Category: Experiments

  • Jewish Futurist Experiment: Using NotebookLM’s Video Explainer Generator

    Jewish Futurist Experiment: Using NotebookLM’s Video Explainer Generator

    Experimenting with AI tools is one of my favorite parts of my practice, and this particular video generator turned out to be a very cool collaborator. It is not 100 percent accurate, but it gets surprisingly close, and that “almost right” quality ended up becoming part of the interest for me. NotebookLM is a Google product, available at https://notebooklm.google.com, and it works differently from a general chatbot like Gemini or ChatGPT, because it builds everything from the specific sources you feed it rather than from the entire internet.​

    The video that NotebookLM generated based on my article.

    NotebookLM’s video overview tool ended up acting like a surprise co‑director for a project where I wanted to explain proto Jewish futurism in the context of the Vitebsk People’s Art School. Instead of hand crafting every frame, I loaded it up with my recent article and asked it to propose a first pass at a lesson: a narrated video that walks viewers through how Jewish, revolutionary, and avant garde energies briefly converged in Vitebsk. To be more specific, it appears to be a combination of the slideshow generator + a podcast voice generator combined to make a “video”. The result was messy in places, visually strange, and full of small errors, but it still managed to deliver my main argument about Jewish futurist tendencies in this short and intense moment of art education.

    Setting up the experiment

    I started with a pretty simple goal: turn a dense, theory heavy pile of notes on Vitebsk, Marc Chagall, and the Russian avant garde into something a non specialist could actually watch and follow. NotebookLM’s promise of an auto generated video overview sounded like the right kind of constraint and collaborator for that task. Because it works on data that you explicitly upload or link, I gathered my materials into one place historical sources, exhibition texts, and fragments from my ongoing writing on Jewish futurism and treated the notebook as a compact archive that the system could mine for a narrative, instead of letting it improvise from generic web knowledge.

    ​

    From notes to video overview

    With the sources in place, I asked the system to create an explainer style video focused on three threads: the Vitebsk People’s Art School, the artists at its center, and the ways their work points toward possible Jewish futures. What came back was a sequence of slides paired with narration that moves through the post revolutionary context, the founding of the school, and its radical pedagogical experiments. What surprised me was how clearly the structure echoed my own framing of Vitebsk not as a footnote in art history, but as a kind of prototype for Jewish modernity in motion.

    AI generated imagery close, not exact

    The visuals were where the experiment really got interesting. The system did not reach for actual archival photos or specific paintings. Instead, it produced images that felt like approximations of the artists’ styles. Scenes appeared that looked almost like Chagall’s floating shtetl figures, nearly like Lissitzky’s architectonic compositions, and somewhat like Malevich’s abstractions, but never fully matched the originals. That almost quality created a kind of productive uncanniness. The video builds an atmosphere of Vitebsk’s avant garde world without literally reproducing it, more like a synthetic memory or dream constructed from stylistic cues, which for a project about Jewish futurism feels conceptually on point.

    Glitches, spelling errors, and the shape of the argument

    The video is clearly not a polished museum product. There are spelling mistakes, clunky phrasing, and the occasional slightly wrong name or term. For me, that did not invalidate the experiment, it just made the mediation visible. This is a generated draft that still needs a human editor, not an authoritative final cut. What mattered more was that underneath those glitches, the bones of the explainer were solid. The video successfully communicated the ideas I wanted to surface: the social and political context of the school, the specifically Jewish dimension of the work, and Vitebsk as a site of radical possibility rather than a nostalgic lost world.

    Surfacing a Jewish futurist reading of Vitebsk

    The real test for me was whether the piece could carry my reading of Vitebsk as a proto Jewish futurist project. The video condensed that framing into clear, accessible language, repeatedly returning to the school as a laboratory for new Jewish forms and new ways of being together. By forcing my notes into a short, watchable format, the tool pushed me to concretize what I actually mean by proto Jewish futurism in this context: an art school that treats Jewish life as material for design, not just content for preservation, and that treats pedagogy itself as a kind of speculative world building.

    In the end, the experiment showed me how an AI generated video can function both as an explainer and as a mirror for my own thinking. It reflected my argument back in another medium, making it obvious which ideas translated smoothly into narrative and which still need more nuance and friction. The off brand imagery, the typos, and the overall coherence all became part of the story, a contemporary, imperfect, and strangely fitting echo of the Vitebsk school’s own attempt to invent a new way of seeing Jewish futures.

    If you haven’t tried NotebookLM, I’d make an account and try some experiments on your own.

