Shavuot Resource Guide

There’s no single way to be Jewish in America. It’s shaped by migration and memory, tradition, reinvention and stories passed down and stories still being written. This Jewish American Heritage Month, Reboot invites you to explore a range of projects created by artists across our network and in our community, each offering a different lens on Jewish identity, culture and experience. From film and theater to food, digital interpretations and archival storytelling, these works reflect a Jewish culture that is expansive, evolving and deeply rooted in lived experience. This is not one narrative. It’s many. Together, these projects offer a snapshot of Jewish culture as it is being created and redefined today. The annual celebration of Jewish American Heritage Month is organized by the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History. Download Reboot’s guide.

Design professionals Ruth Siegel and Rebecca Garza-Bortman met at a Baby & Me class at the Silver Lake JCC and bonded over new parenthood, creative pursuits and shared loss. Having both lost their fathers, they connected through humor and honesty, jokingly calling themselves “The Dead Dads Club.” Siegel and Bortman saw how hard it was for people losing their parents to navigate grief without tools or tradition. Judaism offers an incredible roadmap for mourning, but most people don’t know where to start. When they searched for something as simple as a yahrzeit candle, everything on the market looked like a repurposed gefilte fish jar. Plastic. Paraffin. Crooked labels. Zero soul. So they designed their own with the concept of “Hiddur Mitzvah”—elevating ritual through beauty, care, and meaning. Their yahrzeit candle, launching through Kickstarted May 8, is sustainable and designed to hold memory, beauty, and tradition. Find out more at meremortals.club.

Tanya Schevitz, Chief Innovation and Communications Officer at Reboot, spoke with writer and star Jill Kargman (New York Times best-selling author and creator of Bravo TV’s Odd Mom Out) about her new film Influenced, a hilariously foul-mouthed, warm-hearted satire of New York City’s Upper East Side “influencer” culture that opens May 8 in theaters. What interested us about this film is that while it’s incredibly funny and sharply observed in its portrayal of influencer culture, status and performative giving, it’s also doing something deeper. It starts in a world that’s about being seen, but over the course of the story, it becomes much more about actually seeing other people and about the responsibility that can come with that. Those ideas are in the world of the film itself, in the B’nai Mitzvah storyline, in the questions it raises about charity culture and obligation. Watch the video interview or read the written Q&A to learn more through our conversation with Kargman.