TorahTweets: A Postdigital Biblical Commentary as a Blogart Narrative: Mattot מטות

Down-to-Earth Spirituality

Unlike the Torah narrative that begins “In the Beginning,” a blog begins at the end. This "Torah Tweets" blog displays its narrative in reverse chronological order with the most recent post appearing first. The blog http://bibleblogyourlife.blogspot.com was created to reverse the order of the blog posts in this blog to begin in the beginning.

See the blogs for the books Through a Bible Lens: Biblical Insights for Smartphone Photography and Social Media http://throughabiblelens.blogspot.co.il/ and Photograph God: Creating a Spiritual Blog of Your Life http://photographgod.com/. Both books invite you to explore creative ways to photograph all that happens in your everyday life while crafting a vibrant dialogue between your life story and the biblical narrative.

Postdigital Narrative on Spiritual Dimensons of Everyday Life ///// "For the Lord thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp." (Deuteronomy 23:15) ///// "Judaism does not direct its gaze upward but downward ... does not aspire to a heavenly transcendence, nor does it seek to soar upon the wings of some abstract, mysterious spirituality. It fixes its gaze upon concrete, empirical reality permeating every nook and cranny of life. The marketplace, the factory, the street, the house, the mall, the banquet hall, all constitute the backdrop of religious life." (R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik) ///// "It is not enough for the Jew to rest content with his own spiritual ascent, the elevation of his soul in closeness to G-d, he must strive to draw spirituality down into the world and into every part of it - the world of his work and his social life - until not only do they not distract him from his pursuit of G-d, but they become a full part of it." (R. Menachem M. Schneerson) ///// "If there is a religious agency in our lives, it has to appear in the manner of our times. Not from on high, but a revelation that hides itself in our culture, it will be ground-level, on the street, it'll be coming down the avenue in the traffic, hard to tell apart from anything else." (E. L. Doctorow) ///// "The first message that Moses chose to teach the Jewish people as they were about to enter the Land of Israel was to fuse heaven to earth, to enable the mundane to rise up and touch the Divine, the spiritual to vitalize the physical, not only as individuals but as an entire nation." (R. Abraham Y. Kook)

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Mattot מטות

Talking Rocks and Trees

None of the men over 20 years old who left Egypt will see the land that I swore to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob since they did not follow me wholeheartedly. The only exceptions will be Calev son of Yefuneh, the independent one, and Joshua son of Nun. (Numbers 32:11-12) אם יראו האנשים העלים ממצרים מבן עשרים שנה ומעלה את האדמה אשר נשבעתי לאברהם ליצחק וליעקב כי לא מלאו אחרי בלתי כלב בן יפנה הקנזי ויהושע בן נון

God said, "The only exception will be My servant Calev, since he showed a different spirit and followed Me wholeheartedly. I will bring him to the land that he explored, and his descendants will possess it." (Numbers 14:24) ועבדי כלב עקב היתה רוח אחרת עמו וימלא אחרי והביאתיו אל הארץ אשר בה שמה וזרעו יורשנה

Calev's different spirit and independent thought is sorely needed by Calev's descendants who have resettled the Land of Israel in our day.

Only Calev could see that a peaceful future would be realized by Joshua leading an army to defeat the enemies of the Children of Israel.

3,500 years after the Israelites settled in Judea and Samaria on the west bank of the Jordan River, Israel faces an enemy there.

During the week we read Mattot, we remember on the 17^th day of Tamuz the Roman siege of Jerusalem 1,941 years ago ending in ruin and exile.

As we mourn this loss, a face-to-face survey of Arab adults in Judea, Samaria and Gaza revealed the depth of their hatred of Jews. (Conducted with the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion)

When given a quote from the Hamas charter of the need for Arab and Islamic battalions to defeat the Jews and annihilate Israel, 80% agreed.

73% agreed with the Hamas charter: “Israel, by virtue of its being Jewish and of having a Jewish population, defies Islam and the Muslims.... Muslims will fight the Jews and kill them; until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him…. I will assault and kill, assault and kill, assault and kill.”

66% said that their real goal should be to start with a 2-state solution as a steppingstone to conquering all of Israel.

92% would not agree to Jerusalem remaining the capital of Israel. 72% denied the thousands of years of Jewish history in Jerusalem.

What are we to do when the majority of our "Peace Partners" are in favor of teaching songs about hating Jews in Palestinian schools?

