We create accessible, intergenerational, arts-based programming that explores Jewish learning and practice.  Our programmatic offerings include gatherings, events, educational series, skillshares, performances, exhibitions, healing spaces, and public ritual.

Jewish tradition has much to offer us in the realms of creation and rest. We honor the cyclical rhythms of Jewish time and agricultural seasons as an antidote to colonial assimilation. We resist urgency and move slowly at the pace of trust. We create in a way that respects the regenerative aspects of our collective planet and individual bodily needs.

We celebrate the diversity that exists within the Jewish diaspora and are building an archive that can be passed on l’dor vador — from generation to generation. We amplify artists who have faced systematic and institutionalized censorship, exclusion, and erasure. Our work actively generates space for Jews of Color through leadership representation, Mizrahi and Sephardic programming, affinity groups, and mutual aid. We design intergenerational experiences so that children, youth, adults, and elders create together in meaningful and substantial ways. 

We affirm and uplift one another. Interpersonally, we allow ourselves to be imperfect, making room for mistakes and prioritizing repair. Collectively, we boldly tend to our grief so we can heal cycles of violence that stem from pain and trauma. We practice being in right relationship with ourselves, one another, Chicago communities, global Jewish communities, and the lands we call home as both guests and stewards.

Our artistry is a vow to remember, revive, and reimagine Judaism through the arts. We excavate the archives for Jewish histories, traditions, texts, lands, stories, rituals, holidays, and ancestral legacies that bring us closer to our values. We devote ourselves to connection and creation in times of mass division and destruction, a commitment to materialize the vibrant urges that animate us and give our lives meaning. 

As stewards of contemporary Jewish culture, we are creating the Jewish Museum of Chicago out of necessity. We feel that our ethnic, religious, and historical cultural assets deserve a new home. Illinois does not have a Jewish contemporary arts museum. Additionally, there is no other Jewish contemporary arts museum in the United States that rejects zionism and embraces diasporism and abolition. Here and now, we reclaim Judaism from institutions that do not represent or serve us. 

Much of modern Jewish practice is not mentioned in the Torah, but rather comes from lineages of meticulous interpreters who have worked hard to stretch, imagine, translate, and imbue Jewish tradition with humanizing values. We humbly and eagerly join this lineage. We honor the teachings that liberate, compost the ones that don’t, and add our own artful contributions to this ever-evolving archive.