  • Vibe Coding for 8 Crazy Nights

    Vibe Coding for 8 Crazy Nights

    During my semester long sabbatical, I set out to experiment with new ways to tell Jewish stories, and I kept coming back to the immersive feeling of games. While I stayed focused on my main objective, completing my book Hiddur Olam: Bereshit – Genesis and telling new Jewish stories through art and writing, this Hanukkah, I also felt a pull to expand this idea of immersive storytelling into video games, where players could step inside the work rather than only view or read it. Framing the game projects as interactive midrash let me treat code, mechanics, and level design as another layer of commentary on the same questions that animate the book: how to re engage with foundational Jewish narratives, how to honor tradition while playing with form, and how to imagine Jewish futures that feel both grounded and newly alive in digital space.​​

    Vibe coding and my AI toolbox

    For all of these projects, I leaned heavily on what I think of as vibe coding. By vibe coding, I mean describing in natural language how I want something to feel, look, or behave, then using AI coding tools to generate or refactor code until the game’s behavior matches that feeling. I used ChatGPT, Gemini, and GitHub’s coding assistants as a rotating team, asking for everything from small bug fixes and refactors to full systems like player controllers or state machines. I have 20 years of front-end and back-end web development coding experience. Having been a part of a wave of student designer-artist-coders in NY in the late 90s and early 00s making websites by day and net-art by night, vibe coding is great method to make code sketches of ideas or experiments. In this project, I would move the same block of code from one model to another when I got stuck, wanted new insight, or when I wanted to shift from quick procedural hacks into a more object oriented structure. Each of the the different LLM code “voices” helped me see new paths through the same problem. These tools gave me a sense of freedom to soar with code, where in the past I would have been creeping along, slowly teaching myself new methods and getting bogged down in syntax rather than in the Jewish and ludic questions that actually interested me.​

    Research questions that guided me

    A cluster of questions ran through everything I made:

    • How can I evolve dreidel gameplay beyond a single spin and four letters?
    • With only four sides, can a dreidel still function as a rich, reusable dice object in a larger game system?
    • Can the dreidel be used more effectively to tell the story of Hanukkah, not just reference it visually?
    • What are better ways to tell the story of Hanukkah using the immersiveness of games?
    • How can I tell new digital Jewish stories that feel both grounded in tradition and native to contemporary game culture?
    • Is this creative act, moving ritual objects into speculative, interactive worlds, an example of Jewish futurism in practice?
    • How will Jewish people play dreidel in the future?

    Each experiment became a different argument or provisional answer to these questions.

    ​So, over 8 nights, I played with various game and interaction experiments. Here are my best of the best, in no particular order.​

    Dreidel Run: Neon Grid

    Best for dreidel kinetics

    With Dreidel Run, I leaned into the question of how to evolve dreidel gameplay at a purely kinetic level. Here, I made the case that the dreidel can succeed as a contemporary and arguably futuristic game mechanic when it is allowed to be fast, flashy, and even a little mindless, while still anchored in

    Hanukkah imagery like gelt and glowing colors. Using the Temple Run game mechanics, the experiment argues that not every Jewish game needs an explicit narrative lesson, and that embodied fun, quick reflexes, and the pleasure of catching coins and dodging hazards can themselves be a form of connection, a way of feeling Hanukkah as energy and rhythm rather than only as a story told in words.

    ​

    Dreidel x Katamari mashup

    Best for dreidel physics

    In the dreidel and Katamari Damacy inspired mashup, I took seriously the question of whether a small, four sided object could scale up into a world building tool. The design argues that as the spinning dreidel absorbs gelt and grows, it enacts a kind of visual and mechanical midrash on Hanukkah’s themes of accumulation,

    excess, and the tension between material things and spiritual light. By exaggerating the physics, I could show how a simple ritual object might literally reshape its environment, and in doing so, I tested how far dreidel based mechanics can stretch before they stop feeling like dreidel play and become something new. Another fun way to play with the dreidel kinetics.

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    Dreidel Physics Sandbox

    Best Holiday Stress Reliever

    The smaller dreidel physics sandbox experiments addressed the quieter research question of how players might encounter Jewish content without a fixed goal at all. The spinning battle top game transforms the dreidel into a tornado like object tasked to destroy Seleucid idols of the Temple. It’s instant gameplay makes the argument that

    open ended, low stakes experimentation can be a valid form of digital Jewish learning, where the “lesson” is not amoral but a felt sense of spin, friction, wobble, and collapse. In the second experiment I used the Marble Madness type game play, making the dreidel become

    a tiny lab for thinking about stability and risk, which echoes Hanukkah’s precariousness, and invites players to linger, tinker, and waste time in a way that is still charged with symbolic possibility. These were worthwhile explorations of the exciting and kinetic nature of the dreidel game.

