The COJECO BluePrint Fellowship
2012-2013
FRUJELI
FRUJELI (Families of Russian-Jewish Long Island) is non-denominational organization that is designed to unite Russian Jewish families. This project is about creating a community by offering family friendly events, and events for adults such as meeting prominent artists, writers, movie directors, musicians, Jewish educators. Learn more on the website and follow them on Facebook.
Diana Zeltser is from Odessa, Ukraine. She immigrated with her family in 1995, and continued her education in Computer Science at Hunter College, where she began to be active at Hillel. Her passion to educate children fully developed when she became a mom. In 2008 she founded a company, Happy Tunes Inc, that specializes in Children Enrichment and Entertainment. Since then, she taught mathematics, Russian, and Music&Movement classes at various children centers and Jewish organizations. She wrote curricula and took part in creating and editing textbooks. She was awarded Maestro of Outreach title in Kindermusik International in 2012. In the same year, she created a local community, Families of Russian speaking Jewish Long Island, as her BluePrint Fellowship project of COJECO that is continuing to bloom and attracts families with children from birth to high school ages. Currently her project is known as BRIJE of Mid Island Y JCC. She organizes Holiday celebrations, Shabbat gatherings, and volunteering events. Every event is unique and provides Jewish components for every age group. Diana's strong background in STEAM education, love for Olympic sports, and her passion to teach help to ensure her continuing success in her work.
Inheritance of a Story
“Inheritance of a Story” is a COJECO Blueprint Fellowship Alumni art exhibit of three New York artists: Anya Roz, Tanya Levina and Yuliya Levit, juxtaposed with poetic prose of Clarice Lispector, mystical Brazilian writer of Jewish-Ukrainian descent. This show is a multimedia exploration of the tales of strangers in the strange lands – recurrent narratives […]
Originally from Minsk, Belarus, Tanya Levina is a Brooklyn based painter. Her artistic inclinations showed at a very young age as she started compulsively drawing on every surface in sight including books, walls and papers around the house. As she grew older, Tanya gave up defacing household property and started using drawing and painting as an outlet for documenting surroundings and expressing affection for things she liked, especially horses. To this day horses remain a dominant theme in her work. Tanya often sets her subjects in extremely colorful, exaggerated and slightly surrealistic settings, drawing inspiration from her surroundings, travel experiences, as well as works by Dali, Klimt and Monet. Her artwork can be found at www.tanyalevina.com
Aside from painting, Tanya studied Economics at Brandeis University, and after a couple of stints at various strategy consulting firms landed as a Research Manager at Scholastic.
Anya Roz is an artist, photographer and designer residing in New York on the Spanish side of Harlem, was born and raised in Moscow in an eclectic family of artists, musicians and photographers, learning to live in the middle of a self generated art scene – visual material being the source of both self exploration and collaboration.
Anya says, “Although I have worked in mediums ranging from oil to video, and had made a living as a graphic designer for the past ten years in New York, my work has focused on photography and painting, and finding a unique visual link between the two mediums. I have also explored lots of antique archival photographs, using their digital replicas in my collage and mixed media work.”
Yuliya was born in Moscow in 1979 and graduated from RGGU with degree in IT in 2001. She moved to New York, along with all my family: my parents, my 84 year old grandfather, two of my 83 year old grandmothers, our dog, our cat, a violin, a guitar, my father’s bike and sewing machine that same year. Ever since she can remember she was interested in the link between the photo and a story, but she got serious about photography only 9 years ago. I currently reside in New York and work as a professional photographer. See her work at www.ylevit.com
Kaddish for the Machine
Kaddish for the Machine is an interactive installation, dedicated to the memory of the victims of Nazism. The event took place on November 7, 2013 at Hadas Gallery 541 Myrtle Ave, Brooklyn.
Igor Molochevsky is a new media artist, documentary filmmaker, and photographer. His work is based on mixed media and technology reintegration. His workflow includes live coding, interactive and generative programming, kinetic sculptures, sound design, and digital imaging. His work is defined by de-structuralization of visual and conceptual paridigms. His installations have been exhibited alongside such artists as Ai Wei Wei, Komar & Melamid, Ernst Neizvestny, and Michael Chemiakin.
Kruzhok
Cultural events and social outings for Russian-speaking Jews ages 50+. Event series, created as part of the COJECO Blueprint Fellowship, included: “Бранч под музыку”, a fabulous brunch at City Winery, with a performance by Lisa Gutkin, a Grammy-winning artist, offering a vibrant blend of Jewish melodies, jazz, blues, and much more! A great event for […]
Marina Mirchevskaya is originally from Moscow and has been living in New York for almost twenty years. An artist early in life, she now works as an art director and designer in the advertising industry. After earning her BA in Advertising Design from Syracuse University, she worked for a number of design agencies, start-ups, and nonprofits. Her work extends to the Russian Jewish community in various capacities, running enriching camps in Israel, volunteering at community centers in New York, and participating in leadership programs and fellowships.
