Photography program documents Milwaukee's Jewish experience – Jewish Sentinel
By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel – May 7, 2010
From Tunisia to Yemen and Moscow to Chile, Israeli-born photographer Zion Ozeri has traveled the world documenting the diversity and universality of the Jewish experience.
Now Milwaukee-area students inspired by Ozeri's work have turned their cameras on their own communities, capturing the richness of their sometimes disparate faith expressions and enhancing their understanding of what it means to be Jewish.
"There's such a spectrum of different ways of life and different ways people express their Judaism," said Amanda Ruppenthal of Milwaukee's Coalition for Jewish Learning, which sponsored the local Jewish Lens project using the curriculum developed by Ozeri.
"The way they pray, they keep a Torah scroll in their ark . . . even though they might not all look the same, you see this connectiveness across the diversity," she said.
The New York-based Jewish Lens, founded by Ozeri in 2004, uses photography to teach young people about such Jewish values as the importance of education and family, and care for the environment and the poor.
The curriculum, which has been used in 150 Jewish schools and organizations in the United States and Israel, incorporates technical and artistic photographic instruction with the study of Jewish texts and principles.
The approach, said Ozeri, embraces both the intellectual and the emotional, and helps young people see in concrete terms how their own lives reflect their Jewish culture and heritage.
"Part of the whole process is about empowering the students to reflect," said Ozeri, who will speak at the opening of the My Jewish Lens exhibit May 11 at the Jewish Community Center in Whitefish Bay.
"We want them to see that this material. . . what people wrote 1,000 or 50 years ago, still resonates and relates to their lives," said Ozeri.
The local project, funded with a grant from the Covenant Foundation, drew about 140 students ages 11 to 18 from 10 Milwaukee-area organizations, mostly schools and synagogues, said Kipp Friedman, a Milwaukee freelance photographer and marketing professional hired to oversee the initiative. And they represent a broad spectrum of Jewish belief, from Orthodox to Reform.
That can be seen in the breadth of the 240 photographs in the exhibit, which will move to the Jewish Museum Milwaukee beginning May 14.
Take, for example, 12-year-old Devorah Fisher's shot of Orthodox families burning the chametz, or leavened foods, on the eve of Passover; and 13-year-old Carly Cohen's image of a young woman in a tallit, the prayer shawl reserved in some communities for men, and standing next to an Israeli flag.
"I just thought it was really cool that she was a girl and she was holding a siddur - our prayer book," said Cohen, an eighth-grader at the Milwaukee Jewish Day School.
The show includes color and black-and-white images, and covers a broad array of subjects from architecture to ritual items, ceremonies and celebrations, and candid shots and portraits.
In some images - say, a hand dropping a coin into a collection box - the message is more overt. Others are more subtle: the spectacular tree of life in stained glass surrounding the ark at Congregation Shalom; or two students - one younger, one older - studying together in the library at the Wisconsin Institute for Torah Study.
Effective for teens
Ruppenthal, who taught the sessions at Congregation Beth Israel in Glendale, found the medium effective for reaching teens, whose formal Jewish education may have stopped at bar and bat mitzvah.
"You talk so much about this idea of Jewish values - of charity, of tikkun olam, repairing the world - when they get to high school, we want to connect it to their daily lives," she said.
Soon, young people outside of Milwaukee's Jewish communities may have an opportunity to share in Ozeri's vision. He launched a companion program for public schools called the Diversity Lens in New York this spring, which will culminate in an exhibit later this month.
"It's the same principle but different content," said Ozeri, speaking from his home in New York.
"It's about how we live in a diverse community that's comprised of so many different kinds of people," he said.
"I want them to realize that what connects us is much larger than what separates us."
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If you go
My Jewish Lens: will feature 240 photographs by teenagers from The Academy (Hillel); the B'nai Brith Youth Organization; Congregations Beth Israel, Emanu-El B'ne Jeshurun, Emanu-El of Waukesha, Shalom, Sinai; the Milwaukee Jewish Day School; the Torah Academy of Milwaukee; and the Wisconsin Institute for Torah Study.
Opening reception: 7-9 p.m. May 11 at the Jewish Community Center, 6255 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Whitefish Bay.
Exhibit: After the opening, the show moves to the Jewish Museum Milwaukee, 1360 N. Prospect Ave., where it will run from May 14 through July 9.
View them on the Web: After May 11, the photos will be posted online at www.youngjewishmilwaukee.org