The COJECO BluePrint Fellowship
2017-2018
Family Reunion
Create a multilingual, multi dimensional a Capella group that will focus on performing, preserving, and modernizing songs of the diaspora, focusing on the languages, lyrics, rhythm, sentiment, historical meanings. You can dip into all of languages Jews wrote songs in – Hebrew, Ladino, Russian, Ukrainian, Romanian, Yiddish, English. Reinvent, reinvigorate, and re-interpret and re-inspire Jewish […]
From the Past and In the Now
Creation of an ongoing visual document of Russian-speaking Jewish families, discovering the myriad of ever-changing ways culture, languages, and traditions are embodied in our daily lives. A documentary photo exhibit accompanied by written accounts of multi-generational families of Russian-speaking Jewish Americans, and exploration of generational changes as impacted by the immigration and acculturation, and of […]
GOGA
Multidisciplinary performance, a play with music and live readings based on a memoir book about coming to American in 1988 as a young Soviet girl.
Grandma’s recipes with a healthy twist
Series of health and nutrition workshops that will educate community members and their children about healthful nutrition that is fun and delicious and can be implemented in all life stages. The workshops will explore traditional Jewish cuisine (grandma’s recipes) and will turn them into healthier, more nutritionally conscious meals, while learning about history and tradition […]
Jewish Choices
A study and a follow-up parenting workshop on helping families develop a framework of incorporating Jewish culture and customs into their life and their parenting choices.
Just In Case / На всякий случай
A photojournalism project focusing on objects that immigrants hold onto. Interviewing Soviet Jewish immigrants about and photographing the possessions they’ve carried with them through their journey and beyond. An exploration why we as humans are so often attached to “things” and are they time machines, reminding us of the past.
KlezMixed
Recording and a live performance of a fusion of live Klezmer and other Jewish music with contemporary Electronic Dance Music and other dance and electronic sounds.
Ruben Shimonov – Out of the Fringes and Into the Tapestry: An RSJ-Mizrahi-Sephardic-LGBTQ Community Initiative
The goal of this community project is to create a series of enriching and dynamic programs that will engage and empower an often marginalized, yet crucial, segment of the RSJ community: Sephardic and Mizrahi Russian-speaking Jews, particularly those who are LGBTQ. The objective is to both build a supportive and vibrant community of Sephardic, Mizrahi […]
Survival Codes
An originally composed and performed musical piece, based on stories collected through conversations, writing and interviews with Holocaust survivors and Russian Jewish dissidents. The meetings to find out how their methods of communication were altered and turned secrets, so that they would be able to keep practicing Judaism under the very strong suppression of the […]
The Russian and the Jew: Спасите наши души (A Play)
Staging of “The Russian and The Jew,” an original physical theater piece that explores anti-Semitism and misogyny through a female friendship in the Soviet Union in 1969 that underlines the eternal question of fidelity to oneself, to one’s partner, and to one’s country. Drawing on autobiographical material, this piece focuses on blending and re-visiting Russian […]
