Shemspeed promotes young artists, global Jewish culture

After the first lights of Chanukah melted away, the young artists came out to play. Inside a Gowanus factory space, on the first night of the fifth annual Sephardic Music Festival the walls were painted with Jewish themes, a makeshift fashion runway, and an Orthodox rapper was rhyming for the crowd.

“I saw so much attention being placed on klezmer, and I wanted Sephardic culture to not only be seen as beautiful, but also as hip and fresh,” said Erez “Diwon” Safar, founder of Shemspeed, the Jewish record label sponsoring the event.

While recent Pratt Institute graduate Elke Reva Sudin has an established presence at Jewish art shows, the Chanukah event gave other young emerging artists an opportunity to exhibit their art.

“I often sketch on the subway,” said Pratt graphics design student Ariana Hehmad, 23. “People watch and I give out my card.”

After the artists laid down the basic forms of their murals, the public was invited to contribute to the designs. “It was very unique and fun,” said event volunteer Kseniya Bondarenko, 24. ”I especially enjoyed getting paint all over myself.”

Observing the interaction, filmmaker Saul Sudin, 27, said he took pride in the event. “My wife and I have dedicated our lives to it, to make people conscious of our creative side,” Sudin said.

“The non-Jews already know about Matisyahu and Isaac Mizrahi,” said Y-Love, the hasidic rap artist. “It’s the Jews who think there’s not a lot of creativity within the Jewish community. That’s the lie that needs to be broken.”

Guiding models clad in Hebrew-themed keffiyehs, designer Igor Rozenblyum, 26 spoke of his passion for designing — when he’s not working as an accountant for a modeling agency. “I was inspired to design by the lack of things that I wanted to wear, and to bring out the Jewish culture,” said Rozenblyum

Safar said that the mission behind Shemspeed events is to revive Sephardic culture and promote other non-European Jewish traditions with an infusion of hip-hop, reggae, and collaboration with non-Jewish artists. The festival’s music album is a polyglot mix of Hebrew, Arabic and Ladino.

“Some may know that there’s more to Jewish life than Eastern European culture,” Safar said. “Jews with origins in North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and today’s Jewish African Americans. The Festival gives people access by embracing the entire spectrum of Jewish culture, radically expanding the customary notions of what Jewish looks like.”

The eight-day event is part of a larger mission to promote the multicultural Jewish recording label.

“The end result was really quite beautiful as a complex and colorful composition,” said Elke Reva Sudin. “The mix of people creating art together showed how the arts are a wonderful way to promote collaboration between Jews who would otherwise not encounter one another.”