Vanessa Hidary

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Born	New York City; raised on Manhattan's Upper West Side in a family of Syrian Jewish descent
Today	Spoken word artist, educator, and founder of the Kaleidoscope Project
Expertise	Spoken word, storytelling, and Jewish identity and diversity
Speaks to	High schools, universities, Jewish organizations, and cultural centers
Book	The Last Kaiser Roll in the Bodega (Penmanship Books, 2012)
Training	M.F.A. in Acting, Trinity Rep Conservatory
Website	Visit website

Vanessa Hidary is a spoken word artist, educator, and advocate known to audiences as The Hebrew Mamita. A native New Yorker who grew up on Manhattan's Upper West Side in a family of Syrian Jewish descent, she began performing poetry in New York City venues more than two decades ago and became a pioneering Jewish voice in the slam poetry scene. Her signature poem, "Hebrew Mamita," was featured on HBO's Def Poetry Jam and invites listeners to ask what Jewish looks like.

A graduate of LaGuardia High School of the Arts and Hunter College, Vanessa holds an M.F.A. in acting from Trinity Rep Conservatory. Her one woman show, Culture Bandit, about coming of age during the golden age of hip hop, played the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and theater festivals around the country. She was featured in the short film The Tribe, selected for the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, and in 2012 published The Last Kaiser Roll in the Bodega, a collection of poems, scripts, and stories.

Vanessa is also a gifted teacher of writing and storytelling. With Birthright Israel NEXT she created MONOLOGUES, an evening of solo pieces by young adults exploring Jewish identity, and she founded the Kaleidoscope Project, a narrative arts initiative that amplifies the stories of Jews of Color, Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews, and people with interfaith experiences. The ADL has honored her as a Hero Against Hate.

In January 2026, Vanessa led a writing and storytelling workshop for the New York cohort of JIMENA's Sephardic Leaders Fellowship, guiding fellows to use narrative as a tool for memory, responsibility, and communal voice. In classrooms, her performances and workshops open honest, often joyful conversations about stereotypes, identity, and the many faces of the Jewish people, and invite every student to share a story of their own.