Descriptions are in the language of the initiatives and their web sites!
Paper Midrash
Husband and wife “dynamic duo” Isaac & Rabbi Shawna Brynjegard-Bialik create new pathways into Torah, combining deep Jewish scholarship with comic books and pop culture for a unique take on traditional texts.
The Jewish Art Salon is a global network of contemporary artists and art professionals. It connects artists, curators, and the public through programs that emphasize long-term dialogue and conversation
Our mission is to celebrate the rich diversity and sacred beauty of Judaic art around the world, and to establish a community for those who are inspired to fulfill the commandment of Hiddur Mitzvah by creating, collecting and exhibiting Jewish art and objects.
At JAE, we are dedicated to educating the wider world on the contributions of the Jewish visual arts to Jewish civilization. JAE continues to explore innovative uses of media to tell the story of Jewish civilization to a wider audience
The Institute for Jewish Creativity of American Jewish University
The Institute for Jewish Creativity is a dynamic hub for creative practice, artists and organizations. We serve as a catalyst for the creation of new spaces of creative activity, and the expansion of an exciting, ever-growing community of artists that join forces to explore their identity, practice and culture
Beit HaYotzer/the Creativity Braintrust “Revelation is just the beginning”
An incubator designed to catalyze Jewish creative thinkers – artists, practitioners, and academics – in collaborative experimentation around what Jewish teaching, educational leadership, and learning can become in the creative age, and disseminate the teaching and the artistic works to individuals and communities everywhere.
Jewish Artists Collective of Chicago (JACC) is a community of multidisciplinary artists connected through common heritage and committed to sharing ideas, enriching practices, and creating dialogue with community.
The New Jewish Culture Fellowship advances the work of groundbreaking artists through material support, mentorship, peer feedback, and shared cultural investigation.
CAJM is an association of institutions and individuals committed to enriching American and Jewish culture and enhancing the value of Jewish museums to their communities. It offers programs, networking, and learning opportunities to the Jewish museum field, and highlights issues pertaining to the presentation of Jewish culture. It is the leading forum for Jewish museums in North America and reaches colleagues in other countries as well.
OUR MISSION: To strengthen Jewish museums as essential resources and vital centers of culture, knowledge, and discourse.
OUR VISION: Communities are made more vibrant and inclusive by their Jewish museums.
Recognize that as you are creating a photograph, God is creating through you. Both the subject of your photo and the photograph itself are facets of Hamakom. Open your eyes in wonder everyplace. With eyes of wonder you can discover the miraculous in the mundane. Stop long enough to uncover veiled aspects of Hamakom expressed through the built environment and frame them through your lens. Alexenberg, Mel. Photograph God: Creating a Spiritual Blog of Your Life (pp. 27-28). Kindle Edition here.
Through a Bible lens
Mel Alexenberg: To find God, you have to stop seeking. Don’t search for God in some far-off place or hope to meet God in some future encounter. You need to simply open your eyes in wonder in whatever place you are and you will be positioned to photograph God here and now. Alexenberg, Melvin L. . Through A Bible Lens (p. 54). Elm Hill. Kindle Edition.
A Multi-Media Performance Art Environmental Experience
Was it a coincidence that in 2014 , the art that Hitler called “Degenerate” and “Design Home: Jews in Midcentury Modernism” were each the subjects of insightful museum installations? The former was at the Neue Galerie in New York, and the latter at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco.
There is an historical connection , in that the Nazi campaign against the Jews and modern art led to the migration to North America of significant contributors to Midcentury Modernism, many of these contributors of Jewish birth.
Was it against the theme of death by Nazi extermination and birth of the State of Israel that the Jewish impulse for creativity was released? Or was it also the mid Twentieth Century economic expansion in the United States that unleashed opportunities for Jews and others ,unburdened by religious discrimination or anti-Semitism?
Perhaps there has been within Jewish historical culture a deep-seated impetus to see the possible, to add to the beauty and improve the quality of life.
