Contribute to TREYF Podcast
Dear comrades of the Jewish Internet,
Almost one year ago we created Treyf Podcast with the intention of engaging with political discussions that are happening (and not happening) in North American Jewish communities. We wanted to address the fact that conversations rooted in anti-colonial politics are not well represented in Jewish media and Jewish institutional spaces.
The first ten episodes have mostly included some combination of discussions between us, and interviews with activists, academics and journalists. [If you’d like to get a sense of the show, you can check us out on iTunes or Soundcloud].
Treyf is now in the process of expanding from in-studio discussions to include narrative pieces (think Love and Radio, Reply All, and This American Life), which is why we are reaching out.
We’re looking for contributors to work with us on narrative pieces, and figure that the “Jewish Internet” is the best place to make this appeal. Being a contributor can mean many things depending on your level of interest and experience. Absolutely no radio experience is necessary! In fact, we’d be happy to guide you through the process. Alternatively, if you’re interested but don’t have any story ideas, we’ve got quite a few sitting around Treyf HQ. These narrative pieces will be incorporated into the existing show, complimenting the themes that we normally discuss.
That said, we think it’s important to note that Treyf doesn’t have any funding right now and don’t having any coming in the near future. We understand the ways this can be a barrier to involvement, that cultural production is labour, and are open to talking more about this. But for the time being, no one at Treyf is (and will possibly ever) receive payment for the work we do on the project, as much as we’d love that to be different.
**EDIT:
After receiving some feedback that our initial post wasn’t as clear as it could’ve been, we decided to re-write this a bit with the hopes of better explaining the kinds of radio that we’re looking for. Hopefully this is more clarifying than confusing.
The kind of segments we’d like to work on with contributors is actually a departure from what we’ve been doing up to now. Since we started broadcasting in the summer, Treyf has mostly consisted of the two of us responding to news and current events in the studio.
We’ve understood these discussions to be grounded in a series of recurring themes, that include (but are not limited to): settler colonialism, migration and capitalism, European Jews and whiteness, and racism within the Jewish community, anti-colonial struggles (particularly in North America and Palestine), queerness and patriarchal gender constructs within Jewish communities, de-centring European Jewish identity in conversation about ‘Jewishness,’ the relationship between Jewish communities and active struggles for social justice, & the political tragedy that is the modern institutional Jewish community in North America. These themes have framed our bi-weekly attempts to engage with the the political discussions that are happening (and not happening) in Jewish communities across Canada and the United States. But we’d like to move beyond the news, and add a narrative storytelling element to the podcast.
In short, we want Treyf to incorporate some elements from the kinds of radio that we like listening to. We started moving in that direction with our #WarOnChristmas episode, and we are (slowly) working on some other story ideas of our own. However, we want other folks to get involved.
The kinds of narrative driven radio pieces that we are looking for can probably be best described as storytelling with a focus on characters. [For reference, here are three pieces that fall in line with what we’re looking for: Love and Radio – Of Birds and Boundaries, Snap Judgement- The Accidental Arms Dealer, and Reply All – Exit and Return]. But what makes this project different is that we’d like the stories to engage (however tangentially or explicitly) with some of the themes that we address on the news-side of the show.
With the structure questions out of the way, we now enter a slightly more complicated territory: story ideas. One of the reasons we reached out to the Jewish Internet is because we’d like people to bring stories and ideas from wherever they are living. We’re both settlers living on occupied Kanien’keha:ka territory (Montreal), and our story ideas tend to be situated around here. In short, we’re hoping that contributors can also focus on the communities, neighbourhoods, and cities that they’re living in.
If you’re interested in any of the themes listed above, the next step would involve finding an event, person, or place, to help tell a particular story. [You can also read This American Life’s zine about radio storytelling, which has helped in our thinking about this kind of stuff]. Other ideas that have worked for us include: talking to elders, getting in touch with activists, checking out old archives, visiting the library, asking relatives. If this step seems daunting, we’d be more than happy to help you brainstorm, or work through certain ideas, to get towards a clear storyline.
Looking forward to hearing your stories!
Treyf Podcast (Sam and David)
