![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Mazel-tov-moment-1.jpg\")
The \u201cUnapologetically Jewish\u201d finalists on stage at the Weitzman. (Photo credit: Stephen Silver)<\/p>\n The \u201cUnapologetically Jewish\u201d finalists on stage at the Weitzman. (Photo credit: Stephen Silver)<\/p>\n
By Stephen Silver<\/p>\n
The Unapologetically Jewish contest launched last year, under the auspices of Philadelphia Jewish Film and Media, as what PJFM described as \u201ca national social media contest aimed at finding and highlighting unabashed Jewish positivity.\u201d<\/p>\n
The contest was the brainchild of Elaine Lindy, PJFM\u2019s presenting sponsor, who described the contest to Philadelphia Jewish Exponent as an opportunity to bring \u201cfun, energy, excitement and joy\u201d to online Jewish discussion, especially at a time in our history when such things are too often in short supply.<\/p>\n
This year, for its second iteration, Lindy\u2019s daughter Ariel took a more active role, telling Jewish Exponent that she was \u201cblown away\u201d by the quality of the competitors. She also joked that she enjoyed getting to \u201cwatch a lot of Instagrams and pretend that it\u2019s work.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Unapologetically Jewish competition came to a close on Sept. 10 at the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History, at an event called the \u201cMazel Tov Moment.\u201d The nine finalists appeared and mingled with guests before giving brief presentations, and the winners were crowned.<\/p>\n
The winner of the Social Impact First Place award was Arizona-based Grace Guentzel, known as @yourhistorygal, who shares lessons about Jewish history on Instagram.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt meant a lot to me just being able to share these unique Jewish histories and Jewish stories, and being trusted with these,\u201d Guentzel said. She appreciated the contest for \u201cgetting to expand my creative abilities, as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Taking the prize for Social Impact Second Place was Yakov Binyamin Turmelle, a photographer and photojournalist who focuses on the Jewish experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are so many rich, beautiful, challenging, and inspiring stories from our people that I feel a lot of journalism, unfortunately, misses,\u201d he said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t always have to be the most sexy, or the most violent, or the most heartbreaking.\u201d<\/p>\n
And winning the \u201cAudience Favorite\u201d award was Zevi Slavin, @seekersofunity, who often goes to surprising places and opens dialogue with people. In the presentation, he shared one video of himself appearing at a pro-Palestinian protest and sitting down with a protester to find common ground.<\/p>\n
The competitors included Jews from around the country and all walks of life.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis contest really expanded my creative ability with my content,\u201d Michael Valdes, whose project is called \u201cHot Jewish Energy,\u201d said on the panel. Valdes focuses on videos paying tribute to \u201chot Jews,\u201d one of whom is David Corenswet, the Jewish Philadelphia native who played Superman in this year\u2019s movie.<\/p>\n
Danielle Goldstein, a modern Orthodox woman, makes videos about \u201cJewish content for the average goy,\u201d and shared a video in which she debated modesty standards when it comes to what to wear to the beach.<\/p>\n
Another Danielle, Danielle Brody, makes videos about \u201cJewish Pride through cartoons,\u201d and her video in the presentation featured a discussion with her Israeli fianc\u00e9 about whether their wedding in Israel will feature the Horah.<\/p>\n
Yohai Greenfeld, who performs in drag under the name Abbi G\u2019zunt, delivers Torah commentaries while dressed in full drag.<\/p>\n
Jordan Berman is behind \u201cStars of the Tribe,\u201d a social media project that also sells merchandise and is dedicated to featuring \u201ctough Jews,\u201d including professional athletes. Among those featured is Dolph Schayes, the Jewish NBA star of the 1950s and \u201960s whose jersey has been retired by the 76ers.<\/p>\n
Berman was inspired by the negative messages sometimes faced by his college-age sons to provide a positive message about Judaism.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve spent a lot of time, I feel like, being on defense, as a Jew, as a father of two young, proud Jewish men who are in college,\u201d Berman said. \u201cFor the series \u2018Tough Jews\u2019 \u2026 I profile men and women who are champions for Jews on and off the field of play, or the battlefield. \u2026 We mustn\u2019t take the lead of our haters who like to see us as victims, or victimizers, but rather we put forth the narrative that Jews are victors.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stephen Silver is a Broomall-based freelance writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The \u201cUnapologetically Jewish\u201d finalists on stage at the Weitzman. (Photo credit: Stephen Silver) By Stephen Silver The Unapologetically…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":230148,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,1448,2830,1311,82715,124214,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-230147","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-pa","10":"tag-pennsylvania","11":"tag-philadelphia","12":"tag-philadelphia-jewish-film-and-media","13":"tag-pjfm","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-united-states-of-america","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115211415772778097","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}