Maya Benton
Curator at the International Center of Photography
Maya Benton is a curator at the International Center of Photography in New York, where she has worked since 2008. She has curated numerous traveling exhibitions, lectures widely, and is a frequent contributor to magazines and museum catalogs, where she writes about museums, photography, Israeli art, and Jewish visual and material culture.
Maya’s 2013 exhibition, Roman Vishniac Rediscovered, is traveling internationally through 2022. The show was heralded as a “revelation” by The New Yorker, ARTnews, TIME, The Financial Times and The Economist, and was praised in more than 300 international press outlets. The catalogue was named Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award, and the Krauszna-Krause Book Award, Europe’s top prize for photography books. She is also the author of the French monograph, Roman Vishniac. Her 2011 exhibition, Ruth Gruber: Photojournalist, is traveling through 2018.
Maya is organized Southern Rites, a traveling exhibition of photographer Gillian Laub’s contemporary images of racially segregated proms and homecoming rituals in the American South. Southern Rites examinesd the legacy of segregation and racially motivated violence through the experiences of African American teenagers.
She is a graduate of Brown University, Harvard University and the Courtauld Institute of Art in London.
Eddy Portnoy
Professor and Reboot Faculty
Eddy Portnoy is a historian of unusual Jewish phenomena. His 2017 book, Bad Rabbi and Other Strange but True Stories from the Yiddish Press, was described by the New York Times as “a succession of outlandish misadventures, a wild panorama populated by an astonishing array of characters.” An occasional contributor to the Forward and Tablet Magazine, his headier publications can be found in numerous academic journals. He currently serves as Academic Advisor and Director of Exhibitions at the YIVO Institute, where his exhibits, Yiddish Fight Club and Jews in Space, among others, have won plaudits from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Forward, Tablet, and Vice.
Jessica Chaffin
Actress, comedian, and writer
Jessica Chaffin is a writer/performer, Emmy-Nominated Consulting Producer on HBO’s Hacks, and host of the popular podcast ASK RONNA.
Dan Crane
Host of The Kibitz
Dan Crane is a journalist, musician, Jew (lax, loves lox) and retired professional air-guitarist. He writes about culture and travel for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, California Sunday, Slate, and numerous other publications. He’s the author of “To Air is Human” and stars in the documentary, Air Guitar Nation.
