This year’s festival will be headlined by Lior Raz. Along with the rest of the program, the festival promises to be a magnificent evening of Jewish art, cuisine, wine, and, above all, community.

Lior Raz demonstrates a profound understanding of the complexities on the ground in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As co-creator and star of the award-winning Netflix series Fauda, Arabic for “chaos,” he portrays characters on both sides of the dispute with empathy and depth. Raz experienced the conflict firsthand as a member of the Israeli Defense Forces. Serving in the IDF Special Forces, he became fluent in Arabic and gained unique insight into the realities of daily life for people living amid the conflict.