Reinventing a Jewish muse
Deborah
Lauren Gelfond
Jan. 23, 2003
A new Israeli program hopes to bridge the divide between artists and
religion
When Barbara Adler was an art student in Israel she was disappointed
that the only art which felt "Israeli" came from the few local Druse
and Arab students.
"They did work that reflected their background and their relationship
to the land," she says. "But the Jewish students didn't."
Adler had chosen Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem
because she wanted to learn in a place where she could express her
identity as an Israeli and a Jew.
"When I brought it up, they were cynical, they said that talking about
Jewish identity was so Diaspora-ish," she says.
During the 1980s when Adler was studying at Bezalel, the American
Jewish community started to re-engage with its own histories and
traditions, following on the heels of the new multicultural movements
on university campuses. The American art scene slowly followed suit.
In Israel, the public was more resistant - until recently. As the
question of what is Jewish and Israeli art has become more relevant,
new art programs were started at a few religious high schools and
colleges, and art and Judaism seminars were launched at some colleges,
universities, and synagogues.
In 2000, the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem
launched the country's first comprehensive center to teach Judaism and
the arts beyond Judaica to MA students, artists, and the public.
Scholars from leading art and academic institutions around the country
helped with planning, betting on a revolution. They hope that
religious texts and traditions can serve as inspiration for Jewish
Israeli art. They also hope to inspire scholars to use traditional
sources to validate creative expression.
The center's first master's students and artists are now graduating,
but can they rise to the challenge?
In 1989, more than eight decades after its founding, Israel's foremost
academy of art hired its first lecturer on Jewish philosophy of
aesthetics.
"I arrived at a point where the Israeli art world was totally divorced
from Judaism," says Bezalel Prof. Nadine Schenkar, who has tried to
bridge the divide.
Last year, two architecture students explained before a Bezalel
judging panel that their final projects were related to Jewish
thought.
"It was remarkable that the judges gave them very high marks," says
Schenkar. "In the years that I've been at Bezalel, they were against
everything Jewish. Everyone at the school is secular. It's true
Bezalel is not a yeshiva, but the teachers are very cultured in other
fields of philosophy but not Jewish philosophy. They don't know about
it and you could even say they were anti-religion."
Bezalel, named for the first Jewish artisan, was founded in part with
a vision of creating a national Jewish style, but the artists and
educators changed with the times. David Cassuto, architect and editor
of the collection of essays Judaism and Art, echoes a modernist
ideology prevalent at Bezalel and some international art circles that
art should be only about art.
"Twenty-first-century art forgot the nationality behind the object of
art. You normally don't find a Jewish attitude in the fine arts - and
there is no reason to have one. It's decadent. Art should not have
political or moral manifestos, it should be about form."
Beyond art ideology, Israelis have also been notoriously divided
between religious and secular, a division reflected in the art world.
"Even when Israeli artists started to become more interested in
working with Jewish content, the art establishment was less
interested," says Emily Bilski, a curator. "Some artists who worked
with Jewish content were received more favorably abroad."
In the early 1980s, US campuses faced a pluralistic revolution. As the
multiculturalism movement became trendy, Jewish students noticed that
they were becoming knowledgeable about other cultures and
philosophies, but their own philosophers were completely absent. Since
then, the American Jewish community has seen a renewal of interest in
all things Jewish, including art. In Israel, only recently has the
public agenda included a debate on whether Judaism should have a place
in public education. Proponents, including Education Minister Limor
Livnat, argue that the study of Jewish ethics, philosophies, legends,
laws, and traditions should become more accessible and fun.
Now art historians and theologians, too, are taking another look at
the Israeli art world and wondering if there isn't a dearth of Jewish
content and identity in film, theater, dance, music, art,
architecture, and poetry.
Schenkar, who says the attitude in the Israeli art world to Judaism is
changing only slowly, has been urging a return to the idea that
Judaism and the arts are compatible. She started leading Jewish
aesthetics seminars around the country several years ago in addition
to teaching at Bezalel. Last year she joined the Schechter Institute's
staff.
"The way Israeli schools teach Bible and Talmud is so ridiculous. They
are among the deepest books on earth and yet they are taught like
children's stories," she says. "We discovered there is no divorce
between Judaism and art, and teaching this can have a very positive
influence on both art and Judaism."
