Phd visual midrash
Phd Title and Proposal
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To what extent could arts practice contribute to midrash? A visual exploration through selected episodes of the Hebrew Bible (Creation, Jacob’s Ladder at Beth-el, Burning Bush and Tabernacle) Rabbinic literature is replete with exhortations to study Torah such as: ‘Ben Bag Bag said: Turn it and turn it [the Torah], for everything is in it’. It is the responsibility of every generation of Jews to engage with the Bible afresh. The Hebrew Bible, although a closed canon, is the source book for Jewish life in every generation. We study it continually and bring it back to live again and again through our contemporary interpretations. As Hammer says, ‘Scripture is never out of date, never abandoned, and never runs dry’ Whether in translating (itself a form of interpretation) or through midrashic commentary, the Hebrew Bible and in particular the Torah, is seen as a living Scripture made accessible and meaningful by each generation. It is as much my responsibility as a Jew to ‘do midrash’ on Torah as it was for a third century rabbi. For me as an artist, my response to the verses and stories in the Hebrew Bible is visual. I want to add to midrash from my perspective as an image-maker rather than a word-smith. McBee (1) suggests the purpose of such visual midrash is ‘to pose questions and raise issues’ from ‘an entirely different realm’. In the same volume, Terlinchamp (2) goes further. She says: ‘Visual art, if permitted, may be the one element that can bridge the multi-layered worlds of the people of Torah. Art as a valid form of midrash might be the transcending channel from our dualistic text-oriented tendencies. Art frees us from being the people of the book and helps us to become the people of Torah, allowing truth to come from a variety of courses rather than from the text alone’. In this research, I am exploring the extent to which it is possible for me as an artist to do midrash through arts practice. I am testing out Terlinchamp’s claim that ‘Art, in its best moments, is a midrashic tool, in that it brings forth meaning’. How can an artist who is outside the traditional oral and written mode of normative Jewish discourse usefully engage with it with their distinctive practice-based pictorial approach? What has this type of exchange got to offer? The research thereby also raises questions about our understanding the role of practice in generating new insights in a field of study. Notes
(1) McBee,
R. (2013) ‘Bezalel’s Legacy’. The Reform
Jewish Quarterly, Winter 2013. pp 119-121. Published by the Central
Conference of American Rabbis, p.120. |
