The Whole Megillah
and then some!
Purim 2022 Recap
The costumes are packed and the hamantaschen have been
consumed, but the memories of the Jewish Federation
of Greater Philadelphia’s Kehillot Purim programs are
still very much alive. The neighborhood groups joyfully
reunited for carnivals, parades and volunteer opportunities
after last year’s physically distant celebrations.

The Kehillah of Buxmont brought ht P Purim
i t to th the H Horsham
h Center (formerly the Abramson Center) for Jewish Life
Cent as part o of their Joy of Purim Project. Volunteers delivered
mishloach m manot (Purim gift bags) with goodies, including
cards and cr crafts created by synagogue children, to the
residents on Tuesday,
March 15 and Wednesday, March 16.

Tue It was a packed, wonderful day for Lower
Merion Kehillah’s PurimFest as parents and
children celebrated at the Kaiserman JCC
on Sunday, March 13. The program featured
games, bouncy houses and mask-decorating.

Northeast Jewish Life kept Purim alive throughout
hout the
weekend with a car and walking parade that began
emy on
at Beth Ami and ended at Politz Hebrew Academy
Sunday, March 20. Attendees wore costumes, decorated
ecorated ed
their cars, and brought matanot l’evyonim (charitable
aritable le
gifts for those in need) for the Jewish Federation’s
ation’s n’s
Mitzvah Food Program as well as the Emergency
enc ncy
Response Fund for the crisis in Ukraine. .

The Kehillot are part of the Jewish Federation’s neighborhood
initiative to foster a vibrant Jewish community throughout the Greater
Philadelphia region. To learn more about your Kehillah or community
group, please contact Senior Director of Leadership Development and
Community Engagement Addie Lewis Klein at alewis@jewishphilly.org.

12 MARCH 31, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
Close to 1 1,000 people showed up at Reform
Co Congregation
K Keneseth
eseth Israel for Kehillah of Old York
R Purim Ca
val on Sunday, March 13. This Israeli-
Road’s Carnival
themed event f featured
tured fun for the whole family, from
music to inflatables s to a Magic Mirror Studio and more! e!



YOU SHOULD KNOW ...

SASHA ROGELBERG | STAFF WRITER
I nstead of finding a community
at graduate school, Zo Baker, 29,
found the experience to be rather
isolating. While pursuing a master of fine arts
at the University of Pennsylvania, they
were surrounded by like-minded artists,
but lacked Jewish colleagues who could
meaningfully engage with their pieces
inspired by Jewish ritual and culture.

But the void of a community to
engage with and provide constructive
feedback on Baker’s art distilled an
important value to them: “This spirit of
inquiry is embedded in Jewish culture.

It’s OK to ask questions and create
space for our histories and traditions
on our own terms.”
Now a 2022 Tribe12 fellow, Baker,
who grew up in Queens, New York,
hopes to rectify the lack of Jewish-
specific spaces in the art world by cre-
ating an artist-in-residency program,
providing resources for Jewish artists
to hone their craft and foster a pur-
poseful community along the way.

The artist and educator will pilot the
program this summer.

How does your art incorporate
Jewish ideas?
Courtesy of Zo Baker
I come from a sculpture background,
and I do a lot of large-scale installa-
tion work. Most of my work involves
some sort of storytelling component
that, whether it feels explicitly Jewish
or not, I think is inherently rooted
in my own Jewish upbringing, and I
think the way Jewish conversation
styles and customs and the rituals I
grew up with for many years now.

And usually my goal, like I said,
whether it’s inherently doing or not,
is to really encourage the spirit of
community-building and connection
and create spaces where people are
excited about asking questions, and
of curiosity and play, so that’s taken
many forms.

Can you give an example of this?
One of which was an archive proj-
ect about intergenerational rela-
tionships, specifically with your
grandparents, and collecting archive
Zo Baker
materials, doing an oral history proj-
ect, where I was collecting stories
from many people about their expe-
riences with their grandparents and
how that shaped their identity.

I built the physical installa-
tion using my own family archives
because both of my grandmother’s
had passed away a few years prior,
and I had inherited a lot of their
clothing and objects. And [I was]
just considering what it means to
give these objects, especially these
clothes, a new life with a new gen-
eration because I was just wearing,
you know — I got all these coats, and
I would wear them out and do often.

Have you found that your
Jewish identity has changed
since beginning your art on
these topics?
Hugely. I grew up and went to
Hebrew day school, pre-K through
eighth grade, so I have that founda-
tion. But then I went to a public arts
high school in Manhattan, and I was
exposed to a million different other
people and wanted to have so many
much more varied experiences.

Throughout high school and in
college, I really went out of my way
to avoid Jewish communal experi-
ences, especially in college because
my school did not have a Hillel.

Really, the only Jewish organiza-
tion on campus was Chabad, which
doesn’t resonate with me.

And then I came to my thesis proj-
ect, which was called “Dining Dreams,”
where I was inviting people to Shabbat
dinner. So I built out a Kabbalat Shabbat
service, I wrote all my own prayers and
poetry and started leading, basically a
short Shabbat service along with this
dinner series.

Every time we did it, we talked
about what people wanted and what
people needed, and every single
time we did it, we revised the rituals.

Through doing this, a lot of my friends
who were just from art school, who
I’ve never connected with Jewishly
— suddenly we have this Judaism
that we could all engage with on
our own terms in our homes and not
have to go somewhere and abide by
somebody else’s rules.

Would you say that you’ve tried to reclaim your Judaism?
I would say I am a work in progress. I am very much in the pro-
cess of reclaiming my Judaism, and I think that that’s something
that I want to be ongoing in my life. It’s an ongoing process that
I’m very invested in, especially right now.

What do you mean “especially right now”?
My formal education is finally over. And the routines, the sched-
ule, the calendar I’ve been adhering to my entire life doesn’t
exist anymore; it doesn’t apply. But the Jewish calendar still
does, and that’s something that I can find grounding. I’m moving
into the next stage of my life. And I think that as I move more
towards what we would consider traditional Jewish life stages,
it’s important to really figure out what my values are and what I
want to do so that I can feel greater agency over my Jewish life
in my adult life.

A lot of your art is focused around food. Why is that?
There’s just so much material in Jewish food. Let’s say people
who have used the “Maxwell House Haggadah” for the last 30-40
years — God knows how long the “Maxwell House Haggadah”
has been around — they will still make a brisket. They don’t know
why, necessarily, but they’re making these Jewish foods. Like, why
are we so obsessed with bagels? People don’t necessarily know
the history of bagels and bialys, but it’s part of their life.

Food is really an exciting and valuable entry point to exploring
these topics. Because even if somebody says, ‘Oh, I don’t know
anything about Judaism,’ they know Jewish food. JE
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