“The showdown between students, police, and administrators remains essential in narratives of Sixties rebellion, but the centrality of Jewish actors is often overlooked. Those involved recognized how their Jewish heritage dovetailed with their contemporary concerns.” —Andrew Sperling, “Exorcising the Dybbuk” 

Established in memory of the Skirball’s founding chairman, Howard I. Friedman, the annual Friedman Prize invites graduate students from across the US and beyond to submit essays offering perspectives on the American Jewish experience to encourage scholarship and dialogue in these areas. In anticipation of the Skirball’s original exhibition Outsiders, Outcasts, Rebels + Weirdos: Punk Culture 1976–86, this year’s prompt invited scholarship on the role of counterculture in shaping the American Jewish experience.

Each year, the presentation of the Friedman Prize offers a chance to celebrate a remarkable essay—and to reflect on the ideas that make the Skirball, and the man it honors, so vital. This year, those ideas came with a little more volume.

Applicants reflected on movements, communities, and creative expressions that challenged mainstream norms—whether in music, literature, activism, art, religion, culture, or alternative social spaces—and considered how these countercultural moments intersect with Jewish values and identity. Ultimately, the 2025–2026 Friedman Prize went to Andrew Sperling, PhD, historian at the American Jewish Historical Society in New York City, for his essay “Exorcising the Dybbuk.” His winning essay revealed the deeply Jewish roots of American countercultural rebellion—from the Free Speech Movement to the Chicago Seven—and showed that outsider identity, dissent, and the refusal to be forgotten are central to the Jewish story.

The concurrent, original exhibition Outsiders, Outcasts, Rebels + Weirdos: Punk Culture 1976–86 asked, “what happens when people refuse the world as it’s handed to them?” At the award presentation, we asked a sharper version of that question: What happens when Jews stop playing by the rules? The honest answer is... Jewish history.

Long before there was a downtown club or a three-chord anthem, there was Abraham—who, the midrash tells us, walked into his father’s shop and smashed the idols. The first iconoclast. The prophets who stood outside the palace gates and told kings exactly what they didn’t want to hear. A tradition that begins with argument, that canonizes dissent, that names its people Israel—“the one who wrestles.” We did not learn rebellion from punk. Punk, in no small measure, learned it from us.

And in the 1960s and 70s, when American counterculture erupted—on the steps of Sproul Hall, in the streets of Chicago—Jews were not on the sidelines. They were disproportionately, conspicuously, sometimes scandalously at the center of it. 

Howard Friedman might seem like an unlikely figure to invoke in that company. No leather jacket, no safety pins. He wore a suit, and he wore it well. But don’t let the tailoring fool you—Howard understood dissent in his bones. As a young student at the University of Oklahoma, he led campus protests when Ada Lois Sipuel was denied admission to law school because of the color of her skin. “Those who say we can have equality under separate schools are blind,” he said—decades before that view was safe or popular. Howard spent his life inside institutions—the law, the American Jewish Committee, the Skirball—but he never confused belonging with conformity. He built institutions precisely so they could carry the voice of the outsider forward. That, too, is a kind of rebellion: the long, patient, stubborn kind.

Howard believed in the power of ideas. He believed in the Jewish people. He believed in a world where difference is not merely tolerated but celebrated. And he believed in the Skirball as a place that tells the story of the Jewish-American experience—including its loudest, most unruly chapters. We are proud to carry that story forward.

Click here to read Dr. Sperling's essay in its entirety.

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Beaumont Shapiro is Rabbi-in-Residence at the Skirball Cultural Center, where he serves on the senior leadership team and helps advance the institution’s mission through public programming, staff learning, strategic partnerships, and exhibition development. He contributes to the reenvisioning of the Skirball’s permanent exhibition and collaborates across departments to translate Jewish history, ethics, and culture into meaningful public engagement. Previously, he served for more than two decades in senior leadership at Wilshire Boulevard Temple and founded the Karsh Family Social Service Center, an innovative nonprofit serving more than 10,000 families annually through cross-sector collaboration.