This program utilizes multi-media and performance art to explore Jewish contributions to Mid-Twentieth Century architecture, design, motion picture, theater, music, literature, business and the sciences.
Dellheim’s work is between Degenerate Art and Modernism, helps explain Jewish involvement with Modernism
An amazing archaeological hoard lay hidden high on a promontory overlooking a bend in the middle of the Euphrates River. This unusual treasure was known as early as 1872, but real interest did not begin to percolate till a British army unit engaging in skirmishes with local Bedouins entrenched itself in a walled fortress and came upon paintings while digging into the earth fill. It was then, in April 1920, that Professor J. H. Breasted of the Oriental Institute, visiting in Baghdad some three hundred miles to the southeast, was called to the site and took notes, measurements, and photographs. [1] And well it was that he took those photographs, albeit without details, because the local Bedouins, educated to iconoclasm, promptly gouged the eyes of the applicants in the sacrifice of Konan on the south wall of the newly uncovered Temple of Bel.https://rsc.byu.edu/scriptures-modern-world/dura-synagogue-visual-midrash
In the Jewish historical experience art is used to transform time and space. The foundation of Jewish time are the cycles of the seasons and the life cycles of our individual lives.
Judaism calls our attention to the need to observe these cycles with their impact on our physical and emotional beings. Jews have created rituals and ritual items (“klai kodesh”-holy instruments) with which to observe these cycles.
These cycles do occur in linear or historic time, and the rituals and ritual items tend to reflect that. The design of ritual items has been influenced by the cultural surroundings experienced by Jews in particular civilizations and historic time frames.
Thus the significant attention given to ritual items in any discussion of Jewish Art, with these items at times being synonymous with “Jewish Art.”
On a broader scale, the synagogues which replaced the biblical Temple are also subjects of Jewish Art as it has evolved over the centuries.
To label this area as “from Bezalel to Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design” is to trace the development of Jewish ritual art and sacred spaces from the biblical designated artist Bezalel (Exodus 31:1-6, 36 to 39) to the founding of the Bezalel Academy in 1906.
Organized art activity in the country began in 1906, the year Professor Boris Schatz (1867-1932) arrived from Bulgaria and founded the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Crafts in Jerusalem, according to a plan approved at the 1905 Zionist Congress to encourage talented young Jews to study art in the Land of Israel. By 1910, the school had 32 different departments, a student body of 500, and a ready market for its works throughout the Jewish world.
In addition to painters and sculptors, the country’s artistic life now comprises a host of talented craftspeople (ceramicists, silver and goldsmiths, weavers, calligraphers, glass blowers, etc.), many of whom specialize in modern interpretations of traditional Jewish ceremonial objects.
Biblical Calligraphy, Talmud Page Layout – Media Lessons
Along with the contents of both the scribal columns of the Torah scroll and the recorded discussions of the Talmudic academy, there is much to learn from the media themselves:
With the advent of the printing press, the Talmud Page layout evolved into a very sophisticated multi-dimensional study tool as will be discussed below.
The calligraphy of the Torah scroll and the pages of the Talmud and other Rabbinic texts are themselves visual. There is great skill among the scribes who penned the Torah text, and significant design elements in the layout of the Talmud with its central text being quotes from the earlier Mishnah compilation of law, and the recording of the dialogue of the Rabbi scholars, and the side text representing commentaries of the later schools, and ‘footnote’ references to other texts.
Torah Calligraphy consists of hand-scribed text in ink on parchment that is secured to wood rollers, with the text in columns. The text flows from right to left. When the congregations finish the annual reading cycle, the parchment is rolled back to the left roller, and the cycle begins anew. The last letter of the Torah scroll is a Lamed, the first letter of the scroll is a Bet. A Lamed and a Bet in that order spells out the Hebrew word for ‘heart’.