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    Dreidel Catan prototype

    Most conceptual

    In my Catan style prototype, I explored whether a four sided dreidel could act as a meaningful dice object inside a complex resource and territory game that could help tell the story of Hanukkah in terms of the Maccabees, Hellenized Jews, and Seleucids as groups competing for resources and domination in Jerusalem. The design argues that it can, because each side of the dreidel already carries narrative weight, and that weight can be elevated when paired with a card, tableau and board game system like Catan. Resource bonuses, penalties, or events that shape a shared board.

    By letting the dreidel drive the different outcomes for each player I was curious to replace the dice with two dreidels. Pushing the game narrative of dreidel from a closed loop into a network of context specific effects.While buggy and complicated, this was one way that Hanukkah themes of scarcity, risk, and negotiation might live inside a modern strategy game.

    ​

    Hanukkah Quest 1: The Temple of Gloom

    Best for Hanukkah story

    Hanukkah Quest 1: The Temple of Gloom tackles the question of how to better tell the story of Hanukkah with the immersiveness of a game. Here, I argue that interactive midrash is possible when puzzles, jokes, and spatial navigation all serve as commentary on the holiday’s themes, such as hiddenness,

    illumination, desecration, and rededication. Instead of retelling the miracle in a linear script, the game invites players to stumble through a gloomy, playful temple and slowly piece together meaning from their own actions, which models a Jewish way of learning that is iterative, interpretive, and grounded in wandering and return.

    ​

    Jewish futurist wisdom

    These experiments do not just gesture toward Jewish futurism, they enact it and point toward where it might go next. They show that Jewish futurism means keeping ritual objects and stories in play, while re staging them inside interactive systems where players can touch, bend, and argue with them in real time, like a digital beit midrash that anyone can enter. By dropping the dreidel and Hanukkah into arcade runners, resource economies, absurd physics toys, and point and click temples, the work suggests that the future of Jewish storytelling may live in responsive systems rather than fixed scripts, and in shared worlds that generate many valid readings instead of a single correct answer. Your vibe coding practice, using AI to rapidly prototype and reconfigure these systems around a felt sense of Jewish meaning and play, is a clear example of Jewish futurism in practice, and it opens hopeful paths forward: networked Jewish game spaces, collaborative “midrash servers,” classroom rituals that unfold as playable worlds, and future projects where new holidays, communities, and speculative texts are first tested as games before they are written down. In that sense, these games are not an endpoint but a launch pad, a sign that Jewish life will keep unfolding inside new technologies, still circling the same core questions of memory, risk, light, and communal responsibility, while inviting the next generation to help code what comes next.​​

  • The Jewish futurist Manifesto

    The Jewish futurist Manifesto

    9–14 minutes

    Introduction: Why a Jewish futurism Manifesto

    Almost every modern era or movement of art has announced itself with a manifesto to declare what must come next. Often these manifestos of the past were blustery often spoke in the language of conquest. Most notably, the Italian Futurists (1909-1943) text glorified war, destruction, and exclusion of certain types of people. Unfortunately, their call for progress came at the expense of compassion and aligned themselves with fascism and antisemitism. For more insights, please read the previously wrote about the warnings that we can head from Italian Futurism in this article. Others defined themselves by what they rejected, not by what they hoped to heal.

    I wrote The Jewish futurism Manifesto as an act of tikkun, to repair that lineage. It reclaims the idea of the manifesto as a sacred, inclusive, and ethical declaration of creative purpose. Where earlier manifestos worshiped speed and dominance, this one turns toward kavvanah (intention), chesed (compassion), and tzelem Elohim (the divine image in all). Read more about Mussar, Jewish ethics here.

    We stand at a new threshold: between text and code, between human and machine, between memory and invention. Judaism, with its deep traditions of questioning, balance, and ethical creation, offers precisely the framework that modernity has lacked. This manifesto emerges from that realization that art, design, and technology can be Jewishly spiritual, halakhic, and humane.

    Where other groups intended to shatter, we intend repair. Where others sought power, we seek presence. Jewish futurism is not rebellion for its own sake, but a recommitment to the creative covenant that began at Sinai. To make the world more beautiful, conscious, and just.

