A Cutting Paper Cut

For the third, and the last (for now), of my weekly words on contemporary art I’m returning to the paper cut. In this case a most cutting cut. Fair disclosure, the artists Jacqueline Nicolls is a good friend.

 

In the Ladies Guild Collection, viewable at

http://www.jacquelinenicholls.com/ladies-guild-collection.html

Nicolls uses a most conservative form – a paper doily, perhaps the sort of thing one might find under the biscuits at a Shabbat Kiddush. But look closely and the doilies turn out to be made up of a text surrounded by images – shocking texts and shocking images drawn from the Talmud and similar texts that depict women in dark and, frankly offensive ways.

“One cup of wine is becoming to a woman, two are degrading, three she solicits publicly, four she solicits even an ass in the street and cares not.” Ketubot 63a

It’s true – texts like this, and worse, do exist on our tradition. Nicolls however refuses to buckle under them. The carefully cut out designs around the central text are largely of women embodying the worst nightmares of the, presumably, men who spoke these texts. The texts are, in many ways, bullying, unfair, certainly one-sided. The images, coupled with the fragility of the medium – the paper-cut – stand up to the bully and face down the misogyny. The texts reflect the male-only environment from which so much Rabbinic culture emerged. The images ensure that women are very much in mind. No longer a ‘less-seen-the-better’ afterthought to the central Rabbinic preoccupation with men. It’s a fascinating marriage of form and content and it’s a brave critique of andocentric Rabbinic culture that could only be made from a place of knowledge and understanding.

 

Shabbat shalom

 

Joseph - Adi Nes

At first glance Nes’s portrait of Joseph (whose birth is recorded in this week’s Torah reading) feels wrong. The child is too young.

 

You can see it here

http://rabbionanarrowbridge.blogspot.com/2011/12/adi-nes-joseph.html

Please click through, it’s hard to explain just in words.

 

As readers of Torah, our collective memories of Joseph properly begin with his dream stories (stories we don’t come to for a couple of weeks). He seems arrogant, tactless, almost goading his brothers with dreams of his greatness. But in Nes’s photograph the boasts are revealed as nothing more than the bravado of a little boy who has lost his mummy. The glorious ‘coat of many colours’ is revealed as the sort of shirt one can buy in the markets of the Middle East. There is certainly a Middle Eastern quality to the photograph, but after that it’s difficult to pin down. I presume the child is Jewish, but he could be an Arab. The street behind him is indistinct and blurred. It could be a beautiful Galilean Moshav, or some godforsaken refugee camp. There is an ‘everyman’ quality to the suffering of this small child, coupled with a certain bravery. He’s prepared to meet our stare but he doesn’t know what it coming. Who does?

 

When we read these wonderful stories we have the end, perhaps, to easily in mind – Joseph, hero of Egypt, Viceroy over the Nile. But this photograph, and the others in the series, bring a freshness, a challenge and a raw quality that opens up more questions than it answers.

 

Other photos in the series can be seen at

http://tinyurl.com/adinesbible

 

Shabbat shalom

Adi Nes - Joseph

Joseph by Adi Nes. For more http://www.praz-delavallade.com/index.php?site=artists&fromlink=artists&a_id=13&artistname=adi_nes

Chanukah Post

A woman goes to the post office to buy stamps for her Chanukah cards. She

says to the clerk "May I have 50 Chanukah stamps please."

"What denomination?" says the clerk.

The woman says "Oy vey... has it come to this?

Okay, give me 32 Masorti, 12 orthodox and 6 Reform."

 

Peter Callesen's Transparent God - words

Rabbis specialise in words.

And I love words, especially the words of our tradition.

But other forms of creativity can sometimes open doors to ideas words alone cannot reach.

 

Over the next few weeks I want to use this e-mail to look at some contemporary works of art that seem particularly powerful for a Jewish community like ours, or at least for a Rabbi like me beginning with Transparent God by the Christian Danish papercut artist, Peter Callesen.

