Four friends gather around a table as a waiter serves a tray of pastrami sandwiches; a Torah scroll is passed from grandfather to father and son, marking a bar mitzvah; three grandmothers sit on lawn chairs outside of a brownstone, watching passersby on a summer night.

These candid glimpses of ordinary American Jewish life, part of a new art exhibition, “Golden Age: Nostalgia for the American Jewish Century” — currently on display at the Altneu, an Upper East Side Orthodox synagogue — evoke a bygone era, before today’s historic rise in antisemitism.

“I grew up in the golden age [of North American Jewry], the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. It was an easy time,” Jacqueline Kott-Wolle, one of the seven artists whose work is highlighted in the exhibit, told Jewish Insider on Wednesday at an event to mark the gallery’s opening. “My memories of growing up Jewish [in Toronto] were very positive. Everybody was Jewish — even the people at my high school who weren’t Jewish were Jewish. It was a good time to be alive. [Today,] antisemitism slammed into us so hard. It shocked us.” 

Kott-Wolle, who is based in Highland Park, Ill., and is the daughter of Holocaust survivors, said her oil paintings “represent the height of that time period, when we were very comfortable being Jewish.” The artwork, she said, evokes memories of the “Golden Age of American Jews,” which a 2024 piece in The Atlantic claimed is ending due to antisemitism stemming from both the left and right. 

In addition to her six paintings displayed in the exhibit, Kott-Wolle has a larger exhibit called “Growing Up Jewish – Art and Storytelling.” The series of 40 paintings illustrates five generations of her family photos, which have been exhibited in the Maltz Museum in Cleveland and Houston Holocaust Museum. 

“[The paintings] are playful and fun, and they make us feel a little more nostalgic for something that we think or worry might be lost,” she told JI, noting that displaying her work in a synagogue is a unique experience.  

“The paintings resonate everywhere, but differently,” she said. “I find Jewish audiences recognize it immediately. I can’t tell you how many times someone will come up to me and say, ‘I love this painting and how come my mom is in it?’”

In more mainstream settings, her art has also been widely embraced, she said. “It’s like our Jewish faces have been beaming into people’s TV screens forever. Our faces are familiar, so non-Jewish audiences also respond, but in a different way. Still in a very loving and receptive way.”  

But amid the highest levels of antisemitism seen in generations following the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza, many Jewish and Israeli artists no longer feel their work is welcome in non-Jewish spaces. Located in the basement of the Altneu synagogue — a Tudor Revival townhouse on East 70th Street —  the new exhibit directly responds to that exclusion, according to curator Anne-Marie Helwaser and co-chairs Diana Gordon and Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt, who is also Altneu’s rebbetzin.

“At a moment when openly Jewish artists are facing growing barriers in cultural spaces, we are doubling down on Jewish creativity by giving space and visibility to strongly Jewish [and] Israeli emerging art, in the heart of the Upper East Side,” said Chizhik-Goldschmidt who founded Altneu in 2022 together with her husband, Rabbi Benjamin Goldschmidt.

“On a deeper level, there is a spiritual component too. Visual arts is a powerful connection point for people; in the words of Rav Kook, ‘Literature and art are positioned to express the deepest of secrets hidden within the soul.’ We believe it’s an important part of our spiritual experience, to be moved, to feel a stirring in the soul when seeing a particularly evocative piece of work,” she told JI. 

“As the Altneu grew, I dreamt of people coming to an Orthodox synagogue for a contemporary art show, and for those two pieces to feel utterly organic together,” said Chizhik-Goldschmidt, who recalled growing up in the halls of New York’s museums, the granddaughter of a passionate art historian and tour guide.

“It was a major part of my upbringing, as a child of Soviet Jewish immigrants,” she told JI. “The arts were the only kind of spirituality that Jews had access to in the USSR. Now, we are blessed to be able to combine this with a sanctuary space.”

This is the fourth art exhibit the Altneu has hosted. Until now, the synagogue has focused on Israeli artists. However, the conflict with Iran made the logistics of securing their artwork nearly impossible in time for this exhibit.

The idea first came about “at a fragile moment,” said Helwaser, director of the Helwaser Gallery on Madison Avenue. 

On a trip to Israel soon after Oct. 7, she recalled being moved by an exhibition by one artist who was an IDF soldier.  

“He came back [from war] and started painting,” she said. “I talked to my friend, [Altneu community leader] Diana [Gordon], and thought we should show the images. We created — very improvised — an exhibition here. People responded really well.” 

Once the organizers realized the Iran war would make it a challenge to bring Israeli art, they issued an open call for American Jewish artists, and the resulting meetings sparked the idea to highlight this different political moment. 

“Hundreds of artists responded. I selected maybe 20 and we met with them and chose seven. 

In different ways, all the selected artists were asking the same question: what does it mean to be Jewish today in America? It’s something we are concerned about,” Helwaser continued.  

