I think.

Mark Gunnery: Can we go back to something that you all brought up earlier, which is talking about ritual as rebellion and specifically Antifascist Shabbat. Can I hear a little bit more about Antifascist Shabbat?

Naomi Weintraub: Well, the Jewish Antifascist Shabbat Guide really came from us wanting to have an antifascist Shabbat and then saying we should make a guide for it and share it with people. And also this was an attempt to kind of ask people to be a part of what we were doing. So, we were asking people to lead the Shabbat in their communities.

Ami Weintraub: And that was also on the anniversary of 10/27 as well. So it was kind of our way of being like, "How do we do like a diasporic honoring that doesn't have to all take up place in one place, but it's like also very meaningful?"

Naomi Weintraub: I just want to share one piece of the ways that we kind of aesthetically created this guide. The front cover is an adapted cover from the underground Yiddish newspaper Jugend Shtimme  Voice of the Youth, which was distributed in the Warsaw ghetto. And the Yiddish caption, which is on the original newspaper reads, "Fascism must be smashed." And so, we kind of took that design and then put Jewish antifascist Shabbat on top in 2019. And so, kind of just starting from that place of really anchoring it in a history was something that was really important to us for this guide. It's full of just songs, stories, ritual, art. We got some memes.

Ami Weintraub: Yeah. I think one of the big ideas was we wanted... Especially at that time, I think it was 2019 where there was already a lot of talk about antifascism in the US. And we wanted to just really remind Jewish people like, "Hey, we've actually been in this antifascist fight for a long time as Jews. And we actually have a very important place within this movement." So, yeah. Like Naomi said, bringing in the histories of our antifascist struggle as Jews felt like a really important way to anchor our continued visioning.

Naomi Weintraub: And the guide kind of goes through the ritual. So, blessing the candles is where we talk about confronting oppression. Blessing the children is where we talk about dispelling shame. Blessing the wine is all about cultivating joy. Later, we talk about the meal, which is learning from our community, blessing the challah. We talk about creating and nourishing present and possible future, and then blessings after the meal is where we talk about engaging in further resistance. So, we really try to break it down and make it as obvious as possible that we see these ties in our ritual itself.

Mark Gunnery: Ami, I want to ask you one more thing. So, you have another piece that you contributed to A Fence Around The Torah called “We Are The Disloyal Ones”. Can you talk about the piece, both the graphic and the poem and why you were interested in talking about this concept of disloyalty?

Ami Weintraub: For sure. Thanks for asking, Mark. Pretty much, I guess it was 2018, I think, when Trump said I think something along the lines of like Jews are disloyal for voting Democrat because the Republicans, I think, are the ones who are actually supporting Israel. And I think the implication was Jews are disloyal to America and... At least that was how I heard it. And I heard that and I was like... I think everyone was really freaking out about it because it was one of the first times where this concept of like, what is Jewish loyalty is a big aspect of Jews being safe in a society. And that's been something that's been questioned throughout our history in Eastern Europe and different places for Ashkenazi Jews. But I also kind of heard it as this excitement of Trump saying we're disloyal. And I was like, "Yeah. We are disloyal to this country, at least. That's what I hope. And we are disloyal to you, Trump. And we are disloyal to Israel."

And again from that place of like disloyalty is where we find who we truly are instead of having to fit into like, "What does American society want from me? Or what does Israel state want from me? Or what does Trump want from me?" So I made this poster that says disloyal and the "Oy" in disloyal is kind of a different color from the rest of the word, so it brings us into that Jewish feeling. And then there's a poem I wrote of all of these different ways that we are disloyal that calls in a lot of different Jewish practices and holidays. Yeah. We are the ones who wrestle with God whenever we dream. While we stand and pray, we ask our ancestors not your armies together and shield us. So, bringing us into before the no-vote section of the Amidah. We're asking our ancestors to be our shield, maybe our strength, and in the end of the poem says together, beauty turns your curses into blessings, Mah Tovu.

And that brings us into the story of the magician who was asked to curse the Jews. And then he goes to see the Jews. And instead of curses coming out of his mouth, blessings come out of his mouth and that Mah Tovu, we're good. So I wanted to have this feeling of like, "Oh, we're going to hear you, but we're going to take this thing that you said about us and turn it actually into our greatest strength." And again, from that place, we'll find what we actually are loyal to, which is to... The things that I said in this poem and our liberation and our sense of self and agency.

Naomi Weintraub: And one of my favorite lines from the poem is we are the ones who reject your calendar so we can grow with the waxing and waning of the shimmering moon.

Mark Gunnery: Naomi, I have one more question for you. You work here at the museum. Can we talk about that? What do you do here at the museum and what does it mean to be artist in residence here? And also, I'm just kind of curious, what is it like for you as a rebellious anarchist, young Jew working at a Jewish museum, a Jewish institution? I'm just kind of curious to hear a little bit about that.

Naomi Weintraub: Yeah. I'm the community artist and residence at the museum. That means I'm doing a lot of design work, a ton of graphics, planning, interesting programming that centers art. And also just trying to find ways to bring more art into our programming to engage more people. And honestly, one of the things that's most powerful about my job is that I get to show the Jewish community how art and culture can be such a powerful tool and shifting however we want. And so, for a lot of the people on staff at the museum, we're really trying to push the museum to be more focused on diversity, inclusion, on transforming the world and social justice. And so, I get to be a part of using art and culture to move those ideas.

Mark Gunnery: Well, is there anything else either of you want to say before we wrap this up?

Naomi Weintraub: I think we're both just really grateful that our work got to be showcased in this way. I think we're always a little unsure about who and what we're engaging and who's seeing our stuff. And so, it's been a really cool opportunity to know that tons of people are at least either for the first time or being reminded of Jewish anarchism. Anything to add, Ami?

Ami Weintraub: No. Thank you so much for just caring about our little idea. It's been a joy to watch it bloom and to see the people it brings us into connection with. So, it's been nice to get to know you Mark as well.

Mark Gunnery: It's been good to get to know you too.

Naomi Weintraub: Love and rage.

Mark Gunnery: I've been speaking to Naomi and Ami Weintraub. Naomi Weintraub is an artist and educator currently working as a community artist and residence here at the Jewish Museum of Maryland. And Naomi also is production assistant on this podcast. Ami Weintraub is a teacher, organizer and writer. They are a rabbinical student in the Aleph Ordination Program and founded and runs Ratzon: Center for Healing and Resistance. Naomi and Ami, thank you so much for joining us.

Naomi Weintraub: Thanks, Mark.

Ami Weintraub: Thank you.

Mark Gunnery: Thank you so much for listening to Disloyal. We hope you enjoyed the podcast and we'd love to hear your feedback. Our email address is disloyal@jewishmuseummd.org. You can follow us on Twitter @jewishmuseummd or on Instagram @jewishmuseum_md. And if you're in Baltimore, come visit. Go to jewishmuseummd.org for more information, and to become a member if you're interested in supporting content like this podcast. Visit afencearoundthetorah.com to check out our latest art exhibit. Disloyal is a production of the Jewish Museum of Maryland and is produced and hosted by me, Mark Gunnery, with production assistance from Naomi Weintraub, the Jewish Museum of Maryland's community artist-in-residence. Our executive director is Sol Davis. You can subscribe to Disloyal wherever you listen to podcasts. New episodes each Friday. Till next time, take care.