Midrash is the process of seeking added meaning from the written sacred text. Midrash was both aural and written, whether dealing with legal or literary passages. While Midrash was also applied to ritual items, appreciation of the visual in storytelling as “Jewish art” is only recent .
Visual Midrash is an art form that experiments with the interaction between the visual and the written record of the Jewish Historical experience. What happens when biblical text and/or interpretation techniques merge with contemporary visuals or photographs?
What spiritual richness is accessible for us, created in the “Tzelem” or image of the creator, through “Tzelum” or Photography? “Tzelem” and “Tzelum” are related in Hebrew.
An example is a photograph entitled Missing the Mark
While dramatic enough on its own merits, the photograph of the horseman yields spiritual meaning when the traditional Jewish notion of “Cheyt” or Sin is brought to bear.
Chyet“ חֵטְא” is a significant part of the Jewish liturgy for the high holidays, Rosh Hashannah and Yom Kippur. During worship on these days congregants recite a litany of sins “Al Cheyt”/For the Sins” including “for the sin which we have committed in our speech.
Imagine for a moment the concentric circle target of the archery range.
The goal of the archer is to hit the target with her arrow, ideally in the very center circle of the target. Not hitting the target is often described as missing the mark. And that expression ‘missing the mark’ is the traditional Jewish notion of Chyet.
Looking at the picture of the competitive horseman, it appears that he committed the sin of missing the mark, missing placing the pencil like object in the circle. Thus if we were to place this image on the prayer book page of the “Al Cheyt”/For the Sins” there would be added meaning. Or more simply, we could add a caption/title:
Al Cheyt/For the Sins