Out of the many different options for post-college career involvements in my horizon, I can honestly and truly say that I never thought I would end up working in a Jewish institution. The fact of the matter is, if the new wave of contemporary Jewish culture had not come to me, I would have probably just dosed off the whole Jewish sphere, becoming completely indifferent of my Jewish identity and how it plays with the world at large.

Of course, I have always been involved in the Jewish World. I had been a madrich (counselor) and Rosh (head) of Maccabi Hatzair and participated in a yearlong experience in Israel, volunteering in different aspects of Israeli society. However, when I reached college, I found myself straying off from the regular mainstream Jewish institutions of my community. I was angry at them for trying to make communal space feel like a ghetto. And so, taking this in mind, I began to distance myself from the whole “Jewish world”. As Avraham Infeld told us in a Jewish Salons meeting, I was “Jewed out” of the institutions; they where too Jewish, too in-your-face.

All of this changed drastically during my semester scholarship at the University of California at Berkeley. It was during that short stay that I took a course called “Cultures of the Jews” in which I started to become sensible to the fact that each Jewish community has developed differently depending on their different social and geographic conditions. I also happened to meet some wicked, intellectual and counter-culture Jews that I never knew existed.

These factors made me change my approach to the Mexican community; all of a sudden, I could see the particularities of the Mexican reality: Jews where too insulated, too traditional, to scared of involving themselves with the outside world. This, in turn, created a culture of paternalism and control towards the youth, which pushed them aside.

Taking this in mind, I created a Facebook Group called “The Other Community”. Its motto was for to be a virtual place for all types of Jews, allowing pluralistic expressions of Jewish identity. It was a total hit.  In four months it reached 400 people, had over 24 discussion topics and was buzzing. The group was alive.

When I came back to Mexico, everyone was asking me about the next step. This is where the Jewish Salons folks came in. It dawned on me that this was part of an international generational change within the Jewish world. I felt backed up in my needs, I felt relieved.

Basically, the Jewish Salons is an international network that seeks to explore and reframe Jewish identity through culture and arts. The events take place outside of the traditional institutional framework, in galleries and clubs that are known locally as artsy or intellectual hotspots for any type of events. Each event revolves around a different Jewish topic, taking the universal themes that are found on Judaism and making them relevant for Jews and non-Jews of our date of time.

The main reason why these Salons exist is that there’s a growing need, in small diasporic communities, for alternatives that express Judaism in a way that’s relevant for the young crowd. There is also a need for local communities to be heard as Jewish voices in the international cultural sphere, especially in a date and time where only New York or Israel are seen as focal points of contemporary Jewish culture.

The interesting thing about this whole Jewish salons concept is that Israel's role is to act as a mediator and promoter of Jewish diasporic culture. Thus, each particular salon is completely autonomous and independent from the whole network, participating with its own voice within the framework of contemporary Judaism at large.

What I find unique of Salon Mexico City is the experimental and detailed approach to the production of an event. When we make an event, we think of absolutely everything, from how we market it so that people come to how we deal with the post-event buzz and hype. One of the examples of this is our Kosherotica event that deals with Judaism and sexuality...

Theme of Kosherotica event:
Concerning oral sex, the Talmud says: Eat the meat. From the Bible to Brüno, Jews have said yes to sex. But can Judaism make you blush? Is living without a foreskin a case of less is more? Come see where Judaism and sexuality meet. You won't want to miss it.