I was raised by a devout tribalist. My mother worshipped the god of family but like many personal gods, hers was a particular invention — the seasoned product of her own fantastic yearning. My mother’s family disappointed her: my grandfather traveled six months a year, leaving behind his wife and three daughters in Los Angeles, while he sold novelties throughout the Southwest. My mother, the energetic and imperious eldest child, swore that her own family would embody rock-solid stability and, above all, togetherness.

My parents married shortly after my mother’s 22nd birthday. My father was a periodontist, seven years her senior. He was a solid, stable man — a golden ticket to an utterly different family life. Soon we were five and living in Encino, a predominately Jewish suburb of L.A. This was the late 1960s. My parents bought a split level ranch house, perfect for young families. We all slept upstairs — my parents at one end of the long, narrow hallway, my younger brother at the other, and my older brother and I occupying the rooms in between. When I was six, my mother took us for a studio photo session, and to this day those black-and-whites line the upstairs hallway like religious icons.

I was one of a tribe of five. The Lesley one. The girl one in the middle. We needed a table for five, a car for five, and, when staying at a hotel, a room big enough for five (two queens with me on a rollaway cot.) As a child I loved watching Sesame Street, and whenever the show was sponsored by the number 5, my heart tingled with recognition.

I understood myself as part of this tribe of five, but I seemed to be in constant conflict with our family god. Early on, this god mandated smart appearances, love of Judaism, and excellent marks in school. By age ten, I began dressing like a street urchin. At thirteen, I was politely expelled from Hebrew school after I was caught shoplifting at the market across the street from our temple when I should have been in class.  By fifteen, I brought home a report card filled with passable grades and outrageous with unexcused absences. Yet, despite my bad behavior — my ratty hair, my Shabbos dinner sass, my ongoing feral tantrums — no one asked me, Why? Why are you so hellbent on blaspheming our family god? Why are you forsaking the tribe?

Or perhaps someone did ask, and I’ve simply forgotten. Regardless, my answer would have been rejected mightily. I loved our tribe but I knew the sum of it could not contain me. I needed friends.  Our family had friends — lovely people who joined us on ski trips or as part of our havurah — but friends always remained outside the tribe.  Even extended family — aunties and cousins, still-living grandparents — seemed wholly other to our family tribe.  Over time, I realized my sensible mother needed a tribe that fit squarely into the palm of her hand.  For her, our small family tribe offered the kind of manageable safety that had eluded her as a child.  But I was a willful, exquisitely sensitive girl with a big imagination, and I craved more — a bigger tribe, one that could stretch to understand and accept boundaries beyond those of our tribe of five.

In 8th grade I met Kara. We attended the same middle school. Kara was blonde; her parents were divorced; she was not Jewish.  She was, however, a deep-feeling, deep-thinking girl, and, unlike me, completely unashamed of herself. She embraced her complex emotions just as she embraced her complicated her teenage body. Kara extended her unabashed acceptance to me — my emotional volatility and my endlessly-growing breasts. With Kara, for the first time in my life, I felt the simple pleasure of recognizing the goodness of who I was, and of liking that self.

Kara’s friendship was my blessed and forbidden fruit: Once I tasted its sweetness, I knew my own tribe would be larger than my mother’s. I knew it would extend beyond boundaries of blood, beyond mothers and fathers and brothers and children. It would reflect my own interior mosaic. I knew, too, that my tribe and its big-hipped god would often butt heads with my mother’s god, but as I grew and evolved, I understood the two would manage a truce.

Today my tribe contains a multitude. It includes my parents and brothers. It includes my children, my husband, and his family. And it includes an extraordinarily large number of others — women and men I consider other parents, other siblings — people who honor and broaden the demarcations of my heart. People whose hands I hold in mine.

I have been thinking about mystery for a while now. Not the literary genre. Not the esoteric cults of Egypt, Greece, or Rome. Not the Christian mystery of divine grace. These are apocalyptic mysteries. They harbor an implicit promise: Hidden behind the dark veil lies a deep reservoir of truth. If one is privy to a secret initiation or receives an uncanny revelation then all will be brought to light. Mystery, here, is the ultimate solution to the profound risks of being human.

For me, mystery is not so dark and not so light. It is, rather, a perplexity on a continuum of perplexities. Mystery is one of four species of cognitive events that has the potential to command our attention and entangle our minds in an open process of wonderment. In addition to mystery, the other perplexities are the problem, the dilemma, and the paradox.

