2024 Fellows

Alan Niku is a writer and MFA filmmaker from the only Persian-Kurdish-Assyrian-Jewish family in San Luis Obispo, California. He has written and directed comedic shorts, music videos, mockumentaries, and a Bollywood-style action flick shot in the back-alleys of LA. His dozen feature and TV pilot scripts are, in the words of his grandmother, "get that computer out of my face, weirdo."

Jeremy Shuback is a video journalist whose work appears on channels ranging from the Wall Street Journal to Johnny Harris. As a writer, editor, and director, he's helped create hundreds of videos, many with millions of views. Somewhere along the way he got obsessed with history, and now spends his free time making YouTube videos about esoteric minutiae from hundreds of years ago.

Josh is a writer/cartoonist living in Los Angeles whose TV credits include LEGACIES (CW), WARIGAMI (CW) and G.I. JOE: RENEGADES (The HUB). Josh’s published works include the graphic novels THE VERY FINAL LAST GIRLS, CHARM CITY and a handful of pieces in MAD Magazine. Originally from Maryland, Josh previously worked as a newspaper reporter in the Washington, D.C. area, where he covered everything from Congress to the Warped Tour.

Alexandra Zahav is an actor, writer, director. She judges the top screenwriting competitions and coaches screenwriters, as well as facilitates Jewish spiritual dance workshops. She has spent over a decade focused on seeking knowledge and understanding of self, others, and God, and chasing ever-elusive wisdom.

Mollie and Hanna have always told stories, both independently and as a team, that are authentic, empowering, and often about outspoken women. They collaborate on “The Dating Detectives” podcast.

Frieda Vizel grew up in the Satmar Hasidic community of Kiryas Joel. Although she left the fold in her twenties, she continues to connect with the Orthodox Jewish community through her work as a Brooklyn tour guide and Youtuber. Her lively Youtube channel explores Hasidic life through interviews, street visits, analysis, food, holidays, and more.

Natacha is a storyteller, media producer and educator. Her documentary work has appeared at the MoMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art, as well as on National Geographic, NBC NY, and Link TV. Her podcasting work has appeared on NPR affiliates nationally and locally. She was the managing editor of the beloved educational podcasts Duolingo French.

She currently teaches multimedia storytelling at the University of San Francisco and explores the boundaries between French and English on stage in two solo shows.

Play Steinberg is a mapmaker and meaning-maker, drawing connections, queering boundaries and transcending limits wherever she goes. A visual storyteller, facilitator and scribe, Play’s present work is driven by a quest to uncover the divine and lay claim to the true spiritual inheritance that awaits her. Play is currently based on the north shore of Lake Tahoe.

Kate Mishkin is a podcast producer and writer whose reporting has taken her from from the Allegheny Mountains in West Virginia, to the beaches in San Onofre, California. Her work has appeared in ProPublica, The Guardian, and the LA Times.

Miriam Anzovin is a visual artist, writer, content creator, and massive Jewish nerd, exploring the juxtaposition of pop culture, nerd culture, and Jewish culture.
Her comedic, yet heartfelt, short-form videos on Jewish text learning, particularly of the Talmud in the Daf Reactions Project, include her authentic reactions from her perspective of a formerly Orthodox, now secular, Millennial feminist. She exists at the intersection of Sefaria and Sephora, and also in some people’s minds, where she lives rent free.

Alex Salsberg is an independent animation director who loves telling stories through funny, weird and heartfelt cartoons. Alex has directed videos for Billy Ray Cyrus and Utkarsh Ambudkar, and has worked on projects for MTV, Nickelodeon and WGBH. He is also co-writer and director of the award-winning comedy short "Class of 84," about a Jewish family facing anxiety and mortality, and host of "I Loved This Conversation," a podcast about people living creative lives.

Chari Pere is a cartoonist and creative director who has worked on projects for Red Bull, Jockey, Disney, Comedy Central, and Bud Light. She has created content for The Washington Post’s The Lily and Mad Magazine, and has collaborated with NYT bestselling author Gretchen Rubin. In addition to creating coloring pages and comics, Chari's "Cartoonmentary" comic series about miscarriages and other taboo topics was launched with help from actress Mayim Bialik.

Alexander Aciman is a journalist and screenwriter, who has written about food and family recipes for Tablet, and currently works for The New York Times/Wirecutter, and has worked on the food documentary series Rotten, for Netflix. Roy Yerushalmi is a journalist and a culinary writer from Israel. In recent years, he has been working on a cookbook, focusing on his Sephardic Turkish-Spanish heritage, as well as on a PHD in gastronomic history, dedicated to the formation of the concept of national cuisines in the East Mediterranean throughout the 20th century. Roy divides its his time between his home in Tel Aviv and the Princes Islands in Istanbul.