A new hasidic art gallery grows in Brooklyn and is already bucking stereotypes. Its founder is Jewish Art Salon member Zalmen Glauber.
Can it survive, and what does it suggest about contemporary Orthodox life?
Menachem Wecker’s in-depth article in Mosaic Magazine:
That Ḥasidim wear their faith on their sleeves both places them in anti-Semitic crosshairs and makes them cinematic fodder, as in Mel Brooks’s Rabbi Tuckman from Robin Hood: Men in Tights or Woody Allen’s persona at the Easter dinner in Annie Hall. Their clothing makes for an easy and superficial punchline, but Ḥasidism is far more interesting for the ways it infuses holiness into daily life. That emerges in a particularly compelling manner when hasidic artists tell their own stories.
This is important context surrounding Shtetl, a new art gallery in heavily ḥasidic Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which is now picking up a heavy burden in bringing more ḥasidic art to both Ḥasidim and to the wider public.
