Community, Jewish Voice Project

How The Jewish Voice Project Was Born

It started as a way to save my soul.

I was a busy, working Hollywood screenwriter. That'll kill anyone's soul!

Not because the town is soulless.

But because of the natural ups and downs of the business.

I spent a full year developing an animated film at Disney, pouring my heart and soul into it. An executive moves to a new studio and the whole project is shelved.

Ouch.

Another film of mine is fiddled with by the director and the core of the movie's theme is lost. Ouch.

The head of Lifetime Network tells my partner and I that our script is so good that it reminds her of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur - who happen to my writing gods. Then she says, "it's too smart for our audience."

Ouch!!!!!

So I founded a course called "Personal Midrash" at what is now The American Jewish University, where we drew relevant and provocative themes from the weekly parsha.

I have always loved creative writing and knew the power of it, but nothing prepared me for what happened in that workshop.

The tears, the laughter, the revelations - the way the men and women in the room bonded. It became the highlight of my week, every week.

Then Came October 7

The Jewish Voice Project was reborn in 2026 as a simple, urgent question: how, amid all the noise and vitriol filling the streets and web, can everyday Jewish men and women hear and love their own inner voices?

How could I help them find their voice —unfiltered, diverse, and deeply human—at a moment when misunderstanding, misinformation and libels feel louder than truth?

I started with a writing workshop. My mission is to grow this into a movement.

It Started With a Sense of Silence

The real stories of who we are are getting swamped with lies.

Our true stories - how we live, how we love, how we show up in the world - have gone missing from the public conversation.

You may feel that your REALITY has been either reduced to headlines or erased entirely. You, like so many of us, see horrifying caricatures instead of living people, slogans instead of truth or nuance and debates that aren't debates at all - but mud-slinging, stupidity and shouting without any real interest in what's real.

What happens your life or mine when the air gets stuffed with lies and calumnies?

What happens to your lived experience, your memory, your vulnerability, your resilience?

That silence in so many Jewish men and women, who don't want to spend their lives shouting at people who are not even listening, who have so much to say about love, joy, identity, fear, hope, and belonging— is where the Jewish Voice Project began its new life..

From Private Conversations to a Shared Calling

We founded the Jewish Voice Project, not looking to create an institution, but rather a platform and a community for people to express and connect.

We know what happens, as more and more people take a moment out of their week and join us to write - elders speak about memory and survival. Young adults share the bizarre gap between online discourse and real-life friendships. Parents talk about raising children in a world that suddenly feels less safe.

Again and again, one theme emerges: these stories needed to be heard beyond the room.

Intimate circles of listening became the foundation for a broader, public-facing project.

Naming the Vision: A Project of Voices, Not Answers

I want to be clear about something.

This community is about you.

This is not a platform that speaks for Jews, but rather a space where you as a Jewish human - or as an ally who is Jewish adjacent - can speak for yourself.

The word “Project” was chosen deliberately. It signaled something living and in progress, a commitment to keep listening, keep learning, and keep making room for new perspectives.

“Voice” captured what was missing most. What we aim to liberate is your authentic voice.

The Jewish Voice Project was born from the belief that when real people share real stories, it becomes harder to flatten us into stereotypes.

Turning a Moment Into a Movement

What began with a simple workshop has evolved into a wider aspiration: invite you in, ask open questions, supply you with thoughful writing prompts, listen without interruption, and then allow you to craft and share your writing in a safe and supportive community.

The goal: to humanize and empower a community too much spoken about and not spoken from.

The Jewish Voice Project grew from a sense of urgency, but it is sustained by something quieter: the belief that dignity lives in the details of personal experience.

By carefully capturing and sharing those details, we offer our participants a different kind of response to a noisy world, one rooted in depth, honesty, and the courage to show up and speak aloud as fully and spectacularly human.

A Beginning, Not a Finished Story

Today, when people encounter the Jewish Voice Project, they see interviews, reflections, and shared stories. But behind every recording is that original impulse: to make space for Jewish voices that are complex, vulnerable, and real. In that sense, the project is still being born every time someone chooses to sit down, take a breath, and say, “This is my story.”

To learn more, receive new prompts, inspiration and invitations to our workshops and programs, please stay in touch through our weekly newsletter here -- or jump in and come join our weekly writing workshop here.