    Throughout history, Jewish creativity has emerged in response to the extremes of its age. The Kabbalists of Safed (Tzfat, Israel) turned exile into cosmic repair; the artists of the Haskalah transformed enlightenment into moral awakening. From illuminated manuscripts to, the printing press, to digital light, Jews have continually reimagined how revelation meets reality. Jewish futurism continues this lineage, translating timeless values into the language of design and technology. It sees every tool, from ink to algorithm, as part of the same creative inheritance, each awaiting sanctification. Ours is not a rupture from tradition, but its renewal in the medium of the future.

    The Manifesto

    The Future is Jewish

    Jewish futurism envisions a world where Jewish wisdom, art, and halakhah evolve in dialogue with technological creation. We reject nostalgia as fear disguised as reverence. Tradition is not a cage but a scaffold for renewal. Jewish identity thrives through adaptation, spanning from parchment to print, from diaspora to data. We imagine futures where Torah and technology are not opposites but partners in creation. The Jewish future is not going to be inherited, it needs to be designed.

    Sar HaTorah vs. Golem Mindset

    Jewish futurism begins where two myths meet: the Sar HaTorah, the angel of instant wisdom, and the Golem, the creature of blind obedience. One represents revelation without readiness; the other, power without conscience. Both warn of imbalance. The Sar blinds with too much light; the Golem crushes with too much force. Jewish futurism seeks a third way by introducing a design ethic that blends divine insight with moral integration. Our task is not to summon knowledge nor to manufacture strength, but to cultivate binah, discernment. In the age of AI, this means we pursue creativity with kavvanah (intention) and gevurah (restraint), so that what we build remains worthy of the divine image in which we were formed.

    Technology as Sacred Instrument

    Technology is never neutral. Each codebase, algorithm, and interface embodies human ethics. Jewish futurism treats technology as a potential kli kodesh, a vessel for holiness, when guided by Halakhah and Mussar. Like Betzalel and the artisans of the Mishkan, we design not for utility alone but for meaning. AI and creative machines can assist, but they cannot own intention. Tzelem Elohim makes moral authorship a human mitzvah. When we design with reverence and responsibility, innovation itself becomes my concept of Hiddur Olam, the beautification of the world.

    Speculative Imagination is Torah

    To imagine is to interpret. Prophets, mystics, and sages were Jewish Futurists long before the term existed. The Zohar’s visions, the debates of the Talmud, and the architectural dreams of the Temple are all acts of sacred speculation. Jewish futurism extends this lineage into art, design, and digital creation. Speculative fiction and AI-generated imagery become new midrashim, helping us ask: What does redemption look like in an age of code? What new mitzvot emerge when creativity itself becomes shared with our tools? If we aren’t asking these questions then we aren’t really looking at these technologies seriously as a people worthy of wielding it and will unfortunately become victim of it if we don’t take our rightful place as spiritual designers.

    Diaspora, Zion, and the Digital Beit Midrash

    Jewish peoplehood has always been networked. From Babylon and Jerusalem Talmuds to the Sefaria.org, our collective consciousness and knowledge move with us. The digital realm is today’s Beit Midrash, a study hall without walls. Wherever Jews gather, be it in sanctuaries, studios, or shared screens, Shekhinah shruyah beynayhem, the Divine Presence dwells among them. The next Zion may be both physical and virtual, both rooted and planetary. Jewish futurism honors multiplicity as our strength and connectivity as our new covenant.

    Rituals for the Coming Age

    Every generation reshapes ritual. The sages debated how to light candles or bind tefillin and we now ask how to sanctify the click, the stream, the prompt. AI-generated liturgy, AR sukkot, or blockchain tzedakah are not departures from tradition but continuations of its creative evolution. Halakhah is a living design system that adapts intention to circumstance. To innovate within it is to participate in revelation itself. The question is never only “Can we build it?” but “Can it carry holiness?”

    Memory as Living Code

    Jewish memory is dynamic, recursive, alive. To remember is to remix, to link past and future through creative continuity. AI and design tools can help us recover lost melodies, visualize midrashim, and illuminate forgotten voices. But data alone is not zekher, memorial. Memory without relationship becomes archive, not covenant. Jewish futurism calls us to use digital recall as teshuvah to renew moral awareness, not mere nostalgia.

