Mike Wirth talks with April Powers, a leading voice in Black-Jewish identity, inclusion and belonging, contemporary antisemitism education, and a pioneer in DEI practice. April shares her journey as a Black Jewish inclusion strategist, educator, and bridge-builder. Together, Mike and April discuss Black Jewish and multiracial Jewish identity, Jewish representation in media, the forthcoming A […]

Before October 7, 2023, Leat Corinne Unger was a speech-language pathologist and Jewish educator in New York, spending her days helping children and families find language and be understood. That life changed irrevocably when her cousin, Omer Shem Tov, was kidnapped by Hamas from the Nova music festival. In the earliest, most chaotic days, Leat […]

What makes a work of art Jewish when it does not announce itself with familiar symbols, dialogue, or plot? In this episode of the Jewish Futurism Lab, Mike Wirth speaks with Douglas Rosenberg, filmmaker, artist, theorist, and Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Art at the University of Wisconsin Madison. Rosenberg has helped define screendance, a […]

In this episode of The Jewish futurism Lab, Mike sits down with historian, social worker, and activist Elisha Fine, founder of the Hatikvah Sticker Collective and a central organizer of the international hostage sticker movement. Together they unpack how his Jewish origin story led from archives and social work into Jewish street art, why stickers […]

In this episode of Jewish futurism lab, host Mike Wirth sits down with Jewish filmmaker Noam Leibman, founder of Kavana Films, to explore how the camera can become a kind of kavannah practice in Jewish life. They talk about Noam’s journey from Minnesota to Jerusalem, his work discovering and reconnecting Jewish communities in Africa, and […]

In this episode of The Jewish futurism Lab, host Mike Wirth sits down with his cousin, Cantor Hollis Schachner, to explore her future vision of cantors, community, and creativity. Hollis is a longtime spiritual leader and artist at Temple Shir Tikva in W

Mike Wirth sits down with Rabbi Danny Burkeman, Senior Rabbi at Temple Shir Tikva in Wayland, Massachusetts, and host of the award-winning podcast Two Minutes of Torah. Danny was raised in the British Reform movement, ordained in 2009, and has spent his

In this episode of The Jewish futurism Lab, host Mike Wirth sits down with writer and creative director Eitan Chitayat, creator of the viral I’m That Jew project, to talk about his new campaign “Zionism Is”, created with former Knesset member and leading

In this episode, we sit on the patio at Lehrhaus, a Jewish tavern and house of learning in Somerville, in front of a mural by Boston based Jewish artist Chloe Rubinstein, and explore the story behind this unusual space. Rabbi Charlie Schwartz shares his

In this episode, Rabbi Daniel Levine, Hillel rabbi, podcast host, and Jewish history professor at UC Irvine, joins us for a wide ranging conversation about the future of Jewish life on campus and beyond. We talk about how October 7 has reshaped the emoti