A problem is any matter that, at least theoretically, is susceptible to being resolved through the accumulation and processing of data. Every mystery that Hercule Poirot or Philip Marlowe solved is a problem in my terms. When the Discovery Channel proclaims that dark energy is one of the greatest mysteries in science today, it is talking about a problem. For if scientists do not yet understand dark energy, it is because they do not yet know how to gather the necessary data — not because they conceive dark energy as essentially unknowable.

The second form of perplexity is the dilemma. Dilemmas occur when perplexities arise that require some form of lived response before all appropriate data can be collected. Dilemmas are time sensitive. They are resolved not through the accumulation of information but through decisive action in the face of true uncertainty. While in a state of subjective indeterminism, you must make an objective determination that may have irrevocable existential consequences.

Paradox is the third species of perplexity. Take the Christian Trinity. In normal mathematics: One equals one; three equals three. Yet, Trinitarian dogma demands that Father, Son, and Spirit be accepted as unitary, one God, while simultaneously remaining divided as three separate persons. The word “paradox” translates as “against belief.” Contradiction is the heart of the paradox.

A paradox is neither a problem nor a dilemma. The perplexities implicit in the Trinitarian dogma cannot be resolved through the deliberate accumulation of further knowledge. All the research is done; the data is all there. Likewise, the paradox does not entail choice or time-sensitive action. The Trinity is a matter of one and three, not one or three. Paradox entails an internal contradiction within a functionally complete data set for which all data points possess equal value.

So, at an emotional and cognitive level, the paradox has the potential to be received as anomalous and disruptive, an epistemic break, a trauma, radically incommensurate with an individual’s previous experience or normal phenomenology of belief. In this way, paradox shares salient characteristics with mystery. Still, the two are different, for paradoxes may be resolved.

Mystery proper begins when we question: Is it truly necessary to resolve the unknown? Why not be willing, on occasion, to remain on this side of mystery? This intellectual gesture requires a thoroughgoing rejection of transcendentalist assumptions: a willingness to accept that the hidden cannot be revealed; the veil cannot be pulled away. Perhaps nothing is hidden and the “veil” does not veil. What if there is no transcendental power abiding, as it were, on the other side of mystery, poised to open our eyes to the full truth? What if mystery always remains . . . mysterious? What if, in short, all we might know of mystery exists on this side of mystery?

As a perplexity, mystery begins in a subjective experience of perplexity, astonishment, enchantment, or rapture; a state of cognitive or emotional jeopardy. Perhaps long-time presuppositions about the way the world works have proven false. Perhaps one has suffered unaccountable trauma. Perhaps one has experienced a moment of time out of time. But rather than treating this destabilized state as a state of risk, to be analyzed and resolved as appropriate — controlled through mechanisms appropriate to a problem, dilemma, or paradox — one responds to the state of affairs as one might to an uncaused effect — puzzled, entangled, attentive.

Many, if not most, of our lives’ mysteries can be reduced to problems and clarified through naturalistic means. I am not questioning our general ability to identify and solve problems. Nor do I dispute the relative value of such intellectual practices. But the mere fact that we have the tools, methods, and skills to be critical at every turn does not mean that we must be critical at every turn. There are those times and experiences when the answer, however correct, just does not feel adequate to the question. To engage with mystery one must accept that certain cognitive events short circuit one’s regular problem-solving mentality, but not view this short circuit as itself pathological . . . as a sickness of perception, reason, or faith.

It makes sense that physical, natural, and social scientists ignore what I call mystery. The sciences have diverse means for resolving the other three perplexities, but they have no way to deal with that which is nothing, except by turning it into something; reducing it to a matter of data and the critical analysis of data. They have no way to see mystery, no way to value mystery, and no way to make it an element of their professional practice.

This limitation does not hold true for the humanities. The humanities is the only sphere within the academy that has the potential to be openly receptive to that which is unknown and uncertain without the normative requirement to transform it into the known and the certain. If one is going to talk about the perplexities of mystery in the strange, uncomfortable language appropriate to those perplexities, that person is going to be a humanist. If we understand our role as humanists as being something beyond solving problems, calculating dilemmas, or clarifying paradoxes, then I offer the category of mystery as a category all our own.

