What a Jewish woman looks like

The art exhibit ‘This is What a Jewish Woman Looks Like’ opened at Hillel last Thursday, featuring photographs, paintings and videos that explore Brown and RISD student’s perceptions of how they connect with and express their religion.The exhibit seeks to commemorate the beauty of stereotypically Jewish features, while also showing that there is no single mould into which all Jewish women can fit.“What it means to be a Jewish woman is different for everyone who identifies as such. This exhibit celebrates that,” said Emma Axelrod ’18, the creator of the exhibit. Most artists chose to focus their pieces on the identities of their family member, and not just themselves. Many students chose to display photographs or drawings of their mothers and aunts to show how these feminine role models influenced their idea of what it means to be a Jewish woman.Like any cultural stereotypes, those of Jewish women were both embraced and rejected by the artists. “I used to think the Jewish mother thing was a joke. Its not,” wrote Lauren Perea (RISD ’17) to comment on her family collection of photographs.On the other hand, Rebecca Carol ’15, wrote, “I’m Jewish, I’m a woman, and I’m a rapper. Get over it,” making a joke out of the reactions to she expected to receive from a video of herself rapping. This was just one of the ways the exhibit directly challenged the way we think about these stereotypes.While all of the subjects of the portraits were of Jewish women, submissions were open for any artists who wanted to celebrate the Jewish women in their lives. Work from twelve artists was chosen and displayed."We were very open in our requirements, as we wanted to encourage artists to submit as many different kinds of artwork as possible," said Axelrod. "The only requirement was that the art had to depict a Jewish woman and connect to our theme: that there is no way to look Jewish."Axelrod and Alisa Kotler-Berkowitz, Hillel's Engagement Director, have been working on the exhibit since the beginning of the year."It took a lot of planning to get the word out and call for submissions," said Axelrod. "Once we had enough submissions, it was a matter of figuring out how to get people interested in coming out to see it."Check out 'This is What a Jewish Woman Looks Like' at 80 Brown Street before the end of April!Images via the Ebba Brunnstrom '19