 

Photos of the work are at

http://rabbionanarrowbridge.blogspot.com/2011/11/peter-callesens-transparent-god.html

 

Transparent God is constructed from one giant piece of paper and from a distance looks like a large slightly tattered headless human-like form.

As you approach it becomes apparent that the form is made up of a myriad smaller cut-outs of human forms which are held together to create the shape of the human-form.

From directly above the piece you get to look down at the giant piece of paper and see the negative space left as these cut-outs were extracted. The range of cut-outs includes singles, couples, groups, vibrant young things, more sedate gentlefolk and more – a true cross-section of humanity.

 

This myriad of human forms which make up the God-form is a wonderful meditation on the Biblical verse that suggests humanity is created in the image of God (Gen 1:26). It’s not just one particular human, it’s the mosaic of all of humanity that need to be integrated into a vision – as if such a thing could be possible – of God. It’s not an idol, there is too much deliberately missing, much like a person choosing to write G-d, rather than God. You can’t see God’s face  – as God explains to Moses (Ex 33:20). But there is something to connect to - God’s garb, the Hebrew word would be Levush, as seen by Isaiah (Chapter 6) and featured in a number of Psalms, including the concluding Psalm of the Kabbalat Shabbat service – 113. And God’s hands – the outsretched arms of Exodus 6:6.

 

The human forms are two dimensional, simple paper-cuts. The God-form is three dimensional. We are being asked to imagine God existing in an extra dimension above human perception. If we exist in three or four, then God exists in five dimensions, or more.

 

But perhaps the most striking element of the God-form is its fragility, a fragility encapsulated by the title of the work – Transparent God. There is pathos and vulnerability in the God-form. It doesn’t tower over its human carpet aloof and full of foreboding. As an image of God it is intimate, delicate, unfinished and all the more provocative for that.

 

Shabbat Shalom

Peter Callesen's Transparent God

Copy to follow For more of Peter Callesen's works go to http://petercallesen.com

On Humour

 

You mean you haven’t heard about ‘Old Jews Telling Jokes’ yet?

It’s a You Tube hit and BBC4 have begun to serialise half hour programmes.

 

An Italian, a Frenchman and a Jew are waiting to be killed by a firing squad. They are given the choice of last meal. The Italian asks for a bowl of pasta, he eats the pasta then they shoot him. The Frenchman asks for a fillet steak, he eats the steak then they shoot him. The Frenchman asks for a bowl of strawberries. ‘Strawberries?’ the prison-warden asks in amazement, ‘where can I get strawberries, strawberries don’t come back in season until the summer.’ ‘That’s OK,’ the Jew responded, ‘I’ll wait.’

 

More like this at http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01777fr/Old_Jews_Telling_Jokes_Episode_1/

 (but beware, some of the jokes and much of the language is hardly rabbinically appropriate)

 

Of course Jews aren’t alone in being proud of our ethnic humour but … well I think Jewish humour is pretty special. Remarkable among the sub-genres of the Jewish joke is the joke where the Jew triumphs over adversary. Many are the jokes told at the expense of Polish guards and others who, at various times, have presented all too real physical threats. Perhaps the secret of Jewish humour lies in the ability to find an area in which the Jew can triumph. We may be attacked, in the ‘real’ world. But in the world of humour we can find a way to triumph and defeat, or at the very least, cheat an uncomforting fate. Humour cannot change outcomes, but it can lighten our tread and lift up our hearts. Actually that reminds me of a story.

 

A Jewish grandmother thrusts her way to the front of a crowd gathered around a man, lying prostrate at the side of the road, ‘Give him some chicken soup, Give him some chicken soup,’ she demands. ‘Madam,’ responds a doctor, ‘I’m afraid it is too late for chicken soup, this man is already dead. Chicken soup cannot help.’ ‘Give him some chicken soup,’ the woman insists. ‘It wouldn’t hurt!’

 

Shabbat shalom