Me and Ethel Rosenberg
Staged reading of a one-woman show, created, written, and performed by Yelena Shmulenson. April 16, 2013 at Stage Left Studio, 214 West 30th Street
Yelena Shmulenson emigrated to the U.S. with her family in 1993 from Simferopol, Ukraine. She decided to become an actress instead of getting a real job, and now spends her life making silly faces. Her theater credits include five seasons with the Folksbiene, two seasons at the Ellis Island Theatre, “Enemies: A Love Story” in Russian, Frank (‘Klezmatics’) London’s musical of “A Night In the Old Marketplace”, and “The Essence: A Yiddish Theater Dim Sum”, which was a big hit in Sweden. On film, she was a spy in Robert DeNiro’s “The Good Shepherd”, she played Lady Capulet in “Romeo & Juliet in Yiddish”, she burned in “Fire At The Triangle” (PBS), and she fought a dybbuk in the Coen Brothers’ “A Serious Man”. She can be heard in the NPR radio drama ”The Witches of Lublin” (with Tovah Feldshuh) as Leah, the bass-playing Witch. She has also recorded several audio books, winning the Earphones Award for her recordings of “Train to Trieste” and Cynthia Ozick’s “The Shawl” and “Rosa”. Recently she has appeared on Season Three of “Boardwalk Empire” (HBO) and "Orange is the New Black" (Netflix). She is fluent in five languages.
My Russian Jewish Family Relic
“My Russian Jewish Family Relic” is a portrait series accompanied by audio interviews, photographed and recorded by Svetlana Didorenko. These images present the stories of family heirlooms of Jewish immigrants from the former USSR living in the US. From household objects to letters and documents, these objects, passed on from generation to generation, reflect personal […]
Svetlana Didorenko was born in Odessa, Ukraine, and emigrated to the US in 1994. Her studies were in molecular biology and focused on neurology research and robotic engineering before attending Columbia Journalism School to start a career in documentary film and journalism. This past year, she has been working on a series of documentary shorts for the Russian Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, which will open in Moscow in November 2012.
Our Suitcase (Nash Chemodan)
Anna’s BluePrint project is a photo essay entitled Our Suitcase (Nash Chemodan). This body of work shows “portraits” of items that immigrants took with them when leaving the Soviet Union for a life in the United States. Because of censorship and the restriction on communication, many had no idea what to take and what to leave behind. […]
Anna Loshkin was born in Odessa, Ukraine, and immigrated with her family to Boston in 1988. She worked in the internet field for ten years before pursuing photography and journalism. Her work has been featured in BBC Russia, VICE, Grazia, Tablet Mag and others. Her photographs have been exhibited in the US and UK, as well at the on-line International Museum of Women. Anna’s project on influential Afghan women will be featured in the Other One Hundred, an upcoming book and travelling exhibition, and received an honorable mention in the 2014 International Photography Awards. You can see more of her work at www.annaloshkin.com.
RUSA LGBT
RUSA LGBT: Russian-Speaking American LGBT Group RUSA LGBT is a network for Russian-speaking LGBTQ individuals, their friends, supporters and loved ones. As part of the Blueprint Fellowship project, RUSA LGBT created a series of meet-ups and events exploring what it’s like to be a Russian-speaking LGBTQ Jew in the US today. The event series culminated in a panel presentation […]
Yelena Goltsman is a Kiev-born human rights and LGBTQ activist. She is the founder
and co-president of RUSA LGBT, an organization that was formed in 2008 to
establish a social network for the Russian-speaking LGBTQ community in the New
York area and beyond. Yelena is a long-time member of Congregation Beit Simchat
Torah and is an outstanding lay contributor to the life of the synagogue, organizing
a wide range of programming and learning opportunities. Her concern for Russian-
speaking LGBTQ refugees and asylum seekers and those still oppressed in the
former Soviet Union has made the issue a central component in CBST’s social justice
work. Currently and for the past several years, Yelena is serving on the Membership
Committee of the synagogue.
Stateless
In the late 1980s, the Soviet floodgates of emigration were thrown open by perestroika,. However, for thousands of Soviet Jewish émigrés, hopes of a quick arrival in America were shattered when the United States immigration service started denying these people refugee status while they were in transit in Italy. Stateless captures this untold story from […]
Michael Drob was born in Riga, Latvia in 1978 and arrived in New York as refuseniks in 1988. Raised to become a professional violinist by his musician father and economist mother, he instead today works as a software engineer at Audible.com. He lives with wife and children, and runs a family business on the side, Story Tailors, a video production company.
