THE ART OF EXCLUSION
I want to thank all of our donors whose generosity has helped push back against the astonishing tidal wave of antisemitism that continues to swallow Jews in the arts. I am particularly thankful to BTIG, a partner who believed in Tikkun Now when it was still taking shape. They were our first corporate sponsor and remain an important supporter of our work. Their early backing offered both the credibility and momentum necessary to push our mission forward, and we are forever grateful.
After a series of recent art shows put their bigotry on full display, and the gluttonous spectacle of the Met Gala last night, I return to a nagging thought: prestige has become a shield.
There was a time when cultural institutions acted as filters. Museums pushed artistic boundaries without collapsing them. Today, prestige doesn’t just elevate culture; it protects it. It shields decisions from scrutiny, even when those decisions quietly redefine who gets to participate at all. This isn’t about disagreement, which I would argue is a basic tenant of cultural conversation, rather something more consequential: access is no longer assumed. It’s conditional.
During Design Week in Miami, that shift wasn’t theoretical. An Israeli exhibitor paid for a booth, shipped the work, committed fully to the show—and was removed last minute. No context, or refund, or apology. They were excluded. It scared the Jewish art community and signalled that participation can be revoked at any time. And not because of the work itself, but because pressure made inclusion more costly than exclusion.
That same dynamic is now playing out on a larger stage at Eurovision, where the platform that once positioned itself as culturally universal, has faced sustained campaigns to exclude Israel entirely. This is the same stage where Netta Barzilai’s win was embraced as part of a shared cultural moment. The speed with which that inclusion was reversed reveals something deeper: participation itself is becoming negotiable.
And it doesn’t stop at participation. Around the Venice Biennale ecosystem, the conversation has shifted toward limiting recognition—Israeli artists may be allowed to show, but not to win. Presence without legitimacy. Visibility without acceptance.
If you step back, the pattern around Access, Inclusion, Participation and Recognition is consistent. It’s a model, not a movement! You don’t need formal bans to get to the same outcome when simple pressure does the work. Apply it consistently and institutions will quietly recalibrate until participation narrows without anyone raising a fuss.
The model applies to the publishing world too. Jewish authors and themes aren’t getting book deals. Of course, it’s possible that some of these works simply aren’t good enough to publish, but the idea that a community with one of the deepest literary traditions suddenly forgot how to write after October 7th is implausible! The “Gazaology” of University Departments has moved onto the main floors of bookstores and there are even bookstores that define themselves as pro-Palestinian-only spaces. No one would tolerate the inverse and accept a “Jewish-only” filter as legitimate. But here, the asymmetry passes. And then there are the authors, like Sally Rooney, who refuse Hebrew translation and distribution in Israel, effectively excluding Jewish access to work.
There’s an old term gaining speed to define this movement: shtetlization. One decision after another, each defensible on its own, points in the same dour direction. Fewer book deals lead to fewer shelves, which pushes Jews to the periphery, where they risk becoming absent altogether.
Cultural institutions don’t just reflect society; they define its boundaries. They determine what gets seen, funded, translated, and ultimately, what’s remembered. When access narrows at that level, the downstream effects are immediate. Artists self-select out. Donors disengage quietly. Entire perspectives fade, and not because they were debated and rejected, but because they were never fully allowed in the room.
And once the boundary moves, it rarely moves back.
Am Yisrael Chai