Southside Shtetl

Southside Shtetl is a queer and trans-centered Jewish makers collective that hosts grassroots art and cultural events and local tzedakah fundraisers featuring Ashkenazi folk music, Turkish coffee ground readings, cultural food, ritual objects, political education, art and ancestral healing workshops and more. Southside Shtetl’s inception was a response to an apparent need in Jewish communities in the Twin Cities to invest in accessible community-led, ritual-forward Judaism outside of mainstream Jewish institutions. 

Southside Shtetl aims to support the making of a thriving Jewish home in the North American diaspora through many avenues including providing a marketplace for the community to access locally made Jewish ritual objects (judaica) that complies with the Palestinian-led demand for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). Southside Shtetl events support the investment in a thriving home through fundraisers for local causes – tzedakah has been collected for the East Phillips Urban Farm, Renter Support Fund, Indigenous Women Rising, Spiral Collective and more. Most shtetls have incorporated a community art-making station featuring Z’s tzedakah box project.