Stealing Cherries
Rubin’s BluePrint project involves the publishing of her fourth book, a collection of flash fiction stories considering existentialism, Jewish identity, Russian upbringing, transcendentalism, cultural genetics, time travel, religion. Telling the stories in a style that is ”Babel meets Sholom Aleichem,” they describe the hilarious truth about being a newcomer to the American cultural house and […]
Marina Rubin was born in the small town of Vinnitsa, Ukraine, in the former Soviet Union. Her family immigrated to United States in 1989 seeking asylum. Her first chapbook Ode to Hotels(2002) was followed by Once(2004) and Logic(2007). Her work had appeared in over seventy magazines and anthologies including 13th Warrior Review, Asheville Poetry Review, Dos Passos Review, 5AM, Nano Fiction, Coal City, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Jewish Currents, Lillith, Pearl, Poet Lore, Skidrow Penthouse, The Portland Review, The Worcester Review and many more. She is an associate editor of Mudfish, the Tribeca literary and art magazine. Her work was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2007 and again in 2012. She is a 2013 recipient of the COJECO Blueprint Fellowship. Her fourth book, a collection of flash fiction stories Stealing Cherries was released in November 2013 from Manic D Press and is available on Amazon, B&N and other booksellers nationwide.
The Cheburashka Project
The Cheburashka Project examines a generation of Russian Jewish immigrants who came to the U.S. as children in the late ’80s and early ’90s. This generation uniquely absorbed several worlds of influence during its formative years- the impact of a Soviet Russian background, the experience of immigration, an immersion into American culture, and a shift […]
Alice Kogan was born in Moscow and immigrated to the US at the age of three. Her family settled in New Jersey, where they were embraced by the local American Jewish community, an experience that eased her family’s transition and introduced them to Jewish customs. She went to Dartmouth College where she studied Economics and History and traveled to Western Ukraine on a Hillel trip called “Project Preservation,” an initiative in which a group of students from diverse backgrounds restore an abandoned Jewish cemetery in Eastern Europe. After college, Alice worked in strategy consulting, corporate strategy and finance. She is currently pursuing her MBA at Columbia Business School. Alice is interested in human behavior and experience and the way in which both art and science can express and explain it.
The Egypt In My Looking Glass: A Novella
Yuri Kruman’s BluePrint Fellowship is a book of short stories about Russian Jews who grew up as kids in New York and have become urbane American adults. Summary: Twenty-five years after their hellish emigration – thirty from their famous father’s exodus – a sister and her brothers hear his voice again. All three have long […]
Yuri Kruman is an American entrepreneur, author and blogger based in New York. Yuri has published two books of fiction, including a novel, “Returns and Exchanges” (2013, Author House) and novella, “The Egypt In My Looking Glass” (2014, Author House). He has made appearances at the Philomathean Society of the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, JCC of Manhattan Salon Series, Russian American Cultural Center and Roger Smith Hotel Creative Program. He is a recipient of the UJA Shapiro Family and COJECO BluePrint Fellowships (2012-2013) and is also a member of the Asylum Arts International Jewish Artist community and the Jewish Book Council.
When I Grow Up (Little Odessa)
BluePrint Fellow and filmmaker, Kate Balandina, illuminates the lack of communication within Russian Jewish families who live in Odessa, Ukraine, as well as those who reside in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn (A.K.A. “Little Odessa“). The film explores the lost connection between generations on both sides of the Atlantic.
Kate Balandina, a native of Odessa, Ukraine graduated from the NYU Film Department and is currently a film director and producer. She believes that art brings people together and exposes their beauty like nothing else in the world. To foster those beliefs she is dedicating herself to the art of film.
Yiddish Lullabies & Love Songs
Inna Barmash’s BluePrint project (2012-2013) was recording an album of songs inYiddish, drawing from songs collected in pre-war shtetls beyond the pale in Ukraine as well as from contemporary Yiddish artsongs. She celebrated the release of the album with a concert at Joe’s Pub, and her disc has touched many families in the Russian Jewish […]
Inna Barmash immigrated to the United States from Vilnius, Lithuania, where she first started singing in Yiddish in a children’s song and dance collective. While a student at Princeton University, she co-founded the Klez Dispensers, the University’s first klezmer band and has since performed with numerous other East Coast groups. Her explorations of the repertoire of Russian and Romanian gypsies led to her co-founding of Romashka, a gypsy band based in New York. While roaming through clubs, cafe, and underground parties with the band, Barmash encountered the composer/violist Ljova Zhurbin, now her husband and collaborator, with whom she started Ljova & the Kontraband, an original chamber folk ensemble and a duo lovingly dubbed BarmaLjova. When not singing or tending to their adorable toddlers, Benjy and Yossik, Inna works as an attorney at an education technology company in New York.
