PHOTO: The Zamru Ensemble. (Courtesy Art/Lab)

Art/Lab is kicking off summer with a pair of early June events cultivating Jewish culture and artistic expression in Portland and beyond.

The group will host its Exhibition Opening + Music, Poetry, Prose at the Eastside Jewish Commons Thursday, June 4 at 6:30 pm. The opening kicks off the fourth group exhibition for Art/Lab’s annual fellowship cohort, which has been meeting together for nine months to study Jewish texts, dialogue and create work centered on this year’s theme: Zachor (remember).

“We have drawn from biblical texts, more contemporary texts, Jewish thought, academics and rabbinic thinkers, all kinds of people who have written about [memory],” Art/Lab Director Shoshana Gugenheim Kedem said.

In addition to welcoming a new cohort of artists for the year – writer Rachel Attias, writer Rachel Baskind, photographer Zalmy Berkowitz, photographer Brenda Bingham, visual and performance artist Stashia Cabral, writer Andrew Cohen, performance artist Julie Hammond, interdisciplinary artist Stephen Lorber and musician David Rosman – the program has also welcomed new teachers, such as Alicia Jo Rabins and Dr. Yosef Rosen, to the program’s study sessions in addition to Art/Lab co-founder Rabbi Josh Rose. The artists in this year’s cohort represent a diversity of Jewish expression that would likely be impossible to find under one roof anywhere else in Portland – and many other locales.

“Our artists are across the spectrum from very observant to totally secular and everything in between. I always say the same thing about their relationship to Israel, and that’s a really unusual and exciting point of interest about this fellowship, is that we come from such diverse backgrounds, politically, socially, religiously, and we create this really beautiful community that supports and nurtures each other along the way, because art is the connecting factor here,” Gugenheim Kedem said. “They’re never at odds with each other; there’s space for everyone. I think it’s one of the most magical things about Art/Lab.”

The event, which is free but requires preregistration, begins in the EJC’s gallery, where the visual work the cohort has created will be on display through July, before moving to a performance for those artists whose work is best expressed in that format. What that work looks and sounds like is still being decided, in some cases.

“Some of the work is in progress. It’s hard to put a time frame on work from start to finish. So, we really encourage artists, if they have work in progress, that can also be shown. People actually really enjoy seeing works in progress, how an artist’s work unfolds,” Gugenheim Kedem said.

Days later, Art/Lab will welcome the Zamru Ensemble from Israel to the EJC for “Jerusalem Sound | Portland Night” Tuesday, June 9, at 8 pm. The Zamru Ensemble is a musical group formed by the Fuchsburg Jerusalem Center, who are co-sponsoring the event along with the Conservative Movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, Congregations Neveh Shalom and Shaarie Torah, Nehama Jewish Chaplain Services, Kesher HaMayim and the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland.

“This is a group of musicians who specialize in performing contemporary, interesting, engaging kinds of spiritual Jewish music,” Fuchsburg Jerusalem Center CEO Dr. Stephen Arnoff explained. “It’s also a teaching group which helps communities think about how they use music in their own spiritual endeavors. Includes new melodies, but also different ways of thinking about what it means to bring music and spirituality deeper into community.”

The ensemble will be working with a cohort of Portlanders in a residency format for the two days surrounding their performance at EJC, which those Portland musicians will be a part of. The local musicians’ cohort was selected by the sponsoring organizations.

“Each of those communities are bringing people inside the community because the idea is that they’re already integrated and they will help lift up and build the musical capacity and relationships and presence in those spiritual, religious places,” Gugenheim Kedem said.

The Zamru Ensemble consists of Dov Weider, Yaara Samina, Talia Erdal, Amitai Maan and Itamar Zakai. Their sound is a blend of the full spectrum of traditional Jewish music, from Sephardic songs to Hasidic melodies, with contemporary rhythm, instrumentation and vocal sounds.

“It is a combination of many strands of Jewish culture, both traditional and contemporary, which is something that’s happening in Israel in a  very interesting way, and also in North America,” Arnoff explained. “This is a kind of music that draws on a pool of tradition. It’s meant to be sung in a community experience, rather than performed for a community.”

The ensemble is just one of many musical programs the Fuchsburg Jerusalem Center hosts under the name Zamru, which translates from Hebrew to “Let us sing.” These programs expanded dramatically across Israel, and then to North America, following Oct. 7. The center already has deep connections with Art/Lab thanks to the latter’s selection to the Jerusalem Biennale, so when the Zamru Ensemble was organizing a West Coast tour, Portland became a natural stop.

“We felt that there was so much brokenness and upset and loss in our part of the world, certainly not limited to Israelis, and that music and prayer which is pluralistic but deep, which is authentic but accessible, is a way to bring people together without politics, without having to take a side, without having to pick up an armament other than an instrument or your voice,” Arnoff said of Zamru’s expansion post-Oct. 7, “and in that sense, while we are a proudly Zionist institution and deeply embedded in human rights at the same time, which we think is essential to Zionism, we see music and prayer as being one of the best ways to counter the violence and the misunderstanding that has defined the region in so many places around the world.”

Tickets for the Zamru Ensemble’s June 9 performance are available on a $12-18 sliding scale and can be purchased at artlabpdx.org.