As the year comes to a close, we’re taking a look back on a few of the cultural experiences offered by our Kultura partners in 2025. We’ve highlighted a few events from our 2025 archives.
Wishing you a safe, happy, healthy and creative 2026!
Kultura Programming
The Jewish Futures Arts and Culture Salon 2025 was held on Sunday November 16 from 10am-5pm at the Miles Nadal JCC. The attendees included artists, cultural workers, educators, and arts patrons. Thank you to everyone who attended the third iteration of the event! The 2025 event included panel discussions and workshops led by local artists and cultural leaders. The topics ranged from celebrating Jewish joy in the arts, to the intersections of arts and the scared, to how artists are meeting to moment, to how artists bring Jewish culture to non-Jewish spaces, to how to incorporate accessibility into your practice.
Always popular, “The Pitch” returned, allowing artist to give short pitches to cultural leaders for in the moment feedback from our “friendly dragons.” We began the day with a niggun and mediation to set the intention, followed by an icebreaker to begin networking and connecting. The day ended with a high energy and hilarious presentation, film screening, moderated conversation, and musical performance by Montrealer’s YidLife Crisis who shared how they created their popular Yiddish web series, and how they are working as Jewish artists today.
Above: Arts and Culture Schmooze at Koffler Arts, Photo by Shay Markowitz | Business Skills for Artists with Jordan Nahmias, Photo by Nicole Breanne
We continued our Arts and Culture Schmoozes as a way for Jewish artists and cultural workers to come together and connect. We viewed exhibitions and chatted over wine and cheese. We also began the Kultura U series and came together for professional development opportunities designed for creatives, such as writing a pitch, financial literacy, and business skills.
Above: Barbra Astman, Karen Pe’er, Josh Saltzman, Rosette Sund.
We interviewed visual artists, curators, archivists, museums professionals, musicians, filmmakers and theatre producers on our blog! We love learning more about the artists who are contributing to Kultura programs. Click here to read the interviews.
Events, Festivals, and Performances
Above: Community-wide Yom Hashoah commemoration.
The Toronto Holocaust Museum created engaging programming in the museum and in the community. The community-wide Yom Hashoah commemoration brought 1,000 community members together to ensure that the stories and lessons of the Holocaust are not forgotten. In November, the THM launched Neuberger Holocaust Education Week (HEW) 2025 with Indigo Books & Music CEO Heather Reisman and acclaimed author and literary critic Ruth Franklin to discuss her new book “The Many Lives of Anne Frank.”
Above: The Runner. Production photo.
The Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company and Koffler Arts presented The Runner. The production is a powerful thriller from Toronto’s Human Cargo, and winner of the 2019 Dora Mavor Moore Awards for Outstanding Production, Outstanding Direction and Outstanding New Play. When Jacob, a Z.A.K.A volunteer, makes the split-second decision to treat a young Arab woman, instead of the soldier she may have killed, his world is changed forever. (Z.A.K.A is an Orthodox Jewish volunteer force in Israel who immediately respond to any terror attack, disaster or accident.)
In the fall, the HGJTC will brought in two productions from Israel to be part of the Israeli theatre series called “The Gifts of Life.” These plays will be performed in English with one performance of each production being performed in Hebrew. The first play, Without an Evil Eye, is a humorous solo performance in which the writer and actor, Asaf Ben Shimon, guides the audience through his transformative journey of gradually losing his sight and discovering new purpose in life. The second play, How Do We Get Out of Here?, is a two-character play in which a man’s life is illuminated when locked in a cold cellar with his autistic employee.
Above: An Afternoon with Sasson Gabay, Leah Posluns Theatre, TJFF 2025.
The 33rd Edition of the Toronto Jewish Film Festival was held from June 5th to 15th, 2025. From horror to comedy to poignant documentaries, free programmes and engaging panels, film enthusiasts discovered the unexpected at the Festival.
TJFF2025 honoured the work of internationally-celebrated actor Sasson Gabay (The Band’s Visit, Shtisel, Gett). From Iraqi-Jewish roots, he has performed in Hebrew, Arabic, Yiddish, English and French across film, television and theatre. In this 5-part screening series, TJFF presented his latest collaboration with filmmaker Shemi Zarhin and actor Assi Levy; the new spin-off from Shtisel; some rarely-screened early television work; a special moderated discussion with clips covering the breadth of his career; and a carte-blanche programme with the actor reflecting on his heritage.