Joining a team of theologians and academics from all the major
universities, working under the guidance of curators, the Schechter
Institute is offering Israel's first master's program in Judaism and
the arts. Courses include aesthetics in Bible and Jewish law; Judaism
and art in ancient times; aesthetics in modern Jewish thought; liturgy
as theater, and the study of Judaism in music, poetry, dance, art, and
film.
Back in school, 16 years after graduating from Bezalel, Adler has
signed up for the MA program to supplement her own painting and
teaching. The universalistic approach to art she learned in the
Eighties cut out Jewish identity as well as Israeli identity, she
says. "And it's not just in the art schools. Jewish values are missing
from Israeli education. They are shunned, ignored, or left to
extremists."
Now Adler says she is searching for Jewish inspiration for her work
and has found it.
"There is no lack of material and metaphors in Jewish text to inspire
us. If we don't find a connection between Judaism and living in
Israel, and understand the long, continuous line here from the Bible
until now, I don't see how we can hold onto a future here."
The 30 students in the program, and the dozens of others who take
courses, reflect diverse backgrounds. Orthodox students look to
understand the place of art in traditional Judaism; Conservative and
Reform students look for new kinds of inspiration; and secular
students look to their roots to expand their own vocabularies.
Painter Orit Arfa is studying Torah and Talmud with the hope of
redefining female role models, she says.
"There are sources for inspiration that show women, including the
matriarchs, in a unexplored light." Most recently Arfa painted a
portrait of biblical Rebekah in a way she describes as sensual.
"People looking for models of righteousness, modesty, and prissiness
find it. But I find in the text models for self-reliance, strength,
intelligence, and questioning."
Teacher Jo Milgrom likes students to look at classical paintings on
biblical themes to see the different ways artists have interpreted
abstract ideas. "What does revelation look like?" she sometimes asks
her students.
Milgrom, who at age 60 started creating art assemblages based on
biblical themes and midrash, says she wants to help Israelis "create a
relationship with the treasures of Jewish civilization."
Israel Museum's chief curator Yigal Tzalmona, who is on the Schechter
Institute's Center for Judaism and the Arts Steering Committee, is
hopeful.
"This is important work to help rejoin the Jewish body and spirit."
Alice Shalvi, who heads the center, had her revelation in a synagogue
four years ago. Lost in the Yom Kippur prayers, she made a surprising
observation when the prayer leader stepped up to lead the avoda,
detailing the High Priest's service of the Second Temple.
As a Shakespeare scholar, the service suddenly reminded her of the
great dramas she had studied and taught.
"There was a theatrical entrance and exit, changes of costume, and
interaction with a community which served as a chorus to his solo,"
she says. "The ceremony ends with an apex of drama, as a symbolic
scapegoat is sent out into the wilderness, like a catharsis.
"This is a clear and strong theatrical moment," she says.
She turned her prayer book over, flipped back to the source of the
service, and read the accompanying talmudic text. There it was in
black and white, all the way back to talmudic times theatrical
descriptions could be found: "There has always been a connection
between Judaism and creative expression," she says.
But they seemed to go their separate ways.
At the historical basis of the so-called divorce between Judaism and
the arts is an ancient debate over the Second Commandment, which has
recently been renewed. "Thou shall not create graven images" has been
understood by some to warn against the worship of idols, and by others
it is interpreted more literally to mean a ban on art.
The controversy was apparent right from the beginning.
"[The commandment] is in the same book of Exodus, where it also says
there should be cherubs on the Tabernacle," says Rabbi Prof. Daniel
Sperber, who teaches Talmud at Bar-Ilan University, and also holds a
degree in art.
Indeed, references to graven images can be found in Jewish texts and
confirmed in archaeological findings dating back to the Temple and
talmudic eras. Early Jewish synagogues, tombs, ritual objects, and
coins were adorned with images of animals and plants.
The debate was often influenced by the Jewish community's relationship
to foreign cultures. According to the Mishna tractate Avoda Zara, the
talmudic sage Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel used to frequent a public
bathhouse featuring a statue of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love.
It quotes him defending his actions, saying: "She came into my place,
not I into hers. No one had said let us make a bathhouse as a
decoration for Aphrodite, but let us make an Aphrodite as adornment
for a bathhouse."
In Deuteronomy and in the Shulhan Aruch, there are passages
differentiating between graven images that are treated as a god by
others and those created for decorative purposes.
Though Hellenistic images, such as the zodiac, found their way into a
number of early Jewish mosaics, the fear of appearing to worship false
idols did affect Jewish artisans in the Diaspora.