If, as Plato and Aristotle suggested, human nature is characterized fundamentally by the ability to reason, by the rational processes that distinguish us from other animals, it is equally true that we are a species blessed with the ability to intuit a dimension that lies beyond rationality, beyond the arguments that the logical mind can assert. For in addition to our remarkable ability to solve the puzzles and problems of empirical reality, to employ our rational faculties in the service of human understanding, and in pursuit of the good — we are also filled with a sense of the mysterious character of life and Being, with an awareness that there is so much that eludes our capable rational minds. This powerful sensation vibrates in the soul of the visual artist, the poet, and the musician. And the immediacy of this intuition beats in the heart of the mystic, irrespective of his or her religious tradition and affiliation. It is an eruption of Presence — divine, otherworldly. It is a moment of spiritual revelation, when the overwhelming power of the ungraspable rushes into the terrain of an everyday moment, transforming the ordinary into a sanctuary of wonder.

This sense of mystery is captured by Walt Whitman in one of the greatest paeans to nature in all of American verse. A lyric celebration of the grass and the earth (situated within his song of individuality, of sensuality), Leaves of Grass is the poet’s reflection on the power of an encounter with the natural world to evoke that palpable awe, that awareness that there are certain deep elements of our experience that resist our ability to explain and to quantify; these elements stand before us instead as markers of the transcendent located radiantly in the domain of the here-and-now. In Whitman’s description of the touch of grass, the feel and sensuality of the natural world opens the heart of the innocent; it mystifies the poet who comes before the wonders of the earth as a supplicant in religious devotion. The object of experience is elusive, unknown, and impenetrable; it awakens love in the embrace of the naturalist, it suggests the ethereal presence of Divinity someway in the corners. The poet stands in the radiant temple of grass and soil with hands opened in prayer, with a mind alert to the world’s majesty and a quest for the sacred.

The mystic shares in the perception of the poet, in the intuition of the artist, and in the inspiration received by the maker of music. Across the spectrum of religious traditions, and within Judaism in particular, the mystic approaches the world as a reality charged with concealed meaning and purpose — life as we know it is just the outer surface of Being, so much more glows beneath the rim of first glances, beyond the edge of our rational minds. Every element of the world holds a trace of Divinity, serves as a marker for the sublime and the transcendent. The spiritual seeker enters through these doors of perception, these portals into a transformed state of consciousness; from the forms and things of this earth we are led to the upper chambers of Divine light. Mi-besari ehezeh elohah, says Job. “From my flesh I will see God.” The physical is the opening into the metaphysical; through this world and its embodied nature we come to understand the spiritual depth that lies within.

This is one of the core meanings of the kabbalistic use of the word sod (secret), and of its Aramaic rendering as raza in the pages of the Zohar. To the mystic, the world is wrapped in a garment of mystery: from out of the darkness of an infinite expanse there comes the spark of illumination, the promise of ultimate perception. The words of the Torah, the life of mitzvot, the rhythms and shapes of the natural domain — these vibrate with the force of Divinity, veils of otherworldly incandescence. And we who come before the mystery of the All, aware of a depth beyond our grasp — we stand in the open field of a new twilight air that streams into us with the rush of solar birth. We can feel the immensity of Being on our shoulders — the weight of the past, the present at once sublime and tragic, the hope for a future, some unseen redemption. In this fragile and mortal body there is a mystery almost unspeakable; it is the realization that our time is fleeting and soon gone, that many have walked this path before us, only to return to the absorbing oneness of the earth — mute, perhaps remembered, and then speaking to us in the texts that survive.

The Zohar and other kabbalistic texts frequently represent the moments of mystical experience and insight as a flash of lightning, as a blinding radiance that consumes the present, and then, in an instant, is gone — leaving the person in a state of wondrous confusion, touched by the light of God, cloaked in the mystery that brims with the intrigue of birth and death. What is before, and what will be after? From where does this evanescent self emerge, and what will be left of us in the time to come?  Standing in prayer, eyes closed and heart open, we may feel the chasm of mystery that fills all of Being — the presence of God that is not a father, not a king, but a fullness: a light that revives the soul and brings us back to our distant center.

Standing in Postville, Iowa, I was faced with a fiercely rumbling stomach and a personal decision: ethics vs. halakhah.

It was June 2008, and I had traveled to Postville with some of the staff and leaders of the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, a social justice organization that has advocated on behalf of immigration reform. We were planning a march and rally in solidarity with the families and workers who were victims of both the largest immigration raid in U.S. history (at that time) and of serious labor abuses by the Agriprocessors, Inc. kosher meat-packing plant.