The Torah text requires the reader to actively add the vowel sounds to the consonants making the reading more participatory. For most Jewish populations over the centuries, reading the Torah Hebrew text from right to left meant a bi-directional consciousness because their native languages were written left to right. (Agam’s right to left and left to right Images)
And while maintaining the consonant-only text over the centuries, generation after generation of our people were free to add their contemporary meanings and understanding to the study of the written words.
Because vowels are missing in the Torah scrolls Judaism has developed the tradition of the written and oral Torahs. Vowels often provide diverse meanings to words and sentences. Think of the English consonants R and D. Adding vowels could spell out red, read, road, etc.
The first sentence of the Torah scroll is shown below without and with vowels.
For easier viewing, note the first word of the Torah scroll shown below without and with vowels.
“The scroll of the Torah is [written] without vowels, in order to enable man to interpret it however he wishes…as the consonnants without the vowels bear several interpretations, and [may be] divided into several sparks. This is the reason why we do not write the vowels of the scroll of the Torah, for the significance of each word is in accordance with its vocalization, but when it is vocalized it has but one single significance; but without vowels man may interpret it [extrapolating from it] several [different] things, many marvelous and sublime.” Moshe Idel, Absorbing Perfections, p86, quoting from R. Bahya be Asher’s Commentary on the Pentateuch
Certain text passages such as the ‘Song of the Sea’ have their own calligraphy
“Both the typographical design of the Talmud, the major work of Jewish law and lore, and hypertext linking in the design of the Internet are structured so that they facilitate and encourage creative, associative, and multiple perspectives. The confluence between the media ecologies of the Talmud and the Internet generate common Jewish and digital age structures of consciousness.”Mel Alexenberg, “The Future of Art in a Digital Age: From Hellenistic to Hebraic Consciousness”
Because centuries passed between the adoption of an official Torah text the compilation of the oral tradition in the Talmud and in the Mikraot Gedolot compilation of the text and commentaries of the Hebrew Scriptures, The oral Torah allowed for significant creativity in exploring, clarifying, and expanding the impact of the written Torah, both in terms of religious practice (Halacha) and stories (Agadah).
We study the stories of our people to better understand our own stories and how to tell our own stories.
The geography of the printed page
But when it comes to a book format printers and scholars pioneered the geography of the Talmud page with its printed page sections from different time periods and different circumstances of the Jewish people. Reflects a midrashic perspective that there is no absolute chronology in the Torah. In the Midrash, Moses can visit the Talmudic Academy, although he does not understand the discussions.
Talmud page
THE PRINTED BOOK
IN 15TH! AND 16TH!CENTURY
JEWISH CULTURE1
Pavel Sládek
2012, Hebrew Printing in Bohemia and Moravia
With regards to the formation of a new “classical” canon, Renaissance printing was innovative in three
respects: 1. publishing determines whether a text becomes a “classic”;
2. the selection of specific metatexts accompanying a particular “classical” text determines its basic
contextualization and also largely the method of study; 3. the emending process narrowed the variability
of textual versions and resulted in a relative level of standardization.
Adding Commentaries to biblical texts
Examples of the second innovation include the 16th-century editions of rabbinic Bibles (Biblia Rabbinica, Mikra’ot Gedolot) and in particular editions of the Babylonian Talmud.
Daniel Bomberg’s three editions of the rabbinic Bible126 – i.e., the text of the Hebrew Bible accompaniedby commentaries – established the early modern andmodern canon of Jewish biblical exegesis. The second and third editions include the Torah with Targum Onkelos and Targum Yerushalmi, commentaries by Rashi and Abraham ibn Ezra, and parts of a commentary by Jacob ben Asher entitled Ba’al ha-Turim. The Books of the Prophets are supplemented with commentaries by David Kimhi and Gersonides, plus several other texts.
