Project Kesher: Women and Jewish Renaissance in Ukraine

Joan Roth, a long time supporter and friend to Project Kesher, is an internationally renowned and award-winning photographer whose work has been published and exhibited throughout the world. Her passion lies in visually conveying the grandeur of ordinary women. Roth traveled worldwide to publish Jewish Women: A World of Tradition and Change, the first book about Jewish women - including cultures such as Ethiopia, India, and Yemen - by a Jewish woman photographer. She also photographed women in Baltimore and Seattle for the Jewish Women's Archive's oral history project, Weaving Women's Words.

Roth's most recent body of work illustrates the collective voices of the women that make Project Kesher's grassroots work and the rebirth of Jewish life in the CIS so powerful. The photographs document women, who through the efforts of Project Kesher, have taken on social activism and human rights advocacy leadership roles in their communities including breast cancer and domestic violence awareness as well been engaged in Jewish learning.  

In Appreciation: The Joan Roth photo exhibit has been made possible through the generous support of the Reba Judith Sandler Foundation.

Project Kesher thanks our friends Joan Roth and Hebrew Union College for generously partnering with us in this exhibit and for all the guidance and support their staff has provided.

Internationally acclaimed photographer Joan Roth presents her most recent body of work: her 2007 photo-essay portraying Jewish women in the Commonwealth of Independent States of the Former Soviet Union (CIS) who have reclaimed their Jewish heritage and promoted social activism through the work of Project Kesher. Roth's photographs capture the empowerment of ordinary women who are creating extraordinary change in their own lives and in the lives of their communities. Through Project Kesher, these women have gained the knowledge and leadership skills to advance Jewish learning and tackle health and social ills, including breast cancer, HIV/AIDS, domestic violence, and human trafficking, affecting the larger society.

"I have been photographing Jewish women around the world for many years", says Joan Roth. "Project Kesher women are enriched and empowered in ways I hadn't dreamed. In a lot of ways, they've become a model for what we should all be doing."

The exhibition is at the Citicorp Center and runs from June 2 - June 30, 2008

At the HUC-JIR Museum, One West 4th Street, New York, NY

On View: September 4, 2007 - January 27, 2008
Artist's Reception: Thursday, October 11, 2007, 6:00-8:00 PM.
Vodka tasting 6:30 PM, Program 7:00 PM

This exhibition grows out of Joan Roth's longstanding commitment to the mission and goals of Project Kesher. In 1994, she documented Project Kesher's first International Conference of Jewish Women in Kyiv, Ukraine, which was the catalyst for the creation of a women's network throughout the Commonwealth of Independent States of the former Soviet Union (CIS). In 2006, she returned during 16 Days to End Domestic Violence, a worldwide campaign that Project Kesher leaders implemented throughout the CIS, convening roundtables, organizing rallies, establishing hotlines, and spotlighting this issue in public discussions and in schoolrooms. Traveling to the cities of Rovno, Lvyv, Lutsk, Kamenets-Podolskiy, Khmelnitskiy, and Kyiv in Ukraine, Roth met with Project Kesher activists and their local partners, to capture their lives and activism on film.

Also at the Ukranian Institute.

Joan's photographs are also part of the group exhibit "Ethiopia: A View at the Millennium," in the Art Gallery at the Adam Clayton Jr. State Building, 63 W125th St, 2nd Fl., Harlem, NY, from June 10 - July 1, 2008, sponsored by the Beta Israel of North America (BINA), an Ethiopian Jewish organization.

Image © Tadias Magazine