Judy Margles, longtime director of the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education, joins me to talk about the institution she spent a career building — and the tensions built into its dual mission of Jewish cultural memory and Holocaust education. We discuss how Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education (OJMCHE) "third leg," pluralism, became the connective tissue between those two mandates, and how October 7th has complicated that commitment both toward the broader world and within the Jewish community itself. Judy shares a story about discovering that every parent in her friend group had a child at the Gaza rallies, and what that revealed about generational change. The conversation moves into the state of Jewish arts and culture right now — from the fight over the Israel Pavilion at the Venice Biennale to the movement of art across borders during wartime — and into bigger questions: what makes art endure, whether artists owe the Jewish community anything, and where Jewish culture actually comes from. Enjoy.

The Art/Lab Podcast: Conversations About Jewish Arts and Culture is conceived of and created by Rabbi Josh Rose, and is a program of Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture. Theme music by Rabbi Josh Rose.

Links

• Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture: artlabpdx.org

• Our podcast on Youtube: @theartlabpodcast

• Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education: https://www.ojmche.org/

• Rothko Chapel, Houston: https://rothkochapel.org/

• The Jewish Museum, New York — current exhibitions (including the Walter Benjamin photography show Judy references): https://thejewishmuseum.org/exhibitions/

• Portland Art Museum: https://portlandartmuseum.org/