    Justice and Halakhic Design

    Tikkun Olam, beautifying the world, remains the core program of Jewish futurism. We code, design, and build through chesed (kindness) and yirah (awe). Halakhah becomes a form of systems design when we build a moral architecture balancing din (structure) and rachamim (compassion). We recognize the commandment lo ta’amod al dam re’echa, do not stand idly by, as an ethical requirement for algorithmic justice, environmental stewardship, and digital accessibility. To design ethically is to fulfill mitzvah.

    Art as Prophecy, Design as Teshuvah

    The artist stands between the Sar HaTorah and the Golem, by receiving insight yet shaping it responsibly. Art is prophetic when it awakens conscience, not when it predicts trends. Design becomes teshuvah when it restores balance between human and machine, intention and automation. Jewish futurism teaches that the act of creation must include reflection that supports the feedback loop of soul and system. To make without reflection is to build a Golem; to seek revelation without preparation is to summon the Sar. To create with awareness is to become a partner in tikkun.

    The Messianic and the Real

    Jewish futurism lives between utopia and maintenance, between the dream and the debug. We do not await redemption as download or singularity; we construct it through ethical iteration. L’taken olam b’malchut Shaddai, to repair the world under divine sovereignty now includes building technologies that emulate divine attributes like compassion, humility, and restraint. Every ethical choice is a small redemption, a patch to the cosmic code.

    A Shared Horizon of Jewish Becoming

    Jewish futurism is not one style, and it is not one door into tomorrow. Some of us arrive as Merkavah Mystics, building visionary symbols and dream logic. Some arrive as Constructivist System-Builders, treating typography, image, and structure as the scaffolding of new worlds. Some arrive as Civic Blueprint Futurists, designing society forward through public space, planning, and collective infrastructure. Others are Archive-to-Future Salvagers, gathering fragments of story, object, song, and memory as raw material for what comes next. Others are Diaspora Worldbuilders, shaping Jewish futures through language, publishing, education, and cultural networks. And some are Ritual Prototype Designers and Ethical Speculators, turning Jewish practice into a living design lab where values lead and the future is built on purpose. Different lenses, same horizon. We are all staring at the same point in the distance, and arguing with it, praying with it, designing toward it, because the future is not a place we wait for. It is a place we make.

    Becoming Future Ancestors

    To be Jewish is to live across time and to carry memory forward and design possibility backward. Jewish futurism asks us to leave behind moral infrastructure, not just digital traces. The mitzvah of areyvut, mutual responsibility, extends to those who will inherit our algorithms, our art, and our stories. We are not only descendants of Sinai; we are its next iteration. To design consciously is to code for eternity.

    Collective Imagination and Creation

    Jewish futurism is a collective project: part yeshiva, part studio, part lab. It belongs to all who seek to sanctify imagination. We will build this future together, not as masters of machines but as students of wonder. The choice before us is ancient. Should we create as the Golem, blindly powerful, or as the Sar HaTorah, radiantly wise. Or should we find the sacred balance between them, where halakhah, creativity, and humility converge.

    Let us design toward Hiddur Olam, a world made more beautiful through seeking wisdom, restraint, and awe.

    Works Cited (MLA) Updated, with Sar HaTorah + Golem sources added

    Fishbane, Eitan. “Tikkun Olam: Repairing the World, Healing God in Kabbalistic Thought.” The Jewish Theological Seminary, 17 July 2023, https://www.jtsa.edu/event/tikkun-olam-repairing-the-world-healing-god-in-kabbalistic-thought/. Accessed 19 Jan. 2026.

    Han, Jae Hee. “Angelic Contemplation in the Sar Torah and the Prognostic Turn.” Prophets and Prophecy in the Late Antique Near East, Cambridge University Press, 26 Oct. 2023, https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/prophets-and-prophecy-in-the-late-antique-near-east/angelic-contemplation-in-the-sar-torah-and-the-prognostic-turn/C8EE08B1543602E7BFC79CF912D8331A. Accessed 19 Jan. 2026.

    Jones, Jonathan. “‘We Will Glorify War – and Scorn for Women’: Marinetti, the Futurist Mussolini Sidekick Who Outdid Elon Musk.” The Guardian, 9 Jan. 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2025/jan/09/marinetti-the-futurist-mussolini-sidekick-who-outdid-elon-musk. Accessed 19 Jan. 2026.

    Kaval, Allan. “Rome Exhibition on Futurism Exalts the Italian National Narrative.” Le Monde (English edition), 20 Apr. 2025, https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2025/04/20/rome-exhibition-on-futurism-exalts-the-italian-national-narrative_6740429_23.html. Accessed 19 Jan. 2026.

    Library of Congress. “Manifesto of the Futurist Painters.” Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2021667100/. Accessed 19 Jan. 2026.

