By David Sperber | Tweet

53 Arik Weiss, Ye Shall Cleave, 2008,  photograph, detail

Adherence and yearning

Photographs showing what looks like a mummy or golem wrapped all around in white masking tape (fig. 55), and a photograph of a hand similarly wrapped with the same white tape, reminiscent of phylactery thongs (fig. p. 53), are typical of Arik Weiss’ illustrative gaze. The tape is imprinted with the biblical phrase (Deut.10:20) “thou shalt adhere to Him”, as it appears in standard Hebrew printed Bible, that is, marked with diacritics and the symbols indicating the tune for reading the weekly Biblical portion in the synagogue. Another work by Weiss pursues the same idea: a Torah case, from the collection of the Museum of Art, Ein Harod, bound all around with masking tape and bearing the biblical quote “thou shalt adhere to Him.”
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By David Sperber | Tweet

27 Ken Goldman, Torah Mantle, 2006, mixed media

Well-versed yet subversive

It is interesting to observe how the “Judaica Twist” draws contemporary Jewish art closer to themes and patterns of thought already familiar to us from modern Jewish literature, cinema and theater. Scholars have pointed out that modern Jewish creativity – from “Mendele Mokher Seforim” to Sholem Aleichem, Isaac Bashevis Singer to Woody Allen and the Coen brothers – is often critical and even subversive, frequently employing comic elements and self-humor. Use of humor can also be found in Jewish sources from the more distant past: the Babylonian Talmud tells us that the sage Rabba would begin his lectures in the academy with “words of levity.” Kabbalah scholar Yehuda Liebes has demonstrated the function of humor and comedy in the Zohar literature as well; the task of the Levites in the Temple was not limited to the singing of psalms, according to the Zohar: they were also “the king’s jester,” that is, they were charged with amusing God, King of the Universe. Even the Binding of Isaac, that deathly serious episode in the Jewish constitutive myth, has a grain of humor in it, in the Zohar’s reading, according to Liebes’s interpretation: “In the Binding of Isaac, Abraham had to prove that he possessed a sense of humor. Anyone with a sense of humor would have understood immediately that all would end well. The tragic, terrible Binding, when awe and trembling reach a climax […[ therefore becomes in the Zohar a kind of gag, a prank of decidedly macabre humor […].”
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By David Sperber | Tweet

38 Dov Abramson, Ner Mitzvah, 2003, digital print on paper

613 Candles

In this same spirit, the three artists whose work is displayed in the Zimmun exhibition were trained as graphic artists or industrial designers, yet are active on the art scene.

For a long time, graphic design was perceived in Israel as having no bearing whatsoever on fine art; critics often gave artists a slap on the wrist for borrowing principles from graphics and applying them to their artwork. The works of Dov Abramson deconstruct this dichotomy: Abramson works in graphic design and is also an artist. His visual expression is not merely illustrative; it is also directed towards an utterance that does not pretend to illustrate, explain or reify a topic. His work seeks, rather, to maintain an independent discussion about essence and experience. Abramson’s work often tests the boundaries between sacred and mundane, especially in the multi-layered world of halakha. His engagement with the body of Jewish law touches upon the very essence of Judaism: the centrality of “the yoke of the commandments” in any discussion of Jewish culture. This kind of artistic activity integrates critical study with a profound cultural commitment: Judaism is scrutinized with tools deriving from general postmodernist theory; hence, this art raises acute general cultural issues too. Abramson’s confrontation of art and halakha poses questions about daily commitment, its limitations and beauty, and about freedom of choice in the world of Jewish observance. Dilemmas are raised as to the relevance of halakha and appropriate personal halakhic observance. Abramson frequently employs the technique of fragmentation, that is: breaking up the whole into its parts, thereby emphasizing certain segments and enhancing visibility of those pieces which, although they make up the whole, usually remain transparent.
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