The Jewish futurism Lab

Gabriel Meister spent 25 years as a transactional attorney, trained at Harvard Law, before October 7th cracked something open. Now, under the name Gabe Draws, he’s a core voice in the Hatikva Sticker Collective, printing stickers for a penny apiece and plastering them across New York City in what he calls a mimetic battle for […]

In this episode of the Jewish futurism Lab, Mike Wirth sits down with Kara Jesella, feminist scholar and Fellow at the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, to discuss her new book, Feminist Antisemitism: An Intellectual History. Kara traces how antipathy toward Jews became embedded in feminist thought from the 1960s to today. […]

Anshie Kagan is a Chicago-based Jewish pop artist whose work runs across a multitude of Jewish people, objects, and ideas, rendering rebbes and gedolim in Warhol color and recasting the Ten Commandments as scannable QR codes. In this episode, Mike Wirth talks with Anshie about his path from an Orthodox upbringing between Boston and Lakewood, […]

Yaakov Ginsberg-Schreck transitioned from rabbinical ordination at Hebrew College to apply his education toward building RUACH, a Boston-based nonprofit turning breath, movement, and Kabbalah into a new kind of Jewish community. On this episode of The Jewish futurism Lab, Mike Wirth talks with Yaakov about leaving one institution to build something new, whether yoga can […]

In this episode of the Jewish futurism Lab, Mike Wirth talks with Jacob Hasse Albino, the Jewish Brazilian storyteller and chazzan (cantor) behind Judeofuturism. Jacob’s project is a series of visionary novella stories imagining Jews in space. In Tales from Galut, Jewish refugees leave a devastated Earth and build a new home on the planet […]

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 […]