Project Support Grants (Rimon Arts Fund)

Project Support Grants (Rimon Arts Fund) is sponsored by Minneapolis Jewish Federation (Rimon: The Minnesota Jewish Arts Council). Provides financial support for projects that explore Jewish themes, enhance Jewish identity, and promote Jewish collaboration.

Project Support Grants - MJF Rimon: Art Project Support Grants Through the Rimon Arts Fund, created by the generosity of hundreds of donors in our community, Rimon is proud to provide support for projects that embody Rimon’s mission: exploring Jewish themes, enhancing Jewish identity, and promoting Jewish collaboration. Grants provide financial support up to $3,000 but will not exceed 50% of a project’s budget.

There are typically two application periods during the year. In addition to financial support, Rimon may help accepted proposals by: Securing funding and forming partnerships. Providing marketing and outreach support to Jewish community institutions, arts organizations, artists, and audiences.

Conducting research and planning to connect both artists and art presenters with the Jewish community. RIMON is happy to support the current Arts Project Support Grant Recipients. See below for more information about the artists and their projects.

Current and Past Project Support Grant Recipients Fall 2024 Project Support Grant Recipients Five Project Support grants awarded in the Fall of 2024. Rachel Lieberman: Textiles artist and dancer Rachel Lieberman is developing a piece of performance art entitled “Tzitzit”, the Jewish prayer shawl and symbolic reminder of God’s eternal presence.

Lieberman will conduct both hands-on learning and text-based research to produce community workshops exploring and expanding on the idea of Tzitzit. Tobias Moss: JEWBALAYA is a Twin Cities musical ensemble that blends New Orleans jazz with klezmer and other Jewish musical forms. This year, Moss was given a project support grant to help promote the group’s first studio album, as well as produce two music videos from the album’s tracks.

Sarina Partridge will be creating a new body of work (5-8 songs) inspired by time spent in the remaining old-growth forests and native prairies of Minnesota. Anchored in Patridge’s Jewish identity, these songs will explore the ideas of rootedness and community. The project will wrap up with a public song circle.

Cia Sauter: Cross-cultural artist Sauter has spent the last year creating “Joyful Movement”, a Jewish and African performance utilizing dance, music, and storytelling aimed to empower the community and reflect a spectrum of emotions from grief to joy. The grant will support rehearsal, production, and associated costs for three performances that will be given over the fall and winter of 2024.

Amira Stone: Stone’s documentary film “Angelita”, which began as a student project in the fall of 2021, is the story of the artist’s grandmother, a Mexican woman who emigrated to the US and converted to Judaism in the name of love. The film is in the final stage of editing, and the support grant will allow Stone to market and showcase the film as it proceeds through a year-long film festival tour.

Fall 2023 Project Support Grants Two Project Support grants awarded in the Fall of 2023. Justin Anthony Spenner: An Opera Theatre will present an all-new production of Marc Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock, featuring puppetry inspired by illustrator/music critic Al Hirschfeld at the Heart of the Beast Theatre in Minneapolis, MN.

AOT will collaborate with Community Partners to explore the histories of Marc Blitzstein, Arts & Culture funding in America, artist unions, and the arts economy of MN. Rotem Tamir.

In “Crafting Memories: Making as a Catalyst”, the artist used sculptural objects to explore pre-industrial crafts in contemporary art, and delved into themes of femininity, motherhood, and folklore within the context of Tamir’s Sephardic-Mizrahi Jewish heritage. This grant funded an exhibition of the artist’s work at the Rochester Art Center in 2024.

Spring 2023 Project Support Grants Three Project Support grants awarded in the Spring of 2023. Linda Brooks. The curated exhibition, “Rage.

Remember. Renew. Seven Memorials to Victims of Gun Violence” included Linda’s art installation, “The Tree of Life Synagogue Massacre,” a visual memorial fro the eleven Jewish victims killed at The Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA in 2018, along with the artwork of six other artists working in various media and formats at Form+Content Gallery in Minneapolis.

Bo Nashir : Twin Cities Jewish Community Music Festival The Bo Nashir festival celebrates Jewish music created & performed by local musicians, providing opportunities for our community to share a meaningful and community-building experience by singing together. Everyone is invited to enjoy the events, culminating in an album release concert, which will feature local Jewish musicians and workshop ensembles.

Sarah Cluggish – The Perlman Teaching Museum at Carleton College received a support grant to fund an ambitious, large-scale work by artists Ezra and Noah Benus. Their work “The Brothers Sick”, about their Jewish heritage and lived experiences of disability, formed the centerpiece of the exhibit entitled “For the World Eternal. ” Fall 2022 Project Support Grant Recipients Seven Project Support grants awarded in the Fall of 2022.

