Richard McBee

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	Select an Archives Section: JP Archives: Jewish Arts 383 Archived Articles Found in Jewish Arts Next 20 Articles > 1) Posted Nov 09 2011 Shapiro's Midrash By Richard McBee The midrashic world is a dangerous place to inhabit. It delves into our sacred texts to fathom their deeper meanings, solve vexing textual and conceptual problems and, finally, make sense of the holy words in contemporary terms. Midrash is passionate and deeply creative, like the current midrashic paintings of Brian Shapiro. Read Article 2) Posted Nov 02 2011 Rain In Biblical Art By Menachem Wecker One of the most iconic works of art I have ever seen is Japanese painter and printmaker Katsushika Hokusai's c. 1831-1834 Cresting Wave Off the Coast of Kanagawa. The woodcut-which has held up remarkably well even as it has become an object of kitsch, plastered all over t-shirts, mugs, and posters-depicts an enormous wave (a tsunami perhaps) about to engulf a boat. The wave and foam are rendered in such a stylized manner that they resemble snow and icicles. And in the background, one can just make out the mountain. Read Article 3) Posted Oct 26 2011 Divine Encounter And The Sacred Doorway By Richard McBee Our encounters with the Divine are precious moments of personal religiosity. We believe that when we pray we are speaking directly to God and that at that moment we are in the Divine presence. And yet we are seldom conscious of the awe and fear we should also feel. Read Article 4) Posted Oct 18 2011 An Ancient 'Obsession' with Sukkot Iconography By Menachem Wecker In some ways, Sukkot is the most contemporary of holidays. Many pay good money and invest a lot of time and effort to obtain a beautiful etrog-indeed its biblical name is "fruit of the beautiful tree"-and the most visually appealing lulav, hadasim and aravot. There are various schools of thought on whether to refrigerate or not to refrigerate, to wrap in aluminum foil or wet paper towel, all with the goal of preventing the four species from spoiling and jeopardizing their smell and visual appearance. There is no specific requirement that the schach covering the sukkah be alive-indeed it cannot be made of something still attached to the ground-but the entire atmosphere of Sukkot is one of growth, natural living, and disengaging from our comfort zone. Indeed, it is on the extended Sukkot holiday that a prayer is offered for rain, the source of life. Read Article 5) Posted Oct 16 2011 Leonard Everett Fisher's Challenge By Richard McBee Just look at the expression on Yonah's face. It combines fear and incomprehension at his terrible punishment of floating in the belly of the great fish. So too Noah peering out of the ark, perched on the edge of understanding that there might be a future for mankind. Both works point to the genius of Leonard Everett Fisher as an artist and interpreter of biblical narrative. Read Article 6) Posted Oct 05 2011 *The Blowing Of The Shofar* In Sholom Aleichem And The Dybbuk By Menachem Wecker The blast of the shofar ends one of the most dramatic scenes in "The Dybbuk," directed by Sidney Lumet, in which a rabbinical court excommunicates a dybbuk, while the same sound of the shofar opens the "Sholom Aleichem" story of Bontche Schweig, announcing the Job-like character's arrival in heaven. Read Article 7) Posted Sep 27 2011 Hagar And Rosh Hashanah By Richard McBee "After these things, God tested Avraham (Genesis 22:1). What things? The Midrash teaches that "after these things" means something immediately after. We, on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, mentally experience these words immediately after the first day's reading. That reading starts with the miraculous birth of Yitzchak, thirty-seven years earlier. Then the very grown-up conflict with his half-brother Yishmael and the climatic narrative of the expulsion of Hagar and Yishmael unfolds. Avraham is willing to sacrifice each of his sons at God's command. Yishmael and Hagar in the wilderness is the first of these two instances. Hagar's expulsion and her anguish in the wilderness therefore must color our understanding of Rosh Hashanah's primal narrative, the Akeidah. Read Article 8) Posted Sep 21 2011 Why Are Artists So Fascinated By The Branch Over The Prophet Yonah's Head? By Menachem Wecker It's easy to understand why artists have painted the navi Yonah early and often. There is no character more interesting than the man who, though blessed with the gift of prophecy, failed to grasp the responsibility he was charged with, literally turned his back on his divine mission and ran away, only to be devoured alive by a fish. After what must have seemed an eternity to the son of Amitai-in reality just three days and three nights-the fish, obeying a Divine commandment, vomited Yonah onto dry land. Read Article 9) Posted Sep 14 2011 Embodied Light: 9-11 in 2011: An Installation by Tobi Kahn By Richard McBee Tragedies do not function to teach us well-ordered lessons. Rather they demand that we turn inward so that we may absorb their impact and, over time, somehow deal with the horror of a violently wounded world. Read Article 10) Posted Sep 07 2011 Earthquakes And Hurricanes In Art By Menachem Wecker As I sit to write this, Hurricane Irene is unleashing a good deal of rain and powerful winds outside my apartment building. There is a question if the power will go out, and reports from the official county website and social media handles predict it could take a week to two weeks to restore power fully to those who have lost it. This stressful situation comes just a few days after I had to evacuate my office when the building started shaking in an earthquake unprecedented to the