    Leiman, Shnayer Z. “The Golem of Prague in Recent Rabbinic Literature.” The Seforim Blog, 3 May 2010, https://seforimblog.com/2010/05/golem-of-prague-in-recent-rabbinic/. Accessed 19 Jan. 2026.

    Marinetti, F. T. “Manifesto of Futurism.” Design Manifestos, 1909, https://designmanifestos.org/f-t-marinetti-manifesto-of-futurism/. Accessed 19 Jan. 2026.

    Robinson, Ira. “The Golem of Montreal.” Jewish Review of Books, 5 Oct. 2022, https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/jewish-history/12566/the-golem-of-montreal/. Accessed 19 Jan. 2026.

    Sefaria. “The Torah and the Angels.” Sefaria: Topics, https://www.sefaria.org/topics/the-torah-and-the-angels. Accessed 19 Jan. 2026.

    “Golem Legend.” YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, https://encyclopedia.yivo.org/article.aspx/Golem_Legend. Accessed 19 Jan. 2026.

    Areyvut (ar-AY-voot) ערבות
    Mutual responsibility. The idea that Jewish life is bound up together, ethically and practically.

    Beit Midrash (BAYT MEE-drash) בית מדרש
    A Jewish study hall. In this article, a metaphor for shared learning spaces, including digital ones.

    Binah (BEE-nah) בינה
    Discernment and understanding. Not just knowledge, but the ability to interpret wisely and act well.

    Chesed (KHEH-sed) חסד
    Lovingkindness. A core ethical trait and a guiding value for design choices.

    Din (deen) דין
    Judgment or structure. Often paired with compassion to describe balanced moral systems.

    Gevurah (geh-VOO-rah) גבורה
    Strength and restraint. Power that is disciplined, bounded, and ethically contained.

    Halakhah (hah-lah-KHAH) הלכה
    Jewish law and practice. A living system that guides behavior, ritual, and communal norms.

    Haskalah (hah-skah-LAH) השכלה
    The Jewish Enlightenment, associated with modern education, literature, and cultural transformation.

    Hiddur Olam (hee-DOOR oh-LAHM) הידור עולם
    Beautifying the world. A framework where creativity and design serve ethical repair and sacred purpose.

    Kavvanah (kah-vah-NAH) כוונה
    Intention. The inner direction behind an act, not only the visible outcome.

    Kli Kodesh (klee KOH-desh) כלי קודש
    A vessel of holiness. A tool or object used in service of sacred purpose.

    Merkavah (mehr-kah-VAH) מרכבה
    Chariot mysticism. Jewish visionary tradition centered on symbolic, otherworldly imagery.

    Midrash (MEE-drash) מדרש
    Interpretive teachings that expand Torah through story, commentary, and imagination.

    Mishkan (MISH-kahn) משכן
    The Tabernacle. A model for sacred making guided by craft, structure, and intention.

    Mussar (MOO-sar) מוסר
    Jewish ethical discipline focused on refining character traits through practice and reflection.

    Rachamim (rah-khah-MEEM) רחמים
    Compassion or mercy. Often paired with din to describe moral balance.

    Shekhinah (sheh-khee-NAH) שכינה
    The indwelling Divine Presence. In rabbinic language, presence that dwells among people gathered with intention.

    Tikkun Olam (tee-KOON oh-LAHM) תיקון עולם
    Repairing the world. Often used for social responsibility, with roots in Jewish mystical language of repair.

    Teshuvah (teh-shoo-VAH) תשובה
    Return and repair. A process of course-correction, not just regret.

    Tzelem Elohim (TSEH-lem eh-loh-HEEM) צלם אלוהים
    The divine image in every human being. A foundation for dignity, ethics, and responsibility.

    Zekher (ZEH-kher) זכר
    Covenantal remembrance. Memory that stays relational and morally active, not just archived.

    Zion (tsee-YOHN) ציון
    A layered term meaning Jerusalem and the symbolic center of Jewish peoplehood, longing, and future-building.

  • Spiritual pixels: reconciling Judaism and NFTs

    Spiritual pixels: reconciling Judaism and NFTs

    Exporting cultural richness online through the worlds of Torah and NFTs

    Originally Published by Challah Magazine.com (2022)

    By
    Mike Wirth

    By now you’ve heard quite a bit about NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and may have jumped into their world yourself. NFTs are a creative financial technology phenomena that arose from the creation of platforms for digital creators and the like to list and value their artwork. The NFT marketplace has grown to a global multibillion-dollar cultural hub in only a few short years. I want to focus on how Jews and Jewish creators are making a niche for themselves in this volatile yet meteorically growing marketplace, and why the future of Jewish NFTs is still something that is shapeable by all of us.

