By Jenni Person, Artistic Director, The Open Tent
Welcome to the first installment of my Jewish arts blog. So, what’s Jewish about Jewish art? And what constitutes a Jewish story? I sit here, surrounded by cats, a sleeping kid, and my beloved tapping away at his own keyboard as he puts his finishing touches on one of the pieces he is submitting for our November 7 performance of Lip Schtick: Jewish Stories from some of Miami’s most loud-mouthed Jews (and their friends!). When I first approached Andrea Askowitz of Lip Service, an organization that produces the secular version regularly at Books & Books in Coral Gables, about partnering up to create Lip Schtick, I did so with the goal of celebrating fresh voices and alternative perspectives on Jewish identity. From the get-go this project was about throwing open the doors so widely as to embrace a supreme spectrum of definitions of identity and story. And such is the place from which we work at The Open Tent with our Arts mission of: The Open Tent presents performance, visual, literary, and media arts programs rooted in Jewish identity, tradition, practice, culture and/or text.
Last year I was fortunate to be invited by the Foundation for Jewish Culture to participate in a think-tank for New Jewish Music as they embark on building a music program at the Foundation. Surrounded by some of our generation’s most significant Jewish musicians at a retreat center in upstate New York, I was intrigued by the bold words of conductor and academic Leon Botstein claiming that “there is no such thing as Jewish music, only music made by Jews.” And while I humbly disagree with this statement from such a leader, I did agree with his urging that not any one thing is Jewish music – mainly because I think Jewish music, just as Jewish culture in general, can and needs to be many things – just as diverse as Jews ourselves.
To me, Jewish culture is broad and sweeping, defined by association just as in our mission. It is culture that in some way touches on or is influenced by any or all elements of what Jewish is. So, whether it’s Lip Schtick or Seder As Art or Klezmer revivalist Frank London jamming with a salsa band in Flamingo Park where generations earlier my grandparents kibitzed in Yiddish with other snow-bird socialists, it’s Jewish art to me. But ultimately, it’s perhaps a fluid and amorphous experience that touches different people in different ways. Because there’s more than one way to be Jewish, there’s more than one way to be Jewish art. And there’s way more than one Jewish story.
