“During SermonSlam, student performers delivered religion-inspired poems, Torah lessons and personal narratives, all revolving around the night’s theme, ‘The Wandering Jew.’” — Leo Traub
As the crowd trickled into the Charles Carroll Room in Stamp Student Union on Sunday night, junior English and government and politics major Joe Ehrenkrantz looked around the room, surveying the turnout.
Students of different backgrounds milled about, browsing the artwork on display along the room’s perimeter. Men wearing yarmulkes talked to those without. Students, drawn by a mutual interest in art, saved seats for friends, excitedly discussing the upcoming presentation.
The crowd of about 100 people was gathered for SermonSlam, a combined Jewish poetry and literature slam and art show, the first of its kind to be held at this university. During SermonSlam, student performers delivered religion-inspired poems, Torah lessons and personal narratives, all revolving around the night’s theme, “The Wandering Jew.”
It was exactly as Ehrenkrantz had hoped: a diverse union of Jewish-American students, all joined together by art and culture.
The event, co-sponsored by the Student Government Association and Maryland Hillel, was organized primarily by Maryland Jewish Beacon, a student group dedicated to preserving Jewish-American culture. Beacon is “post-denominational,” embracing all forms of Judaism instead of abstaining from denominations altogether, said Ehrenkrantz, the group’s president and co-founder.
The night’s performances, each about five minutes long, made use of different interpretations of the theme. Some students delivered poems discussing the wandering nature of Jewish people throughout history, from biblical times to modern-day Israel and the digital age. Others turned inward, focusing on their own journeys and touching on struggles with identity and religion.
Senior philosophy major and Beacon board member Ezra Ellenberg performed a poem about his own spiritual wandering and finding God. One line of his piece reflected on the last time he saw his dying grandfather, about 18 months ago.
“It was moving for me,” said Ellenberg, who had never performed in a poetry slam before. “It was very personal.”
Beacon wanted to hold a SermonSlam and art show to display “the vibrant artistic abilities of the Jewish community,” Ehrenkrantz said.
Ehrenkrantz and the other eight members of Beacon’s executive board decided on “The Wandering Jew” as the theme for the event because of its capacity for individual interpretation, he said.
“We wanted it to be accessible to every Jew,” Ehrenkrantz said.
The phrase “Wandering Jew” can be used in a derogatory way, so the theme also served to reclaim the term, he said.
Master of ceremonies Jonah Potasznik, a senior philosophy major, kept the crowd engaged throughout the show with lively segments between performers. A Beacon board member, Potasznik encouraged audience members to respond to the question, “What is pluralism?” and to join in a rendition of “Tue Tue Barima,” a Ghanaian children’s song sung in a round like “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.”
“The audience was super into it, which is something you always want as a performer,” Potasznik said.
“The crowd was really digging it,” said senior Arabic studies and government and politics major Molly Bernstein, who attended the show to support her friends. “They were engaged. They were asking themselves questions. They were thinking in an entirely new way about what it means to be Jewish and what it means to be American.”
Ben Eichberg, a senior sociology major, was most intrigued by the diversity of the performers’ journeys through spirituality.
“[Junior aerospace engineering major] Josh Leviton’s description of rebelling from God and then finding his place within Judaism … was really inspiring,” Eichberg said.
The student artwork, also revolving around the theme of “The Wandering Jew,” stood on easels and pedestals around the room, with exhibit labels positioned on the wall next to their respective pieces. For the first 20 minutes, before the performances began, SermonSlam attendees walked among the sculptures, photos and drawings, examining each piece and contemplating its meaning.
On display was senior Jewish studies major Melanie Oppenheimer’s portrait of Linor Abargil, an Israeli woman who, less than two months after being raped, won the 1998 Miss World beauty pageant.
“She set it out as her mission to spread awareness of domestic violence and sexual assault around the world,” Oppenheimer said. “She wandered around the world literally to spread the message against sexual assault.”
With the artists’ permission, Beacon hopes to continue displaying the artwork through a showcase in Hillel’s lobby, Ehrenkrantz said, to further the discussion of Jewish-American culture.
Started in October by David Zvi Kalman, a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania, SermonSlams are held every few weeks and will take place in about 20 cities across the country this year.
“The art show was amazing, and the performances themselves were consistently incredibly strong and remarkably personal,” said Kalman, who attended Sunday night’s performance at Stamp.
Beacon soon will resume its schedule of Saturday afternoon philosophical discussions on McKeldin Mall, and Ehrenkrantz hopes to organize more Jewish-American cultural events like the SermonSlam in the future, he said.
“Slam poetry: That’s hip-hop. That’s America,” he said.
