Tag: artwork

Categories
Technology

From Star Trek to Paper T’filah: “Live Long and Prosper”

Logical. Unemotional. Alien. As Mr. Spock on the original Star Trek television series, Leonard Nimoy found himself trying to bring depth and detail to a character that hadn’t yet been fully fleshed out; it was up to Nimoy to contribute much of what made Spock who he was—including the famous “Vulcan salute.”

Nimoy said that one day on the set, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry asked him to come up with a greeting to use when meeting the Vulcan matriarch, and into his head popped an image of the chazan in his childhood shul giving the “priestly benediction.” And with that, this ancient Jewish hand gesture was introduced to the world.

It’s the blessing by which Aaron blessed the people, the blessing that kohanim still say over worshippers in synagogues today, and it’s the blessing that my wife says over our children every Shabbat (and yes, she does the thing with her hands). “May God bless you and keep you,” she recites. “May God deal kindly with you, and be gracious to you. May God’s face shine upon you, and grant you peace.”

I’ve always connected to the Vulcan salute and the words that accompany it (“Live Long and Prosper”). Perhaps it’s because it seemed so obviously (to me) Jewish, and yet slipped under the radar of my non-Jewish friends. Whatever the reason, I used it to structure my papercut, “Live Long and Prosper,” which I made with cut-up Star Trek comic books.

Yeah, cut-up comic books. For those of you who missed my last post, that’s what I do: I incorporate cut-up comic books into my work, drawing parallels between comic book mythologies and religious traditions. So within the delicate cutaway panels of my “Live Long and Prosper” papercut can be found images of Nimoy as Spock giving the Vulcan salute, the U.S.S. Enterprise, and the beauty of comic book outer space. I also included parts of a chumash that had been headed for the g’nizah for ritual burial: words of the priestly blessing in Hebrew and English, side-by-side with the Spock and his crewmates.

The image is a representation of blessing and strength, and I’ve made it the starting point for the Paper T’filah Visual T’filah I designed for the CCAR. It’s my intention to anchor this visual liturgy in an image both immediately familiar, for multiple reasons–a mix of reverence and amusement, and a statement of intent: this service will boldly go where no one has gone before … and I hope you’ll go there with me.

My wife and I have made “Paper T’filah” an element of the “Paper Midrash” residencies that we lead around the country: worship and study and papercutting workshops that bring together contemporary art, pop culture, and scholarship. The reaction has been overwhelmingly positive, and I couldn’t be more proud to have brought something new to their worship experience.

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Isaac Brynjegard-Bialik is a Jewish artist living in Southern California. He cuts up comic books and reassembles them into work made of clean lines and patterns, sinuous shapes and sharp edges, large fields of color and small intimate spaces.

Click here to view a sample of Paper T’filah by Visual T’filah. It is now available for purchase on the CCAR Press website. For more information on how you can bring Paper Midrash to your community, email Isaac or visit his website.

Categories
High Holy Days Machzor Mishkan haNefesh

Taking Mishkan HaNefesh Off the Page and Into Our Hearts

As we prepared to lead Yizkor from Mishkan HaNefesh we were challenged with how to make a large space feel intimate.  Our High Holiday services take place at the Performing Arts Center of SUNY Purchase, an intimate concert hall that seats 1500 replete with a stage large enough for any philharmonic orchestra.  Our plan was to use the ritual of the seven candles as outlined in Mishkan HaNefesh but in such a large space, we were concerned that the significance of these candles may lose its meaning for those sitting in the upper balcony.

Two things serendipitously came together.  The first is a page in Mishkan HaNefesh that is set apart from the others.  In the midst of the Yizkor service one finds a two-page spread that is different in color, whose words simply say, “Yizkor Elohim” and then a variety of words, randomly spaced (although nothing in Mishkan HaNefesh appears random) across the page describing different relations and the emotions one might feel having them gone.  Verbs like, “I miss…  I remember… I think of…I mourn… i promise,” and relations like, “my mother… my father… my uncle… my friend… my companion.”  Amidst the plethora of amazing readings and poems, I personally find it to be one of the most powerful set of pages in the entire set.  I wanted our congregants to be able to spend some time meditating on those pages.

The second “aha” moment was a Facebook posting (thanks CCAR Facebook page) of Rosh HaShanah services at Denise Eger’s congregation in Los Angeles.  Student Rabbi Jeremy Gimbel led a rousing noggin with everyone standing and dancing and clapping.  Up, above all those on the bima, projected on a screen was a piece of the artwork found in Mishkan HaNefesh.  “This is how we are going to bring that page from the Yizkor services to our congregants!” I thought.yizkor

I quickly sent an email to Hara Person and Dan Medwin asking how we could get a jpeg or PDF of those pages from the Yizkor service to project on our large stage.  For years we have projected the stained glass windows from our sanctuary on the scrim behind our portable aron kodesh.  Now was an opportunity to transform that moment of worship.

During the days between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, Dan and Hara quickly sent us a JPEG of that page.  Our projectionist jumped on it, transforming a static JPEG into move-able text where one word appeared, then another and another.  He also played with the background colors to a project a reddish hue, bringing it more in-line with the coloring of the concert hall.  In this small (albeit complicated by my standards) act, we were able to move Mishkan HaNefesh off the page and into people’s hearts.  I have no idea how others felt about it (no one complained which I take as a compliment).  It was for me, one of the most moving moments of our chagim.

So once again, hats off to the editorial team of Mishkan HaNefesh for their creativity in worship and to our staff at the CCAR for being agents instead of gatekeepers, of saying yes when they could have said no, and for being so responsive to one rabbi’s request.

 

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Rabbi Daniel Gropper serves the Community Synagogue of Rye, New York.