In most Muslim states, Jews rarely portrayed people, following instead
the tradition of the Muslim artisans, who used calligraphy and
geometric design as their primary decorative motif.
"They didn't want to seem 'less pious' than their neighbors," says
Sperber.
In Christian countries where art served to represent religious ideals,
some Jewish artisans hesitated to create figures. In the Renaissance,
as art became less about the sacred, rabbis around Europe started
permitting the use of portrait painting, and even sat for their own
portraits. Soon after, Jewish artists in Europe began illustrating
Jewish documents for private purposes in the home. Artists illustrated
marriage contracts and books such as the story of Esther.
Archaeological findings from the First Temple period onwards, together
with later ritual objects - kiddush cups, Hanukka lamps, Torah crowns
- make up a vast majority of what is considered Judaica.
Though there is an impression that Judaism continues to be hostile
towards the arts in general, photographs of rabbis, paintings with
religious themes, and Israeli landscape pictures are found in haredi
houses. One haredi rabbi, who asked not to be identified, says that as
long as the viewer is not looking at or listening to anything immodest
or breaks any Jewish law, there is no problem with enjoying art.
There is, perhaps, more pressure on Jewish artists. Novelist Chaim
Potok revealed in an interview that he had loved to paint, but that
this was discouraged in his Orthodox family.
Although many Jews who became painters did not paint Jewish themes,
some, such as Marc Chagall and Max Beckmann, did. Despite an opening
up in art and religious communities, many university programs and
museum collections that focus on Jewish art are primarily limited to
archaeological findings and Judaica. And in the fields such as drama,
film, dance, and music, experts also complain of a dearth of real
Jewish or Israeli identity.
To counter this trend, last year the Schechter Institute launched the
Beit Midrash for established artists.
The first group of hand-picked artists are now exhibiting works based
on their first year of study.
The Beit Midrash did not encourage the artists in any particular
direction, yet many of the artists' final projects underscored the
relationship between their study and the current political and
security situation.
"We are a part of the Jewish people so we have to examine our behavior
and challenge ourselves," says painter Maya Cohen-Levi. Moved by the
study of language and words, Cohen-Levi created three final projects
based on text. Two were paintings of Torah and Talmud text
superimposed on paintings of text of eyewitness testimonies of
Palestinians, one who said his olives had been stolen, and another who
said he was used as a human shield. Her third piece was a symbolic
chessboard made of "flimsy" materials and set with rocks with news
headlines painted on them. She describes the work as an illustration
of "the game of what we do to them and what they do to us. At any
moment the board we are playing on could just fall apart."
Inspired by the story of Jacob's ladder and reminiscent of the news
clips of the Ramallah lynching, video artist Kobi Harel shot
semi-abstract scenes of bodies being pulled up and down, expressing
the tension and relationship between the cycle of life and the cycle
of death.
"The individual loses his identity within the collective [and] becomes
a partner in the infinite cycle of death," he says.
Prize-winning poet Asher Reich comes from a different background to
many of the other artists, most of whom grew up in secular
communities. Growing up in the haredi Natorei Karta sect, Reich
studied in yeshiva but ran away 40 years ago.
"I know Jewish text but I miss studying Talmud. I am happy to return
to the texts after all these years, but in a way where we are free to
make interpretations, argue, ask questions. Nobody tells you how to
think."
Growing up in a haredi community turned him on to the Hebrew language,
a love strengthened through his current studies.
"Artists are divorced or blocked from Judaism. They are poor people
because the Hebrew language until today is based on the source of the
Bible," he says.
A poem he wrote was designed like a page of Talmud, with translations
in Hebrew, English and Arabic, instead of multiple commentaries. In it
he describes the worship of idols, the fall of man, and the recreation
of false idols in the name of religion.
"Too many people in Islam and Judaism do not understand the sources of
their religion. But they mistakenly use the sources as justification
for their violence," he says.
The question of what is Jewish art has not yet been answered.
Gliksberg, the curator of the show (at the Konrad Adenauer Center at
Jerusalem's Mishkenot Sha'ananim), says the output of the artists at
this point is less important than the input.
"I hope Jewish artists in Israel start a personal dialogue with Jewish
culture."
Adler concurs, hoping that in future she won't have to seek out Druse
and Arab artists to find works that relate to Israel, as she did in
her student days.
"When I go back to teaching full-time, I will encourage my students to
understand and express their own identities. What does it mean to be
Jewish and live in Israel? That's part of the work that Jewish Israeli
artists have to do, in addition to the technical training."
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