Your donation will be tax deductible in the US to the extent allowed by the IRS.
To make a tax-deductible donation by wire transfer in the US, please contact:
Avrum Lapin, North American Representative
Toll-free: 1-866-830-3321
Email: schechter@thelapingroup.com
To make a tax-deductible donation in Israel, please contact:
Dina Gudai, Israeli Representative
Phone: 074-7800643
Email: dina@schechter.ac.il
Please mail your check to:
The Schechter Institutes, Inc. (a 501(c) 3 tax exempt organization)
Box #3566
PO Box 8500
Philadelphia, PA 19178-3566
Attn: Mr. Avrum Lapin, North American Representative
Toll-free: 1-866-830-3321
Email: schechter@thelapingroup.com
Please indicate the donation is "for your joint Schechter Institutes program."
Checks should be made payable to the Jewish Theological Society of Canada and mailed to:
Jewish Theological Society of Canada
c/o Camp Ramah in Canada
3845 Bathhurst St., Suite 310
Toronto, ON, M3H 3N2
Phone: 416-789-2193, ext. 2139
E-mail: accounting@campramah.com
Please mail a check to:
The Schechter Institutes
Attn: Dina Gudai, Finance Department
PO Box 16080,
Jerusalem, 9116002
Israel
For assistance, please call Dina Gudai at 074-780-0643 (8:00 AM – 3:00 Israel time Sunday through Thursday).
Your donation will be tax deductible in the US to the extent allowed by the IRS.
To make a tax-deductible donation by wire transfer in the US, please contact:
Avrum Lapin, North American Representative
Toll-free: 1-866-830-3321
Email: schechter@thelapingroup.com
To make a tax-deductible donation in Israel, please contact:
Dina Gudai, Israeli Representative
Phone: 074-7800643
Email: dina@schechter.ac.il
Please mail your check to:
The Schechter Institutes, Inc. (a 501(c) 3 tax exempt organization)
Box #3566
PO Box 8500
Philadelphia, PA 19178-3566
Attn: Mr. Avrum Lapin, North American Representative
Toll-free: 1-866-830-3321
Email: schechter@thelapingroup.com
Please indicate the donation is "for your joint Schechter Institutes program."
Checks should be made payable to the Jewish Theological Society of Canada and mailed to:
Jewish Theological Society of Canada
c/o Camp Ramah in Canada
3845 Bathhurst St., Suite 310
Toronto, ON, M3H 3N2
Phone: 416-789-2193, ext. 2139
E-mail: accounting@campramah.com
Please mail a check to:
The Schechter Institutes
Attn: Dina Gudai, Finance Department
PO Box 16080,
Jerusalem, 9116002
Israel
For assistance, please call Dina Gudai at 074-780-0643 (8:00 AM – 3:00 Israel time Sunday through Thursday).
An Artistic Midrash:
Shapes and Colors of God’s World
The second portion in the book of Genesis starts with the introduction of Noah, a righteous man who “walked with God” (Gen. 6:9) and was told to build a wooden ark (teva), because: “the Earth was filled with violence” and God wanted to destroy it and all the living things upon it. The question asked in reading this is why did God select a flood as the way to destroy His Creation? And why was Noah told to build an ark in order to survive the flood rather than a boat that could sail the waters and what did that this ark look like? How did the Earth appear when all but the occupants of the ark had perished, the waters had receded, and the ark had come to rest among the mountains of Ararat?
If you were an artist how would you imagine the ark?
Noach, Avner Moriah
The artist Avner Moriah’s visual interpretation of the biblical text lends a certain perspective regarding the above mentioned questions. The image on the right depicts the ark as a unique three-dimensional structure resting miraculously on the very top of a mountain. It is obvious that this ark could not have been steered like a boat and that its passage through the waters had been totally dependent on God’s will. The painting shows the ark with several windows – not mentioned in the text – framing the faces of Noah and his family, suggesting their eagerness to look outside the vessel that both imprisoned and saved them to see the awesome desolate surroundings.
The blue, purple, and green colors used to image the mountains seem unrealistic and dreamlike. Clearly the artist related to the ark metaphorically for the picture does not tell the story from an historical perspective. Rather, it describes the episode symbolically, showing the Earth after the flood had washed away all the evil and Noah, who had faithfully followed God’s command facing the enormous task of building a renewed cleaner world.
The image on the left visualizes the story of the Tower of Babel, found in the same Torah portion. Upon reading this story one wonders what the actual sin of the people might have been that it was the cause such divine anger? What was wrong with their desire to “build us a city, and a tower, with its top in heaven, and let us make us a name; lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole Earth” (Gen. 11:4).
Moriah portrayed the people of Babel as figurines modeled in the style of the ancient Near East using a neoteric, new cement mixer to make the bricks to build a tower that resembles a novel structure with many antennas. By combining modern motifs with ancient imagery, the artist seems to emphasize the metaphorical significance of the story and to underscore its relevance to contemporary society.
Thus we can discern a connection between these juxtaposed scenes. We are aware that after the flood, God commanded Noah and his family to, “Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the Earth” (Gen. 9:1). The builders of the Tower of Babel seem not to have learned the message of the disaster of the Flood.
In their efforts to rebuild what was destroyed they used their talents and abilities not to build a meaningful new Universe with Godly principles and ideals but a society filled with people that would only empower themselves and “make their name,” without any concern for the world around them, so God, “scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the Earth” (Gen. 11:8).
The colors used to paint the skies in these two portrayals suggest the difference in symbolism between the two scenarios. In the picture of Noah’s ark at the end of the Flood , the sky is rendered in green and yellow, colors that seem to reflect tranquility and ta hope of a new world, whereas the red and orange sky above the Tower of Babel suggests storms and turbulence, thus mirroring defiance of God’s will and designs.
SHABBAT SHALOM FROM SCHECHTER
Dr. Shula Laderman worked for many years as a computer programmer and planner at Shaare Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem. While working there, she studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem towards her Ph.D., which she received in 2000. Her topic of research is the “Artist as an Interpreter” – visual interpretation of the Bible in Jewish and Christian Art. She is the author of Images of Cosmology in Jewish and Byzantine Art-God’s Blueprint of Creation and is co-author with the artist Avner Moriah of The Illuminated Torah. She taught for many years at Bar Ilan University as well as at the Schechter Institute, where she continues to teach in the Judaism and the Arts track (which she directed in the past).
