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Artists, writers get ‘Jewlicious’

The youth festival of Jewish culture called the Jewlicious Festival 5.0 is back for its fifth consecutive year at the Alpert Jewish Community Center in Long Beach with a variety of entertainment and activities.

“Last year we had around 700 people attend the festival, out of those approx. 500 were students. This year we’re expecting around 1,000 people to show up,” said Laurie Green, owner of goodgirls pr, the media company representing the event.

The festival, from Feb. 27 to March 1, includes spiritual workshops, yoga sessions, meditation, challah bread baking, biking on the beach, a series of film screenings, discussions with Jewish filmmakers, and appearances by artists and writers.

The festival will feature artists and musicians from Israel, Germany and New York, including an Israeli grassroots festival band, Aharit Hayamim. Rapper Y-Love will also be performing, as well as Moshav, Dov Rosenblatt, founder of the band Blue Fringe, Shempseed creator Erez Safar, Nosson Zand, Adam Weinberg, Kosha Dilz, Rav Shmuel, Shawn Landres and disk jockey Eric Rosen and The 12 Tribes, according to the festival’s website, www.jewliciousfestival.com.

Because of last year’s success, the Jewlicious Festival 5.0 decided to bring back Grammy-nominated Jewish reggae rock and hip-hop artist Matisyahu. The festival wants to keep exactly what Matisyahu will be doing a secret, according to Jewlicious Festival director Rabbi Yonah Bookstein, who is also the CSULB campus rabbi.

A new feature at the festival is a film competition.

“We want to encourage and promote young filmmakers to incorporate Jewish themes into their movie making,” Bookstein said.

The final 10 films chosen by the public will be premiered at the festival and will then be judged by professional filmmakers for a prize of $500. The winning movies will also be shown at other film festivals around the country, according to the website.

Jewlicious Festival 5.0 will also feature the Beach Bike Ride on Sunday at 9 a.m. This is an eco-friendly event where participants will cycle to the beach to participate in a beach cleanup.

“We want to raise the awareness of the environment,” Bookstein said. “This activity will also allow participants to get some exercise and socialize in a fun way, anybody can sign up.”

Presenters at the Jewlicious Festival include filmmakers Joe Nussbaum, Tahli Miller, wife of Matisyahu, and Ezra Bookstein, as well as Benyamin Cohen, author of “My Jesus Year,” and writer for The Jewish Journal, Brad Greenberg.

The festival will also host a comedy show featuring five Jewish comics, such as rising comedy filmmaker and actor Joel Moss Levinson, former “Last Comic Standing” contestant Robin Reiser and Israeli American comic Benji Lovitt.

Three-day tickets for full-time students not camping out are $36 for three days, $46 for students who camp. Concert tickets sell for $10 to $25 each.

For more information on the event, visit www.jewliciousfestival.com.

2 Comments

  1. Avatar

    Fantastic Article, Thanks!

    I just want all the CSULB folks to know that they can be proud that Jewlicious Festival is the “brain child” of CSULB’s Jewish Student Club – Beach Hillel and its campus Rabbi and Director, Yonah and Rachel Bookstein. The Festival is a co-production of Beach Hillel, SoCal Jewish Students Services and Jewlicious.com – the most important Jewish cultural blog. CSULB can be proud of its students as leaders as students played a central role as core student committee members who worked for six months to put the weekend together.

    The event was staffed by student volunteers from a dozen Universities.

    Rachel Bookstein is a member of the University Interfaith Center, and can be found in USU 103 Tuesdays and Thursdays.

    Rabbi Yonah Bookstein teaches a weekly class in the IUC every Tuesday. For more information, please go to Beachhillel.com and you can click on our google calendar for all events!

  2. Avatar

    Great article! looking forward to the show!

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