area. Read Article 11) Posted Aug 31 2011 Artists 4 Israel: Response Art Series & Terror: Artists Respond By Richard McBee There is a short list of things that really matter: family, friends, country and faith the most. For many Jews, our people and Israel occupy an almost sacred place in the order of commitment and passion. Therefore, when either the Jewish people or the legitimacy of the State of Israel are attacked and slandered, we react passionately. In a visceral way these things are crucial to the very core of our identity. How do contemporary Jewish artists respond? Read Article 12) Posted Aug 24 2011 Janet Shafner's Biblical Women By Menachem Wecker By the Bible's own admission, the laws and procedures pertaining to the red heifer constitute some of the greatest chukot, or mysteries, of the entire scriptures. Per Numbers 19, an unblemished, never-been-harnessed red heifer, if slaughtered by a priest outside of the camp in the proper way - which includes the following ingredients: a piece of cedar wood, hyssop and crimson wool - can purify someone who has touched something unholy. The great mystery of the red heifer, the para adumah, though, is that the very object that purifies the ritually unclean also makes all the priests who come in contact with it unclean. It is the original double-edged sword. Read Article 13) Posted Aug 17 2011 Alan Falk's Lessons By Richard McBee Two of Alan Falk's biblical paintings immediately assault us aesthetically and thematically. Isaac Blessing Jacob (2009) and The Cry of Esau (2010) document the famous stolen blessing of Beraishis 27 and its consequences. The ancient Isaac is clad in a white nightshirt, raising his bony hands in blessing over his two sons. In one, Jacob has donned a curly-haired brown Afro deceitfully offering his blind father food, while in the other, Isaac's trembling hands attempt to bless the hysterical Esau at his feet. The cartoonish figures are caught in a melodrama of high-keyed color and exaggerated gesture that casts the biblical tale into an unfamiliar and strange realm. Read Article 14) Posted Aug 10 2011 The Politics Of Jewish Calendars By Menachem Wecker Although jokes abound about how punctual German Jews (Yekes) are, the concept of "Jewish Standard Time," presumably mocking the non-Germanic segments of the Jewish population, has earned an entry in Urban Dictionary for "15 minutes late to everything" or "being late to an important event." Read Article 15) Posted Aug 03 2011 Meer Akselrod: Painting His People By Richard McBee Empathy and memory meet in the work of Meer Akselrod (1902-1970), the Jewish Russian artist who defied aesthetic convention and totalitarian dictates to relentlessly pursue his personal artistic vision of painting the Jewish people. His quiet courage in the face of epochal changes that convulsed his Russian homeland cannot be overestimated. They are amply attested to by his artwork, not the least of which are two pen and ink drawings, Pogrom, from 1927 - 1928, currently at the Chassidic Art Institute. Read Article 16) Posted Jul 27 2011 Imagining The Destruction Of Jerusalem By Menachem Wecker As I sit composing this column, the fast of the 17th of Tammuz is only hours away. Though the fast will have passed when you read this, the Ninth of Av will soon be upon us, so we are sure to have the destruction of the Temples on our minds for some time. Read Article 17) Posted Jul 20 2011 The Quality Of Mercy By Susan de la Fuente** What was the moral motivation of gentiles who rescued Jews during the Holocaust? During a recent conference at Yad Vashem, Prof. Wolfgang Bialas of the Hannah Arendt Institute in Dresden, Germany presented some research findings on the mindset of non-Jewish Berliners who sheltered Jews and helped them survive. Read Article 18) Posted Jul 13 2011 Lilith by Siona Benjamin By Richard McBee Siona Benjamin's exhibition "Finding Home: The Art of Siona Benjamin" is simply beautiful. Set in the spacious lobby gallery of the JCC Manhattan, it allows for a peaceful (when the kids, nannies and crowds subside) contemplation of this complex artist's meditations on biblical women, war, exoticism and contemporary society. Read Article 19) Posted Jul 07 2011 Philadelphia Museum Exhibit Showcases Chagall's Jewish Circle By Menachem Wecker Although the subject matter of Marc Chagall's 1910 painting Resurrection of Lazarus clearly comes from Christian scripture, the artist put his decidedly Jewish mark on the image twice over. Chagall depicted both a Star of David and two hands - signifying the priestly blessing - on the tomb from which the haloed Lazarus has emerged. Although Jewish burial traditions tended to represent the priestly hands with the index and middle fingers touching and the ring and small fingers touching and a gap in between, Chagall, perhaps forgetting the convention, elected to spread all the fingers out evenly. Read Article 20) Posted Jun 29 2011 Yeshiva Art By Richard McBee Who would have guessed that a yeshiva would have an Arts Program? If I had died and gone to heaven, surely the World to Come would look like this. And yet for seven years, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan the liberal women's learning program (i.e. yeshiva), Drisha Institute for Jewish Education, has had an Arts Fellowship program that offers a year of study (in addition to their regular yeshiva courses like Talmud, Halacha, Parshanut, Biblical Hebrew and Liturgy) where Torah subjects and the arts are combined and pursued with the seriousness and determination of most men sitting and learning all day long. And it's for women only. Read Article 383 Archived Articles Found in Jewish Arts Next 20 Articles >
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