Perhaps our Arab neighbors should study the Qur'an that teaches that the right of the Jews to the Land of Israel is the will of Allah:

“Remember when Moses said to his people: ‘O my people, call in remembrance the favor of God unto you, when he produced prophets among you, made you kings, and gave to you what He had not given to any other among the nations. O my people, enter the Holy Land which God has assigned unto you, and then turn not back ignominiously, for then will ye be overthrown, to your own ruin.’” (Qur'an, Sura 5:22-23)

See our Aesthetic Peace Plan for the Middle East at http://aestheticpeace.blogspot.com

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PRAISE FOR PHOTOGRAPH GOD BOOK

“Mel Alexenberg offers a scintillating experiment in creativity. His work is an invitation to deepen your spiritual sensibilities as you extend your imagination.” - Jan Phillips, author of God Is at Eye Level: Photography as a Healing Art

“One of art’s most complete and compelling integrations of the sacred and profane. It reads like a swift and soulful breeze.” - Dr. Shaun McNiff, author of Earth Angels: Engaging the Sacred in Everyday Things, University Professor, Lesley University, Cambridge

“Thinks brilliantly outside the box. It crisscrosses disciplines, from science and technology to philosophy and mysticism to art as both historical and creative phenomena. This is one of those books that other thinkers will wish they had somehow thought about how to write, and to which readers of diverse sorts will simply respond by saying: wow!” - Dr. Ori Z. Soltes, author of Tradition and Transformation, Professorial Lecturer, Georgetown University

“Photograph God strikes a balance between Kabbalah and contemporary culture. It is literate, wise, and easily accessible.” - Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, author of God Was in This Place & I, i Did Not Know: Finding Self, Spirituality and Ultimate Meaning and Kabbalah: A Love Story

"Photograph God gives us an amazing perspective on our own existence, especially in the age of interconnected iPhone culture." - Prof. Michael Bielicky, Head of Department of
Digital Media/Postdigital Narratives, University of Art and Design/ZKM Centerfor Art and Media, Karlsruhe

“A mystical computer program for spiritual seeing.” - Rabbi Dr. Shimon Cowen, Director, Institute for Judaismand Civilization, Australia

"In an original way, Prof. Alexenberg invites us to connect the networked world of Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Instagram, WhatsApp and Blogspot, with the concept of the unseen God." - Dr.Yael Eylat Van-Essen, author of Digital Culture: Virtuality, Society and Information, teaches at Tel Aviv University and Holon Institute of Technology, Israel

"Alexenberg proposes that text and image - something as simple as photos taken with a smartphone, and multiplied in their resonance by the Internet - can be a consciousness raising tool" - Peter Samis, Associate Curator, Interpretation, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

TORAH TWEETS

Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the Twitter social networking website. Limiting the number of words in our Torah Tweets bloagart sentences to 140 characters is a creative challenge that imitates the torah itself which does not waste words. Our torah tweets are like bursts of bird song that sometimes gain a haiku-like poetic flavor. 140 is the numerical value (gematria) of the word hakel, which means 'to gather people together to share a torah learning experience' as in Leviticus 8:3 and Deuteronomy 4:10.

PLAYFUL SPIRIT

The images and text in this blog engage the torah through creative play. Lest you view our playing with torah as irreverent and sacrilegious, you should know that torah itself teaches us to approach it in a playful spirit. "Your torah is my plaything." (Psalm 119:174). "I [the torah) was the artist's plan. I was God's delight every day, playing before Him at all times, playing in the inhabited areas of His earth, my delights are with people." (Proverbs 8:30, 31). Rav Kook in his letter to the founders of the Bezalel Art School in Jerusalem used the allegory of a child coming out of a coma calling for her doll for the reawakening of the Jewish peoples' art after its long exile of aesthetic sleep. Art is play in earnest.

About Miriam

Miriam Benjamin
I am an artist who has created Jewish ceremonial objects and clayscapes inspired by the forces of geology and erosion in the Negev desert. I also created Legacy Thrones, three monumental artworks made in collaboration with elders from different ethnic communities of Miami and art students in Jerusalem. My artwork has been exhibited in galleries and museums in New York, Miami, Washington D.C., Detroit and Honolulu. I studied at Columbia University, New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, Arrowmont School of Crafts, Massachusetts College of Art, and earned my M.F.A. at Pratt Institute. I was artist-in-residence at the South Florida Art Center and have taught at colleges in Israel and New York. Born in Suriname, the Dutch colony in South America, the great-granddaughter of the Chief Rabbi of Holland (see "My Synogogue Came on Aliyah"at http://www.artiststory.com/. I made aliyah with my family to Hibat Tzion when I was nine. I live in Ra'anana, Israel, with my husband Mel Alexenberg.