While the heart of Israel’s democracy is to be found in the Knesset in Jerusalem, just across the road is a quiet but persuasive work of art that sums up the awesome narrative of Jewish history that finally brought us to the Land of Israel. War and strife are the undeniable subjects of this 15’ foot high bronze menorah by the British artist Benno Elkan.
Shmuel the artist is what they called him back in the Old Country. At home and in cheder he was always drawing or modeling something. Born in 1882 in Wolkovisk, Russia he grew up in poverty, his father a Torah scholar and mother a peddler of grain and flour. Early on he was orphaned and with his soprano voice was apprenticed to a cantor to give performances from shtetl to shtetl in the Polesie swampy woodlands of Byelorussia.
In the world of art and culture the rabbis generally get a bad rap. From time immemorial they have often been thought of as the prototypical zealous guardians, seen as prohibiting all sorts of imagery with righteous abandon, constantly erecting walls to guard against anything that might be tainted with idolatry. Many might even argue that the pursuit of the visual arts, whether representational or abstract, to be no more that “bittle Torah,” a waste of precious time.
“The Sistine Secrets” by Benjamin Blech and Roy Doliner raises many intriguing issues about one of the most important works of Western art and its creator, Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475 – 1564) as first presented in my review of August 29th. Now we shall attempt to put this masterpiece and the artist in a larger context.
Piety and paintings of pious Jews, what a dangerous mix! It takes considerable courage to dedicate oneself to making art, not to mention to do so within the orthodox community. That is what Zvi Malnovitzer did. He was raised and educated in a Hasidic community in Bnai Brak, Israel and while learning at the Ponevezh Yeshiva he somehow found the time and energy to learn to draw.
We live apart, us Jews. Partially by God’s command, partially because of age-old enmity from non-Jews. It is even said by some that the hatred fostered by our neighbors strengthens us to keep our laws and traditions, helps us resist assimilation. But what is the essential nature of “the other?” How can we sum up the fundamental difference between the Jewish people and “the Nations.” Is this an irreversible family conflict?
The road one chooses in Art, much like life, does not necessarily determine the final destination. A youth can start in yeshiva and paradoxically end up a surgeon, a public school student can still find their way into the rabbinate.
Near the end of his long and productive life Nicolas Poussin was commissioned to paint in 1660 an unusual series of paintings called the “Four Seasons.” They very quickly became some of the best known and beloved of his artworks; utilizing four scenes from the Hebrew Bible to depict the Ages of Man as the seasons of the year; Adam and Eve as Spring; Boaz and Ruth as Summer; The Spies with the Grapes of the Promised Land as Autumn and finally, The Flood as Winter.
First there was the word. It was spoken on the mountain and we were afraid. Then it was written fire on fire. And we lost faith. Over the years Moshe wrote it down and we thought the word was tamed. We thought we knew it so we ignored it. So we lost our Temple and our Land. The 613, over the years mostly observed but mysterious, observed now, thousands of years later, distant and holy.
To make a pilgrimage is to travel far and participate in something holy, singular and transformative. On the death of a parent Jews make a pilgrimage thrice daily to a synagogue to participate in the same ritual, the kaddish said over and over. It doesn’t have to be far or near. It simply must be a place that Jews have decided is holy. And if we open our hearts, it is always transformative. That is what Max Miller discovered and documented in the year he said kaddish for his father.
When an artist creates, intention, elementary to the creative process, is paradoxically secondary to the finished work. Once the art work is on view in the larger world it must stand on its own, engaging the audience on its aesthetic merits and creating a meaningful dialogue by means of its content and subject matter.
JT Waldman’s Megillat Esther is brash, loud and groundbreaking. Created as a graphic novel it is the first time the megillah has been illustrated in this radical late 20th century art form. Nonetheless, the question remains; can a comic book express the complexity of the Book of Esther?
The Holocaust was “Ground Zero of the Greenwald-Kahana family.” In the midst of the murderous fury of 1944 three sisters were tattooed with consecutive numbers in Auschwitz. They were lucky; they survived while so many of their family perished. The sisters found their way to Israel where they met men, married, had children who had children who will have children.
Lynn Russell’s current exhibition at the Chassidic Art Institute challenges us with a piety that resists all easy answers. First there are the Baruch HaShem pieces, highly unusual collaged texts combining letters, images and objects that somehow lead us to the painted and altered photographs of Jewish life, finally guiding us to her signature image, “One Way.” Exactly where is the artist taking us?
Sometime in 1967 Bruce Davidson, the photographer, met Isaac Bashevis Singer, the writer and they went down to the Lower East Side to the Garden Cafeteria to chat, have coffee and rice pudding. It began a creative friendship that lasted more than twenty years until Singer passed away in 1991.
