Every year, as I read through piles of applications for the CJP x Vilna Community Creative Fellowship, I’m looking for the creative sparks that might ignite our community curiosity around Jewish life. And in every cohort, the inspiration comes, taking different forms of albums, poetry, paintings, meals and more.
When we launched the fellowship in 2020, people were searching for ways to connect across the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic. Creativity offered a way to gather, express what we were experiencing and feel part of a community.
Years later, that founding belief continues to guide the fellowship: investing in artists enriches Jewish life for all of us. The program gives artists time, resources, Jewish learning and mentorship to pursue new work and invites our community to help shape what emerges.
This year, I’m excited to dig into Jewish life and tradition through melody, image, nostalgia, language and more as our seventh cohort of Community Creative Fellows begin to explore their work.
Our 2026 fellows bring the beauty, heart and joy we all need more of today. Join me in welcoming musician Zach Mayer, multimedia artist Inna Zhukovsky Zilber, stained glass artist Rebecca Michelson and portrait photographer Sharona Jacobs.
Zach Mayer: Jewish music to grow up with
For musician Zach Mayer, this fellowship is an opportunity to bring the community into the act of composing.
Mayer will create music for Jewish children and families, exploring how songs can make Jewish life joyful, accessible and participatory. He’s interested in what happens when music grows out of ongoing relationships, when the people singing along also help inspire what comes next.
His approach welcomes curiosity and gives people room to participate wherever they are starting. Through playful musical experiences, he hopes to help children and adults build the confidence to make music together, and carry it into their own lives.
Inna Zhukovsky Zilber: The stories we carry
What do we take with us when we leave a place? Which objects hold our memories, and how do those memories change as we share them?
Mixed media artist Inna Zhukovsky Zilber is exploring these questions through a proposed project involving vintage trunks and the stories of Jewish communities around the world. Her interests span migration, Jewish symbols and the objects that connect people to home.
Zhukovsky Zilber sees making art together as a way for people to share stories and learn about one another. During the fellowship, she hopes to connect across Jewish communities and generations, creating work informed by experiences beyond her own.
Rebecca Michelson: Giving Jewish meaning a material form
Stained glass brings color and light into a space. For Rebecca Michelson, it also offers a way to explore Jewish learning, memory and ritual.
Michelson enters the fellowship with a curiosity about Hebrew letters and hiddur mitzvah, the practice of bringing beauty to a mitzvah. Her interests include stained glass objects connected to remembrance and daily Jewish practice, such as yahrzeit candle holders and mezuzot.
Through study, experimentation and community engagement, she will explore how a handmade object can help us express something meaningful, and how the process of making it can become an opportunity for connection.
Sharona Jacobs: Seeing the people behind the stories
Photographer Sharona Jacobs wants to turn her lens toward the People of the Book.
A literary portrait photographer with a background in psychotherapy and Jewish education, Jacobs seeks to feature Jewish writers, poets, scholars and teachers who are interpreting, questioning and reshaping Jewish life.
Her project begins with curiosity about the person behind the work. What have they inherited? What have they chosen to carry forward? How have they made a tradition their own?
Through portraits and conversations, Jacobs hopes to invite viewers to linger, look closely and want to know more. Her community engagement will extend that invitation, creating opportunities for people to share the memories, objects and stories that have shaped their own Jewish identities.
An invitation to create together
Throughout the spring of 2027, these fellows will be working and creating with and in community, bringing their stories and skills to communities across the area, and culminating in a closing celebration in June 2027.
Those encounters are central to the fellowship. A participant’s question, a family’s memory or an unexpected conversation can influence an artist’s next step. In turn, an artist can help someone discover a new way to learn, remember or participate in Jewish life. We hope you’ll meet these fellows and be part of this creative process.
The community engagement schedule can be found here.
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