    Meditation on Aleph 2022 Digital Print 40″x54″

    What is an NFT?

    Firstly, NFTs are a part of a larger digital marketplace called cryptocurrency and follow the global digital ledger of transactions called the Blockchain. A lot of new vocabulary, but not overly complicated once you grasp a few simple concepts. I’ll share the way I explained it to my Bubbe.

    Like what if I said that an NFT is like a unique stock certificate being issued by a newly public company to public investors. The price is set based on a formula that considers a company’s net worth and its speculated future potential earnings, which becomes the stock’s initial public offering, IPO price. Crypto is the capital that this new marketplace runs on and the Blockchain is a decentralized securely-encrypted version of the daily stock market trading ledger.

    With me so far?

    Then I explained that we speculate how that company stock is valued based on how “well” traders, investors, and we think it will do. If the company releases an innovative product then its stock will likely go up. Could the same not be applied to artists, and especially Jewish artists? Just like public companies who trade stock, we build brands, produce unique products/services, and contribute to the global economy. NFTs, Crypto, and the Blockchain allow us to participate in a similar financial system that is peer-to-peer-based rather than operated and mediated by private brokerage and or national entities.

    Lastly and, in my opinion, the most amazing aspect of NFTs is the utility or the perks attached to the purchase of an NFT. Besides the glory and crypto value of the NFT, utility provides tangible value to the intangible digital media asset. NFT artists may attach real-world artwork, merchandise, or special access to an event or content. Intangibly, the benefits include status in key social circles, connections with other like-minded communities, and the simple joy of the investment in a community or individual.

    “But, aren’t we just day-trading jpegs, Mike?”.

    Shel Rosh 2021 Digital Print 24″x36″

    What Can Be an NFT?

    In short, anything that can be represented in digital form can be an NFT. The vast majority of NFTs now are jpeg images, but are also videos, audio recordings, writings, 3D models, interactive experiences in VR, video games, or computer code. Basically, any form of contemporary digital media that’s out there.

    But looking at the media side of NFTs is only half the story. Coupled with unique utility, the media representation really serves as a certificate for perks in real life. For example, an artist could sell an NFT of their latest painting and then offer a common utility like a print of the work. Or they could offer something uncommon like a dozen MasterClass painting lessons with the artist. The difference in these kinds of utility perks would greatly influence the value of the NFT in my example. So, if we couple amazing media art with unique utility, then boom – we have a solid NFT to bring to market. This is where great creative questions come into play to decide what is valuable and worth putting on the market.

    How Are NFTs Jewish?

    Since NFTs are globally-based and community-focused, they mirror global creative financial trends. Simultaneously, there is a current Renaissance-like explosion of both implicit and explicit Jewish creativity and cultural expression which has similar trends globally. By implicit and explicit, I’m referring to the 20th to 21st-century shift in defining what Jewish art is. But more so than ever, we are seeing artwork made by Jewish-identifying artists and the content, aesthetic style, or form is also Jewish. We are at a point where we are rapidly learning about the great intersections of the Jewish story around the world and that we actually share a common future. Creative explorations of the bespoke and sublime of Jewish life have exponential cultural and spiritual implications.

    There are a few major ways that Jews are affecting charity and culture in the NFT space by combining acts of Tzedakah with Hiddur Mitzvot to offer unique utility perks to supporters with uniquely-beautified digital objects.

    Firstly, by using the real-world tiered fund drive features in their utility offerings with their NFTs to fundraise for their own brick-and-mortar organizations and beneficiaries, the NFTorah project by TechTribe minted a series of 18 (chai) curated Torah portions into NFTs to raise funds to support Torah-studying communities in need. They cite that the “Torah is the oldest unbroken blockchain” and that the utility of the NFTs is tzedakah going to further the completion of a newly-scribed Torah scroll to be donated to a community in need.

    Cosmic Key 2021 Digital Print 24″x36″

    While this project doesn’t put emphasis on the digital media asset side of the NFT, the 1-to-1 Torah parsha-to-NFT fundraising model is a strong case for why an NFT utility could be a real mitzvah in Tzedakah. Plus, it’s pretty cool to imagine a studious scribe painstakingly handmaking each Hebrew letter moments after receiving your contribution and the attached scripture.

