TorahTweets: A Postdigital Biblical Commentary as a Blogart Narrative: Va'ethanan (Implored) אתחנן

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)

Friday, August 12, 2011

Va'ethanan (Implored) אתחנן

A Blog is an Ideal Torah Art Form

Do not make yourself a carved form or static image of that which is in the heaven above or on the earth below or in the water beneath the earth…. I am YHVH (Was-Is-Will be), your God, who brought you out of Mitzrayim (Egypt-Narrowness) from the confines of slavery…. Do not take the name of YHVH your God in vain. (Deuteronomy 5:8, 6, 11) לא תעשה לך פסל כל תמונה אשר בשמים ממעל ואשר בארץ מתחת ואשר במים מתחת לארץ אנוכי יהוה אלהיך אשר הוצאתיך מארץ מצרים מבית עבדים לא תשא את שם יהוה אלהיך לשוא

The second of the Ten Commandments, not exclusively addressed to artists, asks us not to transform living processes in inert forms.

We can best understand the second commandment in context of the first and third. Do not carve in stone that which is in flux.

The first Commandment can be rephrased as: "I am Was-Is-Will be, your God, who brought you out of the narrow constraints of a slave mentality."

YHVH is a verb, not a noun. It combines the words for was, is and will be, linking past and present to redemptive future.

Do not freeze the process of creation and historical process into fixed images that limit our experience of an infinite God.

Do not even limit the Infinite by assigning God a name. In Hebrew conversation, we call God Hashem, literally "The Name," a nameless God.

Indeed, the Divine names in the torah are not God's names, but rather facets of emanations of Divine light into our everyday world.

YHVH is associated with Tiferet, Divine beauty created through dynamic interaction with all the other emanations of Divine light.

A blog is an ideal torah art form, a log of a living process in a networked world, rather than still life entombed in a golden frame.

Sunday, 7 Av: Our youngest grandchild, Avraham Matityahu, is playing in our living room. He is named for Mel's father and uncle.

Monday, 8 Av: Mel was at Ariel University to send papers documenting his life to Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian in Washington.

Tuesday, 9 Av: We mourn the destruction of the 1^st and 2^nd Jewish commonwealths attributed to baseless hatred, sinat hinam.

Today's antidote is ahavat hinam, unconditional love, exemplified by Miriam's three siblings and their families.

Channa's family is Lubavich. Hans' children are Belz Hassidim. Ezra rides a motorcycle wearing a knitted kippa symbolizing religious Zionism.

We see the bar mitzvah celebration of Channa's grandson where black fedoras, mink striemels and knitted kippot celebrate together.

Wednesday, 10 Av: Every year, we light a memorial candle honoring Mel's father, Avraham ben Mordecai, who passed away on the 10^th of Av.

He always made people happy. In his death, he extended the day of national mourning rather than disrupt the flow of mourners' lives.

Thursday, 11 Av: It's our granddaughter Tali's 18^th birthday. She's a counselor at Camp Ramah and will be serving in the IDF in the Fall.

Friday, 12 Av: Don't make a carved form or static image. The Jewish thing to do is make art to eat. We made a banana cake for Shabbat.

Miriam measured out the ingredients while Mel mashed the bananas. Our art is a tasty version of Internet images of the surface of Mars.

No comments:

Post a Comment

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.