On Sunday, July 21, Chabad of the North Shore hosts a community encampment for Israel starting at 10 a.m. at the Salem Commons. There will be live music, food, movies, children’s activities, exhibits, speakers—and a special writing station from the new, Boston-based Achdut Postcard Project.
Achdut is a collaboration between East Coast Jewish creatives, co-founded by multimedia artist Alisa Rodny. During the school year, Rodny is an art teacher at Burke High School in Dorchester. She balances her teaching work with this grassroots endeavor, gathering fellow Jewish artists to create postcard designs for mailings to politicians, advocates and neighbors to speak out against antisemitism in the wake of Oct. 7, 2023.
“We wanted to come forward as Jewish artists who are pro-Israel to show that we’re not afraid to speak out for what we believe in, and also to show that Jewish and Israeli artists have a common voice and can use art as advocacy,” says Rodny, who emigrated from Russia to Swampscott as a child.
In June, Achdut kicked off its campaign with an event at the Jewish Arts Collaborative with 1,500 postcards featuring seven images; since then, they’ve gathered at private homes. The Salem event marks their next big public campaign, and all are welcome to drop by their table (look for the signs!) to send a card—and to hopefully stay and chat.
The postcard designs are stark and explicit: One simply states, “You Are Not Alone,” against the backdrop of a March for Israel rally in Washington, D.C. Another one shows a woman crying with the line, “Could Be Me,” with a dateline: Oct. 7, 2023. In addition to Rodny, artists include Rachel Hammerman, Inna Zhukovsky-Zilber, Jenny Edwards Ber, Lisa Link, Annette Back and Lilian Kebudi.
“The images are universal and empowering,” she says. So is the mission: Rodny hopes that people will connect while writing the postcards, sharing the sense of camaraderie implicit in the initiative’s name: Achdut means “unity” in Hebrew.
“The idea here is not just to write the cards but also to have people come together. A lot of people come together at rallies, but at rallies, people aren’t really able to sit down and talk, unlike around a table with postcards,” she says.
So far, writers have sent cards to national and local politicians and also to neighbors who have shown solidarity and support.
“A lot of people have sent cards to neighbors, saying, ‘Thank you for putting up a Bring Them Home poster on your lawn.’ I wrote to Boston politicians about being a Jewish educator in the city. I want to see more conversation around antisemitism in K-12 education,” she says.
Next, the group plans to exhibit at Jewish art shows in New York and throughout Boston; in the meantime, the postcards are also available by special order. Follow Achdut on Instagram for future events.