Adding Commentaries to the printed Talmud Page
In the case of the Babylonian Talmud, the printing press was especially responsible for helping to
establish a particular study method as the standard. The individual tractates published by the Soncino family, followed by the complete Bomberg edition, established Rashi’s commentaries and a specific selection of the Tosafot as the two fundamental metatexts. We must emphasize that the rabbinic Biblesgenerally expanded the existing “library” of biblical exegesis, while Renaissance printed editions drastically narrowed the older medieval Talmudic corpus.127 This reduction consisted not only in the upgrading of two specific metatexts to the level of canon, but (when it comes to the Tosafot) also in a somewhat arbitrary selection from among older collections.128 The editors compiled the Tosafot for individual tractates of the Talmud from Tosefot Touques, Tosefot Sens, Tosafot of the circle of Perez ben Elijah and other manuscript collections. The canonic status of the newly created compilation is evidenced by the fact that it is referred to as “our Tosafot (Tosafot shelanu)” as well as by the almost complete decline of interest in all other collections of Tosafot, many of which remain unpublished to this day or were lost and are known only from citations.
The Talmud Page
Visual take aways from the Talmud Page layout:
Multi-dimensional Perspectives
Multi-Time dimensions erasing time barriers “present discussions”
Multi-geographic dimensions
Seeing Patterns – using photoshop layering
Agam’s concept of theater presenting multiple simultaneous scenes
“I can’t help feeling that in certain respects the Internet has a lot in common with the Talmud. The Rabbis referred to the Talmud as a yam, a sea – and though one is hardly intended to ‘surf’ the Talmud, something more than oceanic metaphors links the two verbal universes. Vastness and an uncategorizable nature are in part what define them both. The Hebrew word for tractate is masechet, which means, literally, “webbing.” As with the World Wide Web, only the metaphor of the loom, ancient and inclusive, captures the reach and the randomness, the infinite interconnectedness of words. I take comfort in thinking that a modern technological medium echoes an ancient one.”Jonathan Rosen, The Talmud and the Internet: A Journey between Worlds (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000), 7, 8, 11.
ʽOz veHadarʼ edition of the Talmud, with elements numbered in a spiraling rainbowː (1) ʽJoshua Boaz ben Simon Baruchʼ, Mesorat haShas, (2) ʽJoel Sirkisʼ, Hagahot (3) ʽAkiva Eigerʼ, Gilyon haShas, (4) Completion of ʽSolomon ben Isaacʼ from the Soncino printing, (5) ʽNissim ben Jacobʼ’a commentary, (6) ʽHananel ben Hushielʼ’s commentary, (7) a survey of the verses quoted, (8) ʽJoshua Boaz ben Simon Baruchʼ Ein Mishpat/Ner Mitzvah, (9) the folio and page numbers, (10) the tractate title, (11) the chapter number, (12), the chapter heading, (13), ʽSolomon ben Isaac’s commentaryʼ, (14) the Mishnah, (15) the Gemara, (16) an editorial footnote.Gordon Glottal
In the on-line magazine, Computer-Mediated Communication, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute professor David Porush writes that the Talmud is an early example of hypertext:
“A page of Talmud is structured around a single text surrounded by concentric layers of commentary and commentary on commentary. By form and content, it announces the unfinished quality of constructing knowledge and the collective construction of shared values. Even in its layout on the page, the Talmud suggests a kind of time and space destroying hypertextual symposium rather than an authoritative, linear, and coherent pronouncement with a beginning and ending written by a solitary author who owns the words therein…. The notion of private self, or the notion of singular origin of knowledge, pales into insignificance in the face of this talmudic-hypertextual-Internet-like vision of communally-constructed knowledge.”David Porush, “Ubiquitous Computing vs. Radical Privacy: A Reconsideration of the Future,” Computer-Mediated Website development: Itamar Arjuan Communications Magazine, vol. 2, no. 3, March 1, 1995, 46. http://www.ibiblio.org/cmc/mag/1995/mar/last.html.
The Mikraot Gedolot Page
“Mikraot Gedolot” or Large Scriptures are volumes of the Hebrew Scriptures in which the biblical verses are surrounded by commentaries written over the centuries.
