Featured Panel Discussion
Holding the Widest Tent: Jewish Culture in the Current Moment
With Ayin Press’s Penina Eilberg-Schwartz, Jewish Film Institute’s Lexi Laban, Reboot’s David Katznelson, LABA’s Elissa Strauss, and the Magnes’s Hannah Weisman
12:00pm | Auditorium
Jewish Arts and Bookfest
Sunday, May 4, 2025
at UC Berkeley’s Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA
As the political ground shifts beneath us with vertiginous speed, what does it mean to create and curate Jewish culture that holds the full complexity of the moment? This panel brings together curators from across the Jewish arts and literary world who are wrestling with this question in creative ways. Together, they will explore how to build inclusive cultural spaces that honor a multiplicity of perspectives, how to uncover hidden stories and responsibly engage with inherited narratives, and how to forge new constellations of meaning in service of a better world.
About Penina Eilberg-Schwartz
Managing Editor, Ayin Press
Penina Eilberg-Schwartz is a writer and editor living in San Francisco. She is the co-author of In This Place Together (Beacon Press, 2021) and the chapbook Everything in the Speaking of It (Alley Cat Books, 2019). Her work has been published online in The Rumpus, Literary Hub, and elsewhere. She is the managing editor of Ayin Press.
Photo credit: Dudley Reed
About David Katznelson
CEO, Reboot
David Katznelson is the CEO of Reboot. A Grammy nominated music producer, in his 30+ years in the music industry, he worked in high school for Bill Graham Presents, as a college radio DJ, as vice president of A&R at Warner Bros., and as the head of the independent label group, The Birdman Recording Group, Inc. Katznelson served as the chair of Reboot’s board of directors since 2012 and he is also one of the first members of the Reboot network, and has been an active member of the community from Reboot’s inception. He is a co-founder of two of Reboot’s most successful initiatives – The Idelsohn Society for Musical Preservation and the Dawn Festival, a Shavuot celebration in San Francisco.
About Lexi Laban
Exectutive Director, Jewish Film Institute
Lexi Leban is the Executive Director of the Jewish Film Institute (JFI), which presents the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival—the premier curatorial platform for Jewish-content film, now in its 45th year. Under her leadership, JFI launched the JFI Completion Grants and Filmmaker Residency programs, supporting both emerging and established filmmakers working with Jewish themes, from development through distribution.
Lexi is an award-winning filmmaker whose work focuses on women’s rights, criminal justice, and LGBTQ+ issues. Her feature documentary Girl Trouble aired nationally on PBS’s Independent Lens and received numerous honors, including the Golden Gate Award from SFFILM, Best Feature Documentary at the DOXA Documentary Film Festival, and the PASS Award from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency. Her short films have screened at festivals across the U.S. and internationally.
Lexi is a member-owner of New Day Films, a filmmaker-run educational distribution cooperative with a catalog of over 230 award-winning titles. She holds a BA in Political Science from Barnard College and an MFA in Cinema from San Francisco State University. She is also the proud mother of a kickass daughter.
About Elissa Strauss
Artistic Director, LABA: A Laboratory for Jewish Culture
Elissa Strauss is a journalist, essayist and cultural critic who has been writing about the politics and culture of parenting and caregiving for more than fifteen years. Her work appears in publications like the Atlantic, the New York Times, Glamour, ELLE, and elsewhere, and she was a former contributing writer at CNN.com and Slate. Her book, “When You Care: The Unexpected Magic of Caring for Others,” is out now from Gallery Books.
In addition to writing, she is a curator, speaker and artistic director of LABA: A Laboratory for Jewish Culture.
Photo credit: Laura Turbow Photography
About Hannah Weisman
Exectutive Director, Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life
Hannah E. Weisman is the executive director of the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life at the University of California, Berkeley after having served as the Boston Athenaeum’s inaugural director of education for more than seven years. Weisman has worked in cultural organizations throughout the northeast, primarily in museum education, for more than twenty years. She earned a master’s degree in museum studies from the Cooperstown Graduate Program and a bachelor’s degree in German studies and Holocaust studies from Mount Holyoke College. She currently co-chairs the development committee and sits on the board of directors for SpeakEasy Stage Company in Boston, Massachusetts. When she’s not working, Weisman can usually be found attending theater, hiking, or playing Taijiquan.
Photo credit: Ryuji Suzuki