As a Jew who observes kashrut, I was unable to join my colleagues eating at a non-kosher restaurant. Even in this small Iowa town, a number of kosher restaurants were located nearby. But they were owned by the Rubashkin family, the owners of Agriprocessors. Wouldn’t it be unethical to patronize a restaurant owned by the owners of Agriprocessors? For the first time in my life, I was forced to choose between observing kashrut and following my ethical convictions. The nation’s observant Jews were being forced to make that same decision.

The reading of Isaiah on Yom Kippur is a yearly reminder of how ritual law and ethical practices need to complement one another. Isaiah admonishes the Jewish people for abiding by the laws between God and mankind while being indifferent to the suffering surrounding them. As it is written: “Will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to the Lord? […] Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house?” (Isaiah 58: 4-7)

Isaiah’s words send a strong message. Practicing Jewish laws and rituals, without being guided by ethical principles, is akin to wearing glasses without the prescription lenses. While frames are essential to hold the lenses, we should not focus excessively, or vainly, on the frames. Keeping kosher is essential to my Jewish practice, as frames are to my glasses, but rigorously following the laws of kashrut should not outweigh our efforts toward creating a more ethical society.

The Jewish response to the crisis in Postville has been encouraging. It demonstrates the rising consciousness among American Jews that our ethics and values need to be vigorously upheld. The Orthodox Union devotes vast resources to safeguard the technical aspects of kashrut; should we not safeguard the ethical vision of our forbears? Our institutions — even the kashrut industry, which includes meat processing and packaging plants, shops, restaurants, etc. — must protect workers and defend human rights. If Jewish ethics and social justice are central to our identities, we must make them central to our schools, synagogues, federations, shops, factories, and foundations.

Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai tells a parable of a man in a boat who drills a hole under his seat. Ignoring the protest of the other passengers, he claims that the hole is not their concern because it is under his seat. That limited vision of Agriprocessors’ role in the larger community is the essence of its corruption and is what led the company to its eventual downfall.

In the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Belgium where I grew up, we were always careful not to desecrate God’s name through improper behavior. Keeping kosher connects me to the ancient community that established a covenant with God to uphold responsibilities toward both God and humanity. Kiddush haShem, the sanctification of God, can be put faithfully into practice only when the ethical and the ritual are inextricably connected.

Judaism, Physics and God: Searching for Sacred Metaphors in a Post-Einstein World, David W. Nelson (300 pages, Jewish Lights Publishing, Woodstock, VT, 2005, $24.99)

Reviewed by Andrea Wershof Schwartz

The intersection of science and religion in America often enters the spotlight at moments of tension, such as the debate over how, or whether, to educate children about evolution or the age of the earth. The two fields are so often depicted in conflict that one might forget the possibility that both science and religion can serve as paths to deeper understandings of humanity and creation. Two recent books strive to remind us of the positive contribution to be made by both science and religion to understanding God: physicist Gerald Schroeder’s God According to God: A Physicist Proves We’ve Been Wrong About God All Along and Rabbi David Nelson’s Judaism, Physics and God: Searching for Sacred Metaphors in a Post-Einstein World are both eloquent attempts to revive conversation between science and religion.

While Nelson’s book is a self-proclaimed “book about Judaism” that draws on lessons of physics to enrich the discourse about God within the Jewish community, Schroeder’s book addresses a more diverse audience, drawing on the wonders of nature and the words of the Bible to describe an unknowable God. Both books engage in a rich dialogue between the discoveries of science and the sacred beliefs of religious traditions, building on both in their quest for a clearer understanding of God and of the world.

In Judaism, Physics and God, Nelson reframes scientific metaphors in a Jewish context. For instance, Nelson describes the scientific concept of a fractal, a shape within a shape, a pattern repeated infinitely within a larger finite pattern, as a beautiful metaphor for understanding God and creation. The idea of the fractal structure of nature is echoed in Jewish prayer as well; as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks points out in the new Koren Sacks siddur, the structure of the first blessing of the Amidah, composed of praise, request, and thanks, mirrors the structure of the Amidah and of the prayer service as a whole. Nelson provides many elegant examples of metaphors drawn from the natural world — from string theory to the uncertainty principle — that enrich the Jewish approach to understanding God.

