Local Jewish artists confront rising antisemitism since Oct. 7
"If you’re Jewish, and you’re pro-Israel, which makes you a Zionist, you’re somehow not welcome in these spaces.”
If you visit artist Yafa Negrete’s Instagram page, you’ll see vivid landscape paintings, lovely watercolor flowers and several compelling portraits in black pencil and pastel.
What you won’t see on her latest portrait post — a work in progress of a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen who was murdered and abducted on Oct. 7 by Hamas terrorists— is the name of the subject.
Itay Chen, 19, was an Israel Defense Forces soldier. His body remains in Gaza.
“I actually follow an account of a person that makes portraits of hostages, and I have seen the [antisemitic] comments on their posts,” she said. “Some of them are very awful. I don’t want those comments to be on my account.”
As antisemitism proliferates among some far-left progressives in Pittsburgh, the art world is far from immune. The Chronicle spoke with several local artists who say they are disgusted with the antisemitic social media posts and comments coming from many of their colleagues since Oct. 7. Some agreed to speak only anonymously, for fear of retribution.
Sara (a pseudonym), who is involved in the local arts scene and considers herself a Zionist, said the anti-Israel rhetoric and activism of some fellow artists has caused her to think twice before attending arts events.
“I’m tired of thinking about going to an event and having to figure out if it’s going to be one of these pro-Palestinian/Gaza fundraising events,” Sara said. “I’m not anti-Palestinian, but there’s no gray in a lot of the thinking that I’m seeing. There’s a lot of black and white. It’s you’re either pro- Palestinian or you’re a Zionist. And to them ‘Zionist’ means — I’ve even seen it posted like, white supremacist, a Jewish white supremacist. There’s no understanding that ‘Zionist’ means supporting Israel’s right to exist…. And if you’re Jewish, and you’re pro-Israel, which makes you a Zionist, you’re somehow not welcome in these spaces.”
Online posts by her peers, Sara said, often contain “the misuse of words, things that aren’t true” — words like “apartheid,” “genocide” and “the resistance.”
“If you try to bring up the concept of, ‘Don’t say “Globalize the intifada,”’ they tell you, that’s not what it means,” Sara said. “You know, there’s a lot of gaslighting. It’s been uncomfortable to try to figure out what events to go to because I know that I’m not welcome.”
She knows of other Jews in the arts community who feel the same way.
“Other Jews have felt uncomfortable,” Sara said. “They feel like they’ve been slighted in conversations. They feel like they’re getting sideways glances.”
While Sara doesn’t think Jews are necessarily being blacklisted in the local arts community, “I don’t think they’re being welcomed,” she said, “and that in itself is a way of pushing people away.”
Changing course
Local artist Paula Garrick Klein — who is Jewish, but whose art usually does not depict Jewish subjects — said she has not felt threatened, or been blacklisted. But she is choosing to spend her time differently than she has in the past. Instead of frequenting art openings, she wants “to be more around Jewish people and in Jewish spaces,” she said. “And I think that’s made me a lot more comfortable.”
Klein has seen some of her fellow artists condemn Israel on social media. And she has had “some very uncomfortable conversations” with progressive friends, she said.
“I used to think I was progressive,” Klein said, “but I don’t want to be part of that label anymore, because of the way they’ve condemned Israel from the day after [Oct. 7]. I mean, they didn’t even wait — especially the politicians, the progressive politicians.”
Klein is immersing herself in “understanding the history of the region,” she said, “because that’s how I make myself more comfortable understanding what’s going on and what has gone on. So I’ve read some books, and they’ve really exposed a lot of the of the lies that the media and academia are expressing, and it makes me very angry, and I want to tell people, but I don’t know how. I don’t know how to tell people that their understanding of the situation is really wrong and biased, and they’ve been lied to. And so I find myself in very uncomfortable conversations with people that I like, and then I find myself not wanting to talk to them anymore.”
A longstanding bias
Becky (a pseudonym), a visual artist of Moroccan and Israeli descent, said that the antisemitism she’s seen in the arts community began before Oct. 7. While her Moroccan identity has been embraced, she said, her Israeli identity has been rejected.
“It was just a really strange acceptance of, like, that side of me is accepted, but not this side,” she said.
Much of Becky’s art is Jewish-themed. Her peers know that she is Jewish and that she speaks Hebrew.
After getting into a discussion with another artist about Oct. 7, Becky said, he posted on social media that “anyone who was ‘white-facing’ has no right to comment or say anything about what happened or is happening as a resistance in Palestine.”
“I couldn’t not take that really personally,” Becky said. “And it’s not the first time in the arts community that I’ve been called ‘white-faced,’ or that’s been used against me.
“Having that said to me, and being only accepted for one side of me like that, I felt shut out, like that my voice doesn’t matter — just like all the other Jews who are speaking out against Oct. 7 are in shock,” she said. “You know, we had like, one day, maybe 24 hours, that there was sympathy, and then it was just like, ‘No, this didn’t happen.’ Everything went to ‘This is the resistance.’”
Becky has been snubbed at various arts events, she said, which she attributes to her support for Israel. She has created a lot of art inspired by Oct. 7, which she posts on Instagram, where she says a lot of anti-Israel rhetoric spreads.
Heartbroken — and angry
Negrete, who works as a graphic designer at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh, grew up in Mexico and met her husband on Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak, one of the kibbutzim attacked on Oct. 7. Because of her connection to the kibbutz, she said, she felt “very overwhelmed by the situation.”
“As an artist,” she said, “I didn’t know what to what to do with these emotions. And then I said, ‘OK, I can draw portraits.’”
She is planning on having the finished portrait of Chen delivered to his family in Israel.
Still, she is careful of what she posts on social media and has blocked some friends in the arts community because of blatantly antisemitic posts. One of those posts was a cartoon depicting an Israel Defense Forces soldier wearing a Nazi armband. Another was a definition of the word “Israeled,” with the following example: “In a restaurant, someone asked to share my table. I agreed. After a moment, he asked me to leave because he has a meeting! I’ve been israeled.”
Negrete said she has not been physically threatened and hasn’t encountered any hostility to art she has posted about Judaism. But, she said, the anti-Israel posts from people in the arts community “broke my heart.”
Sara didn’t say she was heartbroken. Instead, she said she is “very angry.”
“I’ve been an ally for everyone,” she said. “I understand Black Lives Matter and I’ve never told a Black person what is or isn’t racist. I’m an extremely huge LGBTQ ally, and I’ve never told anyone what is or isn’t homophobic. And yet I have been told by multiple people of those groups that I’m wrong, and that it’s not antisemitic and it’s not anti-Jewish. And I can’t understand that. I don’t get why you get to tell me that.”
Sara has not removed herself from the arts community, she said, but she has “pulled back from a lot. I’m not as involved as I was in some of the arts community events because I decided that my sanity was important and I could not argue with these people.”
When asked if she is a progressive, Sara said, “I was. I don’t know if I am now.” PJC
Toby Tabachnick can be reached at ttabachnick@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.
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