Riv Shapiro: Fragments is a 3-5 minute partially-animated short film about ancestral connection, debuted in a community ancestral storytelling ritual in fall/winter 2023/24. Mixing animation and documentary film illuminates the abstract nature of memory, story and connection. The project is interactive and uses the motif of weaving to bridge the film and the ritual in a tangible way, resulting in a new piece of art.

Yoni Reinharz: The 12 Tribes of Hip Hop is a podcast created by Yoni Reinharz of Paper Fools Media and Lonny Goldsmith of Jewfolk Media+Jewfolk Inc. 12 Tribes tells the evolution of Hip Hop culture through the contributions of 12 Jews, who for better or worse, moved the culture forward with seismic impact.

12 Tribes is a mix of narrative, interactive story-telling, and succinct interviews, with political and socio-economic context, and hosted by a Jewish rapper and a Black Activist with Jewish roots. Sarah Rose Weinman: Beasts & Birdheads will be a series of figurative oil paintings inspired by medieval Jewish manuscripts depicting women with bird and animal heads.

The series will incorporate elements of these depictions to explore questions of identity and disguise in self-expression and oppression, particularly around themes of gender and Judaism. Josh Rosard: A weekend-long immersive experience of concerts, workshops, and dancing in the Twin Cities, focused on klezmer, traditional Ashkenazi Jewish dance music from eastern Europe.

Barbara Wiener: Adventures in Visual Storytelling (formerly The New Storymaking Workshop) is a creativity workshop for students 55+ to explore innovative ways to share stories, build community and reinforce resiliency. The workshop is 10 sessions (once each week) via Zoom. Students look at memory and present reality through an imaginative process of filmmaking, cartooning, drawing, stop motion animation, photography and writing.

Barbara Brooks: Six Points Theatre, formerly Minnesota Jewish Theatre Company, seeks funding for the regional premier of TRAYF , a poignant and heartwarming new play. This project will honor Jewish diversity, educate about Jewish practices, foster Jewish identity, and stimulate interfaith and intercultural dialogue through the arts.

Jay Fishman: Funds are being requested to support the performance of internationally acclaimed Jewish Ukrainian pianist, Inna Faliks with the Minnesota Sinfonia as part of the orchestra’s 34th annual Winter Concert Series. Performances will take place in February at Roseville Lutheran Church and at the Basilica of St. Mary.

Also the program will be the premiere of Artistic Director Jay Fishman’s newest work, Contemplation. Jay is also Jewish. Spring 2022 Project Support Grant Recipients Five Project Support grants awarded in April 2022.

Clay artist Zoe Asher Kaplan was awarded funding for Community in Clay: An Exploration of Jewish Diaspora and Place . The artist’s goal is to create tzedakah boxes that express doikayt , resilience in diaspora, and to re-envision the possibilities and impact of ritual objects.

Musician Sarah Larsson was awarded funding to support expenses related to her recording Immigrantke , an album of original Jewish music fusing Yiddish, Eastern European, and Americana styles. Theater director Carolyn Levy received funding to mount a staged reading of Cindy Cooper’s play, I Was a Stranger, Too, at Hamline University’s theater.

The play centers on a Jewish woman in Minnesota, who, in memory of her mother’s experiences escaping the Holocaust, wants to help people seeking asylum in the U.S. today. Visual artist Anita White was awarded funding to create documentary drawings illuminating and affirming the inner stories of elderly individuals who participate in the chaplaincy work of Rabbi Lynn Liberman.

Author Jenna Zark was awarded funding to support post-publication marketing efforts for her new book, Crooked Lines: A Single Mom’s Jewish Journey . The funds will help Zark hire a publicist and to defray expenses related to producing book launch events. Fall 2021 Project Support Grant Recipients Five projects were chosen for support in October 2021.

Minnesota Center for Book Arts was awarded funding to support History in the Making , a year-long fellowship to create programs exploring the historical and contemporary printed word in Jewish culture and to activate MCBA’s newly acquire Hebrew wood type. Z Puppets Rosenschnoz was awarded funding to produce a version of its puppet drama, Through the Narrows .

Sarina Partridge was awarded funding to support the composition of new Jewish vocal music, Songs to Re-Root and Re-Member . Rabbi Lekach-Rosenberg received funding to support the creation and performance of original music for five historic piyutim written in the years immediately following the Jews’ expulsion from the Iberian peninsula in the 15 th century.