    No Weapon Formed Against Me Shall Prosper 2021 Digital Print 24″x36″

    Secondly, the visually-dominated platforms of social media and NFT marketplaces have ignited a surge in Judaica and Jewish-themed creative objects. It’s fair to say that this era of Jewish creatives is intentionally making Hiddur Mitzvot quite prolific and are not only pushing the aesthetic boundaries of beautification of our cultural and spiritual objects, but joyfully celebrating the strata of Jewish identities in the world in new and unorthodox spaces. We now see Jewish themes emerging in global pop-cultural arenas of music, art, and fashion. Many contemporary Jewish creatives mine Jewish texts, history, and politics to produce world-class traditional Judaica, fine art, street art, commercial art spaces, and cutting-edge digital experiences.

    I observe all of this creative activity as a sublime visual-Midrashic-like expression of the contemporary Jewish experience in action. NFTs provide a greater platform for cataloging this evolving Jewish art and Judaica on the blockchain that has the potential to make a real-world impact on the artist and their communities.

    Explicit Cultural Expression

    Is Jewish art defined by the Jewish content and themes featured in the work, or is it because it was created by a Jewish artist?

    Jewish art was famously hard to define in the 19th and 20th centuries because many Jewish artists expressed themselves implicitly and in encrypted ways, but were very much Jewish people and had Jewish identities. Perhaps the most appropriate of Jewish expressions for the modern and postmodern art eras.

    The 21st century has been a unique time for Jewish culture worldwide. Some would say that we’ve rebuilt a digital silk road and have entered an era past postmodernism to what theorists call metamodernism. For the first time in centuries, we can access an incredible amount of our thought-to-be-lost texts and cultural artifacts, a continuously unfolding archeological history, and we can connect and collaborate with other Jewish communities living outside of our own in a global Jewish culture jam.

    The simple googling of “Jewish art” will send you down a rabbit hole of wonderful world-class artistry both contemporary and historic. This makes me feel a little less alone in the Diaspora knowing that elsewhere and in Israel there are strong communities of Jews that are actively exporting cultural richness online and in real life. This set of global circumstances has spurred a rise in the amount of explicitly Jewish creativity worldwide which has cascaded into the NFT space. Meaning the art features Jewish content, Jewish cultural experience, and/or is made by a Jewish artist.

    The light body dance 2022 Digital Print 24″x36″

    Jewish NFT projects include The Kiddush Club NFT Mensch collection, a JaDa organization NFT event at Miami art week 2021, to independent Jewish artists like MosheArt’s hamsa art becoming NFTs or myself in minting my Jewish Futurism artwork and digital experiences into NFTs. We take existing artwork and add that work as NFTs to our current output channels. Independent artists offer unique and interesting utility options, such as prints of the NFT art, access to exclusive content, or even providing the actual rights to the NFT artwork. These different perks would greatly impact the value of the NFT offered. As digital technology and utility offerings evolve into new spaces and screens, we’ll see this grow and evolve in value and utility.

    You better believe how thrilled I am that I get to directly engage my audience with the Jewish art that I am making as original work, prints, merch, and now NFTs.

    Where Is It All Going?

    In the end, we’ve seen examples that demonstrate the promising qualities of NFTs that appeal to creatives, fundraising communities, and fin-tech communities. The examples I shared and the growing number of Jewish creatives, organizations, and institutions adding their NFT projects to the marketplace daily indicate that working with NFTs does actually extend the representation and creative utility of the Jewish experience into emerging global markets and spaces.

    That sounds like a fantastic opportunity for high-tech Hiddur Mitzvot and Tzedaka that puts Jewish culture into the midst of new and innovative spaces and conversations on our own terms.

    Dance of Miriam 2022 Digital Print 24″x36″

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    About the author

    Mike Wirth

    @mikewirth, www.mikewirthart.com

    Mike Wirth is a visual artist, digital experience designer, and muralist, best known for his thoughtful murals, public art installations, and client-driven commercial design work that focus on major social justice issues and his identity as a Southern, Jewish-American.

    Over the past 20 years, Wirth’s murals, published design projects, and digital museum exhibits have appeared in New York, Miami, Austin, Charlotte, NC, and internationally in Croatia, Poland, and Germany.

    Currently, Wirth is a scholar at the Stan Greenspon Center for Holocaust and Social Justice Education and Professor of Art and Design at Queens University of Charlotte in North Carolina. He’s been investigating NFTs since 2015 and has been creating them for brands and non-profit organizations since 2021.

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