In early May, the Mandel Program for Leadership in Jewish Culture held an in-depth seminar on the relationship between culture, place, and identity, and explored the perception of place in the context of urban space and Jewish identities. The seminar was held in Bnei Brak and Tel Aviv – two urban locations that are geographically very close but far apart in almost every other sense. The purpose of juxtaposing these two cities was not to create a simplistic comparison between “Haredi” and “secular” or between “traditional” and “modern,” but to open space for complex inquiry into the way place creates culture, the way culture shapes place, and the kind of cultural leadership that is required to navigate the tension between them.

The seminar was held within the program’s study section on Jewish cultures, which is part of the effort to develop a broad leadership awareness among the fellows – one that goes beyond running cultural institutions or leading artistic projects, and seeks a deep understanding of the social, identity-based, political, and aesthetic forces that shape the cultural field in Israel. The seminar addressed a central question of the program: How does cultural leadership operate in a reality of multiple communities, languages, borders, memories, and pain – and how can it maintain complexity without rushing to reduce these diverse stories to a single story?

The seminar began at Beit Bagno Community Center in Bnei Brak with a conversation with Moshe Morgenstern, deputy mayor of Bnei Brak for the Degel Hatorah party, who represents a strand of modern Haredi Jews who wish to integrate into mainstream Israeli society. He spoke about the aspirations and challenges he faces as an exceptional representative of this community – a working man who serves in the army reserves and sends his children to public schools without leaving the Haredi world – as well as about his choice to work for change from within as a member of the Degel Hatorah party, in the belief that major social change in a conservative community can only happen gradually.

The group then met with program graduate Henya Brodbeker, a Haredi filmmaker who documented her departure from Haredi society in her search for a school for her son. She spoke about life as a woman with a Haredi identity who lives outside the Haredi community, as well as about her social struggle, which is driven by art.

To balance this impression of modernity and integration, the group met with Rabbi Kahaneman – one of the heads of Ponevezh Yeshiva and the son of its founder – who presented the separatist Haredi position: one that rejects change, maintains firm boundaries, and fears engagement with the broader public. After the meeting, the group went on a walking tour of Bnei Brak led by fellow Aaron Rabinowitz, Haredi affairs correspondent for Haaretz and himself a member of the Haredi community, who was a key partner in planning the day. The tour revealed the local urban culture: lively and neglected, bustling yet walkable, and filled with creative building-code violations and architectural inventions that are simultaneously spectacular and dangerous.

From the heart of Haredi culture, the group moved to the heart of Hebrew culture. After stopping in Jaffa, they walked to south Tel Aviv for an evening talk about Hebrew hip-hop with musicians Yossi Fein and Eden Derso, which was facilitated by fellow From the heart of Haredi culture, the group moved to the heart of Hebrew culture. After stopping in Jaffa, they walked to south Tel Aviv for an evening talk about Hebrew hip-hop with musicians Yossi Fein and Eden Derso, which was facilitated by fellow Rom Atik. Yossi Fein is a veteran and pioneer of Israeli hip-hop production, while Eden Derso is a young rapper and member of Israel’s Ethiopian community. Together they shared their experience “translating” a musical style with roots in the United States, Jamaica, and Africa into an Israeli-Hebrew idiom, presenting multicultural influences alongside unique local developments in the genre.

On the second day, the seminar turned to Tel Aviv. The group began at Alma College – emblematic of Hebrew culture in Tel Aviv – where Mandel faculty member and Alma founder Dr. Ruth Calderon spoke about the vision of secular Jewish renewal and its challenges. This was followed by a lecture about Tel Aviv as an ideology by faculty member Dr. Jeremy Fogel, and a conversation on the city as a Hebrew literary space with program graduate Dr. Julia Fermentto-Tzaisler, an author and the director of the Jerusalem International Writers Festival, and program fellow Yuval Plotkin, a literary critic.

After wandering the city and lunching at the Carmel Market, the seminar concluded with visits to significant sites in the “White City” of Tel Aviv. Program fellow and architect Layla Moallem guided the group through the urban architecture exhibit at Liebling Haus. The group then visited Bialik Square and met with fellow journalist Hilo Glazer at the Rubin Museum, the former home of artist Reuven Rubin. Hilo has spent years covering and researching Israel’s LGBTQ community, for which Tel Aviv serves as a hub. He spoke about his incisive investigations into its neglected and dangerous fringes.

The seminar thus moved between the shtetl of Bnei Brak and the “shte-tel” of Tel Aviv; between the modern Haredi world and the separatist Haredi world; between Haredi cinema and protest art; between Hebrew hip-hop and secular Jewish renewal; between a white architectural façade and a complex social underbelly. Yet the goal was not to create a colorful mosaic. The aim was to train the fellows in a vital leadership skill: to see a place in all its layers, to listen to contradictory voices without dismissing them, to understand that culture is created from tension, and to recognize that cultural leadership in Israel cannot operate from a flat, comfortable, or one-sided position.

For the Mandel Program for Leadership in Jewish Culture, the seminar is a clear example of a pedagogy that seeks to connect intellectual learning, sensory experience, human encounter, and critical engagement with reality. The fellows learn about culture not only through texts, lectures, and institutions, but also by encountering culture where it happens: on the streets, in community institutions, religious study halls (batei midrash), music centers, markets, town squares, yeshiva settings, architectural spaces, and conversations with those who create, interpret, and challenge it.

This kind of seminar illustrates the unique value of the Mandel Institute’s programs: they develop leadership built not only around skills but also around awareness. Cultural leaders must understand the fields in which they operate, the histories that shape them, the communities they seek to serve, and the tensions within which they wish to effect change. The seminar in Bnei Brak and Tel Aviv enabled the fellows to encounter Israel as a complex, contradictory, and vibrant cultural space – and to ask, from within it, what the responsibility of a cultural leader is today.

The seminar was thus not merely a visit to two cities. It was an in-depth exercise in cultural leadership: how to hold, at the same time, the complexity of unity and difference, sacred and profane, boundary and openness, tradition and renewal, center and fringe, beauty and blemish. It expressed the Mandel Institute’s dedication to developing leaders capable of operating in the Jewish and Israeli cultural world with broad understanding, high sensitivity, intellectual courage, and a profound commitment to the society in which they live and work.