Laura Levinson received funding to support the creation and performance of DOYKEIT, a new Yiddishist performance featuring klezmer music, Yiddish folk dance, and themes of Jewish diaspora and the search for home. 2020-2021 Project Support Grant Recipients Five projects were chosen for support in 2020-2021.

The Minnesota Jewish Theatre Company was awarded funding to produce an original online music production, Our Life and Times: A Journey Through Jewish American Song, in the winter of 2021. The MSP Film Society was awarded funding to support a memorial to Al Milgrom, founder of the MSP Film Society, and the launch of the annual Milgrom Tribute which this year honors the great Polish writer/director Agnieszka Holland.

The funds also support the presentation of numerous Jewish-themed films within the MSP International Film Festival in May 2021. Cia Sautter and her company Storydance Theatre were awarded funding for filming and post-production expenses related to her production, The Garden: A Refuge, in the spring of 2021.

Dancer Tamara Nadel was awarded funding to create a professional studio recording of the music score for her dance, Haven’t I Hidden Your Name? Michael Kuhne and Vic Rosenthal were awarded funding to hire an editor to assist with shaping the manuscript of their book-length history of Jewish Community Action, drawing on oral histories and using innovative narrative techniques.

2019-2020 Project Support Grant Recipients Eight projects were chosen for support in 2019-2020. Katya Oicherman will present a series of performances at White Page Gallery in Minneapolis in the spring of 2020, reflecting on her childhood in the Soviet Union using digital animations, storytelling, and soft functional sculptures.

The musical ensemble Incantare will perform “EXILE: Jewish Musicians and Their Contemporaries in Early Modern Europe” in November 2020 along with numerous supplementary educational programs. The Sabes JCC will exhibit a unique selection of little-known works by Rube Goldberg in August 2020 as well as hosting a multi-generational Rube Goldberg-inspired workshop.

Minnesota Hillel received funding to help commission local Jewish artists Allan Shultz and Claude Riedel to design and install a ner tamid , ark, reader’s table, and bimah seat. These beautiful ritual items will be a crown jewel in Hillel’s new chapel. Zachary Goldberg received funding to create fifteen poems for inclusion in his manuscript Karl::Groucho , which explores the dissonances of Jewish American identity.

The Minnesota Sinfonia will feature Israeli soloists Amit Peled and Alon Goldstein in next year’s season as well as new compositions by the Sinfonia’s artist director, Jay Fishman. Brooks Turner was awarded funds to support the exhibition of his art work in Legends and Myths of Ancient Minnesota at the Weisman Museum.

Amanda Minoff will complete her novel, The Child Who Does Not Know How to Ask , and will organize a reading series of Jewish and historically underrepresented authors. Spring 2019 Project Support Grant Recipients Six projects were chosen for support in Rimon’s Spring 2019 grant round.

Writer/producer Gail Rosenblum will produce a teaching curriculum to accompany her work-in-progress, MILKWEED, a feature-length animated film based on Jerry Spinelli’s young adult novel about the Holocaust. Sarah Myers will create story circles for Jewish and Muslim youth in the Twin Cities with collaborator Fardosa Hassan, exploring the commonalities between these two faith communities and confronting the stereotypes about them.

Rebecca Heidenberg will produce a short experimental film that deals with issues around migration anchored in the narrative of philosopher Walter Benjamin’s escape from Nazi-occupied France. Photographer Linda Brooks will publish her first monograph, PROXIMITIES, reflections on art, education, activism.

Hineni will collaborate with artist Denise Tennen on Cheshbon HaNefesh on the Mississippi River: Preparation for Rosh Hashanah through Nature and Art at Crosby Farm Park in St. Paul. Theater director Carolyn Levy will collaborate with playwright Cynthia Cooper in doing research for the development of a play, I Was a Stranger, Too, about Jewish families who respond to the refugee crisis in a personal way.

Jewish Women and Prayer/visual artists​​​​​ Twin Cities Jewish Middle School/ceramic mural​​​​ Sheltering Home Chronicles/visual art​​​ Company of Angels: The Story of Charlotte Salomon/theater​​ Center Playhouse/interactive visual arts workshops​​​​ Voice to Vision/film​​​​​​​​ Olive Bieringa/film​​​​​​​​ Festival of Lights/theater​​​​​​​ Keren Or/photography & writing​​​​​​ Idit Cytron/arts therapy​​​​​​​ Jay Isenberg/architectural installation​​​​​​ Sheltering Home Chronicles/spoken word workshop & photography​ Sabes JCC/Keshet Dance Company​​​​​​ Sylvia Horwitz/photographer​​​​​​​ Jewish Community Relations Council (Laura Zelle)/visual narrative​ Minnesota Film Arts/International film festival​​​​ St.