Asked why she displayed the art at Altneu instead of her own gallery, Helwaser admitted she never expected to curate for a synagogue. She explained that unlike gallery visitors, this audience comes for the story and to connect with the artists rather than just the art.

“We don’t need Altneu for art, we have the best galleries in the world in New York,” she continued. “[Visitors] want to talk about what it is to be Jewish. Art is a nice way to do that.” 

“It’s not easy [to show Israeli artwork] in New York City galleries now,” said Helwaser. “I would do it but I’d be worried. In London, you wouldn’t be able to do it. Israeli artists here [are afraid] to be shown as Israeli.”

In addition to Kott-Wolle, participating artists are: Rotem Amizur, Nicole Gordon, Noa Ironic, Alan Richards, Ephraim Wuensch and Allison Zuckerman. 

Paintings are priced between $600- $52,000. Many of the buyers are not Jewish, according to Helwaser. The exhibit is scheduled to run until July 6. 

The opening night brought a diverse crowd of Jews together, including many newcomers to the synagogue — from those wearing black yarmulkes and sheitels to others sporting piercings and tattoos. “That’s the beauty of Manhattan, and of the Altneu as a gathering point. It goes beyond denomination,” said Chizhik-Goldschmidt.

The artwork appears to be resonating. At the debut, one guest was overheard gesturing toward a painting and remarking to a friend, “This is nostalgia for me. This is exactly how American grandmothers looked when I was growing up.”

As summer heats up, Jewish adults looking for an escape from the fraught state of world Jewry may find themselves reflecting on a seemingly simpler time — ​​getting competitive over color war or gaga ball and singing Debbie Friedman songs around a campfire at Jewish sleepaway camp.

That sense of nostalgia for one’s Jewish summer camp years is doled out liberally in “The Floaters,” a new film that centers on the fictional Camp Daveed and a group of outsider teens called the floaters. 

“The Floaters” tells the story of Nomi (Jackie Tohn), who is freshly ousted from her rock band and reluctantly takes a job from her best friend Mara (Sarah Podemski), who is now camp director at their childhood Jewish summer camp. Nomi is charged with producing the camp play with the group of “Breakfast Club”-inspired campers. 

The comedy was filmed at Camp Tel Yehudah in Barryville, N.Y. — where the film’s three sibling producers grew up, and where their parents met. “You should write about what you know, and if there’s anything we know, it’s Jewish summer camp,” Shai Korman, who produced the film alongside his sisters, Lily and Becky, told Jewish Insider. The movie was directed by Rachel Israel and written by Brent Hoff, Andra Gordon and Amelia Brain. 

Korman told JI that “The Floaters” — which began production about a month before the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel — was not created to counter rising antisemitism. Rather, Korman said, “our goal was expanding and deepening the definition of how Jews are represented on screen.”

“We try to push the movie beyond lox and bagels,” he said, noting that the sibling trio specifically aimed to “put on screen Jewish women that exemplified the Jewish women that raised us, that were leaders and mentors.” Camp Daveed is run by women, from camp director Mara to the camp’s rabbi, Rabbi Rachel. 

Several iconic films, such as “Wet Hot American Summer” and “Meatballs,” were also inspired by Jewish camps. But in “The Floaters,” “we talk about the rules of kashrut,” Korman said. “You see Orthodox and secular kids all together, reflecting the world we grew up in.”  

Korman said an important aspect of that representation was casting all of the Jewish roles with Jewish actors — which includes Persian, Latino and Asian Jews. 

“Making these kind of stories does help combat negative stereotypes about Jews,” Korman told JI. “But we came from it more from the joyful affirmative we want to expand.” 

Like most summer camps itself, the movie is apolitical. Still, it doesn’t shy away from briefly talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and other debates within the Jewish community. In one scene, campers make maps of Israel out of ice cream. “That’s the kind of thing that used to happen at camp when we were there,” Korman reflected.  A counselor responds that one of the maps holds the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

In another scene, Rabbi Rachel pushes for discussions about “the hard stuff,” including Israel and “all the ways the Torah has excluded or offended you.” The idea is rejected by the camp director, who says she would get angry calls from parents if those seminars took place. 

“If people go away from this movie thinking it’s some kind of political statement, they might want to take a moment of reflection, because what we’re doing is showing an authentic experience,” Korman said. “The movie is not about Israel, but Israel is part of the fabric of the story and the environment because that’s what Jewish summer camp is like.” 

“The Floaters” premiered in June for a mostly non-Jewish audience at the Bentonville Film Festival in Arkansas. While the film has specific details that “only camp kids would know,” Korman said — for example, the chaos that ensues after dairy spoons are switched with meat ones in the camp’s kosher kitchen — “for people who aren’t Jewish,” he continued, “it will make them excited to either learn more or feel like they’re in on it. We believe the more specific you get, the more universal you can be.”

Currently only available for private screenings, the film’s West Coast premiere is slated for Aug. 3 at the closing night of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.