In God According to God, Schroeder seeks to strip away preconceived notions about God that readers may have absorbed as children but not revisited, and introduces a language of discourse about God based on a close reading of biblical narratives and the principles of physics. He uses the flood narrative to explore the notion of a God who regrets, who is part of the ongoing learning process of creation and renewal. Schroeder reframes biblical narratives as windows into human perceptions of God: a God who needs human partners yet argues with them, gets frustrated with them, and loves them. The lessons of science, for Schroeder, serve as yet another passageway into understanding God, a counterpoint to the biblical narratives about the divine that provides further clues to God’s nature.

These two books remind us that the relationship between science and religion need not be one of conflict, nor one of two parallel but non-intersecting realms. Rather, as Schroeder and Nelson convincingly demonstrate, the language of science, particularly of physics, is well served in describing the complex relationship between humans and the divine, and can contribute to a richer understanding of Jewish texts and traditions. Similarly, reading biblical narratives with a mind toward the interconnectedness of nature enables the reader to envision a God of complexity and nuance. Both of these books require the reader to move beyond a simplistic, if perhaps comforting, notion of God toward a nuanced, multifaceted understanding of the mysteries inherent in nature and in the quest for understanding the divine.

The New Year season, an annual opportunity for introspection, is not really over until after the story of the creation is read again in the weekly Torah cycle: “In the beginning.” And so each year, in the waning moments of the Jewish calendar’s period of self-reevaluation, we are asked to think about our origins and the mysteries of existence and to wonder what to make of a Bible that seems to address —  and answer —  questions of science. While tradition assigns an age of 5770 years to the world, the measurements that comprise the “big bang” description find the universe is 13.7 billion years old. What does this apparent conflict between science and religion mean, especially when the power and truth of science are acknowledged by virtually everyone?

There is news for anyone committed to intellectual honesty: It’s no longer an issue. Here’s why. The “god of the gaps” — the derogatory term used to describe a divinity invoked when we do not understand something — is now dead. For centuries scientists could only speculate or brag about the possibility of deciphering all the puzzles of nature, but just in the past 20 years — not earlier — has science provided answers with some confidence to the fundamental questions that used to be the sole domain of religion, especially the two big ones: How was the universe created? What is the nature of life?

In my field of physics and astronomy, the big bang description has been resoundingly confirmed while other options have been rejected. New instruments expect to achieve astonishing accuracies of one percent in their measurement of details in the unfolding of creation. Mean­while, in biology, the human genome project has successfully placed life and its complexity under a microscope. This means that for the very first time in human history we can plausibly, if timorously, respond “yes” on behalf of Job, whom God challenges: “Speak up if you can understand [the creation].” (Job 38:4)

Sophisticated readers of Sh’ma may feel like shrugging off my observation as old news.  Whatever the details of creation — billions or millions of years — most people assumed that science would find answers. But as the pieces of the world puzzle come together, our relationships with God and Torah mature irrevocably. For those of us who are religious, this revolution means that faith is not the result of being ignorant but is an acknowledgment of a sanctified relationship. It also means that attentiveness to Torah requires a deeper new understanding of its message. An example: We, like Adam, are made of “adamah” — the dust of the earth.  But today we know that this is not just poetic speech but concrete certainty. That dust, however, was not made during the big bang but long afterward, in the nuclear furnaces of stars that have since died as supernovae. Matter was tediously assembled into life through an intricate, finely balanced, time-consuming, and I would even say miraculous dance. Torah’s imagery is not about magical incantations, but about fine craftsmanship; the world is far more amazing than tradition suggests, and it reveals its treasures through attentive observation and rational inquiry.

On the other hand, for those of us, including secularists, who recognize the power of science, the revolution lets us approach Torah freed of the distracting, dubious baggage of having to provide satisfying answers to the mystery of origins. Our knowledge of the world is the fruit of our intellectual efforts, and our relationship with the world is the domain of our tradition. Torah’s message to the secular is that we are one family, with responsibility for our fragile garden. Moreover, confidence in science by no means implies that we know everything. On the contrary, the mysteries increase in number as our questions become more sophisticated. We have only recently discovered dark matter and dark energy; they amount to 95 percent of the essence of our universe and we have no idea what they are. Scientists are admirably honest about admitting ignorance; we do not know it all, regardless of our scriptures or our egos. Science is in a position curiously reminiscent of the mythical cosmology in which the earth sits on the back of a giant turtle standing on the back of another turtle. When asked what the bottom turtle stands on, the philosopher is reputed to have replied: “It’s turtles all the way down.” Science finds new questions all the way down. Not only does the living God reveal to us something deeper of these mysteries, secrets that our forebears did not understand, but we also acknowledge that future discoveries (and puzzles) await our children.