Paul JCC/Scattered Among the Nations/photography & workshops ​ Keren Or/website development​​​​​​ Bais Yaacov High School for Girls/theater​​​​​ Talmud Torah of Minneapolis/arts education​​​​​​ Intermedia Arts/Spirit in the House performance festival​​​ VocalEssence/choral concert​​​​​​​ Elisa Korentayer/musician​​​​​​​ Stuart Pimsler Dance & Theater/seniors movement workshops​​ Jenna Zark/theater​​​​​​​​ Ran Shapira/photographer​​​​​​​ One Voice Mixed Chorus/concert production & commission​​ Minnesota Jewish Theatre Company/theater production​​​ 3-Minute Egg/video portraits​​​​​​​ Twin Cities Jewish Chorale/choral concert production​​​ Playwrights’ Center/theater workshop​​​​​ Margie Newman/literary reading​​​​​​ VOICE (Sabes JCC)/film production​​​​​​ Minnesota Film Arts/Jewish film series​​​​​ Adath Jeshurun Congregation/visual art exhibition​​​​​​​​​​ Jane Strauss/photography book​​​​​​ Craig Harris/concert production​​​​​​ Miryam Kabakov/film series​​​​​​​ Laura Silver/film production​​​​​​​ Heart of the Beast Theatre/theater production & tour​​​ TVbyGIRLS/film production​​​​​​​ World Without Genocide/conference arts activities​​​​ St.

Paul JCC’s Camp Butwin/art production​​​​​ Hillel at University of Minnesota/art production​​​​ Singers in Accord/choral conductor residency​​​​ Sabes JCC/film and photography exhibit​​​​​ Oratorio Society of Minnesota/choral concert​​​​ Jay Isenberg/architecture affinity group​​​​​ ettyplay, inc./theatre production and residency​​​​ Minnesota Film Arts/film festival​​​​​​ Zorongo Flamenco/dance-theater production​​​​​ Ethan Rowan Pope/visual art school residency​​​​ Minnesota Jewish Theatre Company/theater production​​​ World Without Genocide/documentary film​​​​​ St.

Paul JCC/Twin Cities Jewish Film Festival​​​​ Curt Brown/non-fiction​​​​​​​ Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies/visual art opening event​​ Keren Kroul/painting​​​​​​​​ Rachel Breen & Alison Morse/multimedia​​​​​ Sabes JCC/new initiative/multimedia​​​​​​ Fortune’s Fool Theatre/theater​​​​​​ International Friendship through the Performing Arts/music​​​ Illusion Theater/theater​​​​​​​ Maggie Bearmon Pistner/theater​​​​​​ Jewfolk Media, Inc./arts writing​​​​​​ Twin Cities Jewish Chorale/music​​​​​​ Judith Brin Ingber/theater​​​​​​​ Northern Starz Theatre Company/theater​​​​​ Tamara Nadel/dance​​​​​​​​ Judith Eisner/music​​​​​​​​ Cia Sautter/dance​​​​​​​​ The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra/music​​​​​ Craig Harris/multimedia​​​​​​​ Bakken Trio/music​​​​​​​​ Minnesota Jewish Theatre Company/theater​​​​​ Alan Berks/theater​​​​​​​​ Jewish Community Relations Council/theater​​​​ The Baroque Room/music​​​​​​​ St.

Louis Park Friends of the Arts/music​​​​​ World Without Genocide/film​​​​​​ Max Sparber/theater​​​​​​​​ Z Puppets Rosenschnoz/puppet theater​​​​​ Kyna Levi/visual arts​​​​​​​​ Illusion Theater/theater​​​​​​​ St.

Paul JCC/music​​​​​​​​ Minnesota Sinfonia/music​​​​​​​ Lior Shragg/music education​​​​​​​ Jeff Weinberg/film​​​​​​​​ Twin Cities Jewish Chorale/music​​​​​​ Minnesota Jewish Theatre Company/theater​​​​​ Harmony Theatre Company & School/theater​​​​ Michael Kuhne/non-fiction​​​​​​ Linda Brooks/photography​​​​​​​ Gail Rosenblum/film​​​​​​​​ Sarah Myers/storytelling​​​​​​​ Rebecca Heidenberg/film​​​​​​​ Hineni/visual art​​​​​​​​ Carolyn Levy/theater​​​​​​​​ Katya Oicherman/multimedia performance Eric Lipman/online concert production Incantare/music performance Sabes JCC/visual arts exhibition & workshop Stay up-to-date on programs and opportunities by liking and following our Facebook page!