Above: Summer Jam 2025 at Earl Bales Park.
Ashkenaz Festival & Magen Group returned to Earl Bales Park for the third edition of the Summer Jam free concert series, including four exciting and eclectic double-bill concerts on alternating Monday evenings. Each concert featured a Jewish roots performance, paired with a pop, rock or jamband tribute act, attracting inter-generational fans from across the musical spectrum. Music lovers enjoyed amazing music in an idyllic setting with friends and family.
Above: On the Waves of Destiny: The Selected Writings of Lili Berger. Tamari Hall.
The UJA Committee for Yiddish presented the launch of On the Waves of Destiny: The Selected Writings of Lili Berger. This selection of elegant translations introduces the remarkable life and writings of Yiddish novelist, literary critic, and essayist Lili Berger. She wrote about the most transformative and traumatic developments of the 20th century, to which she herself was an eyewitness. Because almost all of her works were written in Yiddish and never before translated into any other language, Lili Berger is little known today. This volume finally makes her work available to a new readership in the English-speaking world and beyond. The event featured remarks from the translators and editors.
Above: Mizrahi Voices: Art, Words & Music by Yemeni Jewish Women, Miles Nadal JCC.
The Miles Nadal JCC welcomed Mizrahi Heritage Month with Mizrahi Voices: Art, Words & Music by Yemeni Jewish Women, an unforgettable evening of storytelling, conversation, and cultural celebration featuring: Art exhibition by Karen Pe’er, Author talk & reading with Ayelet Tsabari, Musical performance by Erez Zobary. With a panel discussion moderated by Sara Yacobi‑Harris (founder of No Silence on Race), the evening blended art, music, literature, and conversation in a rare celebration of Mizrahi heritage – with a focus on voices that are too often overlooked.
Exhibitions
Koffler Arts welcomed photographers Elinor Carucci and Hannah Altman for an exhibition curated by Toronto-based artist Barbara Astman. The exhibition highlighted the unique dynamic that exists between each artist’s practice and their different life stages, exploring life from a Jewish feminist perspective, including womanhood, rituals, family, and the human condition.
Carucci showed a selection of works from Midlife (2011-2019), a photographic series and corresponding book (The Monacelli Press, 2019) never previously exhibited in its present format. This body of work explores the middle stage of life from a highly personal, female perspective. Altman’s work explored themes of ritual and lineage, memory and storytelling, incorporating aspects of Jewish culture. The works at Koffler Arts were from her most recent series, We Will Return To You, with a corresponding book (Saint Lucy Books, 2025).
From bakeries to bookstores to butcher shops, Jewish-owned storefronts have long been an important part of Ontario’s cityscapes and main streets. These businesses tell a larger story—of migration, adaptation, and community-building across generations. The mid-19th century to the 20th century saw successive waves of Jewish immigrants to Canada. Whether carrying on a family trade or adapting to new markets, these entrepreneurs helped shape Ontario’s streets and played a vital role in the development of Jewish life across the province. Storefront Stories, an exhibition from the Ontario Jewish Archives on view at the Prosserman JCC, explored the fascinating histories of these businesses and the families who built them.
Above: Silhouettes of Survival by Rosette Sund, Toronto Holocaust Museum
Silhouettes of Survival is an installation by Rosette Sund at the Toronto Holocaust Museum honouring the multifaceted experience of Jewish refugees. This complex experience includes Jewish people who attempted to emigrate from Europe during the onset of Nazi persecution, those who came to Canada as internees, and Holocaust survivors who immigrated to Toronto after the Second World War. Through layered paintings composed of archival photographs, documents, and personal letters, the installation traces the journey from displacement to renewal. Each panel reveals a different aspect of the immigration experience. This immersive work invites reflection and discovery with every viewing and offers bigger understandings of the immigrant journey with a universal message of finding belonging.
Above: Carried Forward Art Exhibit by Karen Pe’er, Gallery at the J, Miles Nadal JCC
Carried Forward by Karen Pe’er reflects on Yemenite Jewish traditions hung in Jacobs Gallery throughout November and December —transforming memory, loss, and heritage into living acts of remembrance, resilience, and cultural continuity across generations. Through intricate works inspired by her father’s community, Pe’er explored what it means to inherit a culture shaped by displacement yet kept alive through remembrance and reinvention. Each piece was an act of preservation and renewal, ensuring that ancestral stories continue to be carried forward.