The power of the scientific method is that every single person will see and hear exactly the same thing. Mistakes of interpretation will be found and fixed; cumulative wisdom grows and as it does we gain in understanding about God’s “Book of Nature.” In contrast, our relationship with the holy is communal and personal, and sanctified. Together our mind and our spirit, and our shared and our personal experiences of the Divine, enable us to live in the natural world both aware of and grateful for its blessings, as Psalm 92:6–7 urges. Neither domain of reality (religion and science) should be denied or ignored; both should be embraced as we attempt to reach new levels of wonder, gratitude, responsibility, and — perhaps — holiness.

ARTISTS’ STATEMENT

THE FOUR WORLDS

Bonita Helmer

According to the Kabbalah (the hidden mystical structure of the universe) the world was created as a great Tree of Existence.  This great tree is composed of four separate worlds connected by the Jacob’s Ladder.  The highest world (Azilut), the World of Emanation, the next is the World of Creation  (Beriah), then the World of Formation (Yetzirah) and finally the World of Action (Asiyah).

Within the center of the structure of the universe (“the great tree”), the Kabbalah also describes levels of existence relating to the individual.   The Keter, at the top of the head (the crown and origin), the Daat, in the center of the throat (understanding and knowledge)  then in the center of body at Tefiret (beauty) thus forming the spiritual world.  The Tefiret then joins with  Yesod (foundation)  in the groin area and Malkut (the divine body), which is at the bottom of the feet and represents the physical world.  These levels are the center pole and core of the Sfirot system.

I have created four different interpretations of the Four Worlds of Existence.  Each painting is constructed with four separate panels reading as one complete work.

The complexity of this “charting” of the universe, and the human nature within, has been a challenge as an artist.  Painting this series has been a combination of using the mind, body, and spirit  Approaching this subject has been a sacred experience.  The wisdom of the ancient masters, in documenting this “unseen” structure never ceases to amaze me as I wander through the depths and try to personally capture these abstract concepts through images in paint.

Bonita Helmer  2000 – 2003

No one is available

Ken Aptekar

60″ X 60″

four panels, oil/wood, sandblasted glass, bolts

After Robert Campin, The Nativity, 1420, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon, France Private Collection

The painting is one of a series of works I made exploring the meaning of angels from a Jewish point of view. There’s something of the wonderment of the notion of heaven in Tuvia Katz’s painting “Between Heaven and Earth.”

Angels of the sort I found in an alterpiece in Dijon, France, by Robert Campin answer questions that were unanswerable in the 15th c. because of the limits of knowledge. I tried to find corollaries today for the messages that angels used to deliver back then. Mystery, wonder and awe reside for me, for example, in how the Internet works, which as far as I can tell, no one really understands. The ribbon with words spiraling around the angel is, for me the antecedent of a variety of disembodied contemporary communications, which in this work float over my painting. The text sandblasted on glass bolted over Campin’s angel reads:  “no one is available to take your call, you may have shut down improperly, for museum gift shop hours press three, please enter your pin number, accident in right lane ahead, you will prosper and have long happy life, server does not have DNS entry, seventh floor: intimate apparel, adjustments.”

Ruth Kestenbaum Ben-Dov

Immersion 1, 1997, oil on canvas, 130 X 90 cm., 51 X 35″

This painting touches on the mystery of immersion in the mikve, a place that juxtaposes free-flowing water with an enclosed and claustrophobic space; and birth – or a potential for new life – with its absence or loss.

A larger dialogue that lies in the background of this work is that between Christianity, a central source for western painting, and Judaism, with their differing attitudes toward the body on the one hand and art on the other. Traditional Judaism involves itself in minute details of the body, including meticulous discussions on menstrual blood, yet its central medium of expression is the written and spoken word. Christianity chose to reject “Carnal Israel”, preferring spirit to body, yet after much controversy selected painting, sensual and figurative, as one of its central religious languages.

In my ongoing search for understanding the complex relationship between Judaism and art, one of the first places from which I embarked was this small human-size underwater space, one that touches on mythic and enigmatic layers in our culture.