Community Engagement: Lipinsky Family San Diego Jewish Arts Festival
San Diego Repertory Theatre’s JFEST (Lipinsky Family San Diego Jewish Arts Festival)
https://www.sdrep.org/jfest
The San Diego Repertory Theatre’s JFEST (Lipinsky Family San Diego Jewish Arts Festival) 2020 celebrated 27 years of performances exploring Jewish history, people and ideas in virtuoso music, theatre, dance, and fine arts. Each year JFEST includes new programs and collaborations which start in the Festival and are then subsequently performed in venues throughout San Diego and the country. JFEST partners with arts, Jewish, and social organizations to presents events in theatres, libraries, and schools throughout San Diego and North County. In 2020, virtual events included the Klezmer Summit, new work by Hershey Felder, Women of Valor, and a music and theatre piece based on Yale Strom’s A Wandering Feast. A virtual summer music series featured virtual performances by musicians from multiple genres and regions of the world.
Founding Artistic Director Todd Salovey notes, “There is so much need now for artistic performances that create community, that bring people together to explore, feel, learn, mourn, and celebrate. I’m so excited that we will begin presenting programs online.”
“In these uncertain times, it is important, now more than ever, to cultivate and sustain a dynamic artistic Jewish future,” said Festival Associate Producer Ali Viterbi. “This year’s line-up for the Lipinsky Family San Diego Jewish Arts Festival allows us to be together (even virtually) in community, and reflect on the diversity and vibrancy of the contemporary Jewish identity, and our relationships to ourselves and each other.”
Stacie and Jeff Cook understand commitment. They live it.
Black, Jewish and Queer. These three identities weave the fabric of who I am, but it took a long time to believe that they could exist together.
Lee and Toni Leichtag established the Leichtag Foundation in 1991 following the sale of their business. Lee and Toni were lifelong entrepreneurs with a passion for innovation and for supporting talent. They believed that only with big risk comes big reward. Both born to families in poverty, Toni to a single mother, they strongly believed in helping those most in need and most vulnerable in our community. While they supported many causes, their strongest support was for young children and the elderly, two demographics who particularly lack voice in our society.
Lifelong Baltimoreans, Rabbi George and Alison Wielechowski and their sons, 11-year-old Lennon and 9-year-old Gideon, are more than pursuing the good life in Southern California. Having moved to San Diego more than three years ago, they are fulfilling a lifelong dream.
You would think that as the executive director of San Diego LGBT Pride, Fernando Zweifach López Jr., who uses the pronoun they, has done all the coming out they possibly can. A queer, non-binary individual who has worked for many years on civil rights issues, López also speaks openly and often about their father’s family, Mexican-American migrant workers who tilled the fields of rural California.