Spirit and Story Archive

By William Meyers

“Ervah: Hidden Sensuality,” a photo essay by Na’ama Batya Lewin, recently appeared in the journal Kerem. Ms Lewin is an Orthodox woman. In the essay she explores women’s head coverings in the Orthodox community by taking portraits of herself in various Orthodox neighborhoods while wearing the head covering appropriate to that particular neighborhood. So in some cases she wears a sheitel (a wig), in some a hat, in some a kerchief, etc. 

I am not interested here in discussing the quality of these pictures as art – that is, whether they are good pictures or not.  I am interested in them as cultural artifacts, ones that illustrate a new movement in photography. There is nothing unusual about photographers taking self-portraits; the current exhibit at International Center for Photography includes self-portraits by William Henry Fox Talbot taken in the mid-nineteenth century, the very beginning of photography. And there is nothing unusual about a photographer dressing up to take self-portraits. Over the past few decades Cindy Sherman has made an enormous reputation for herself as an avant-garde artist by taking pictures of herself outfitted in various disguises. But Sherman, who like Lewin is Jewish, says the theme of her work is the exploration of the self. It is a narcissistic, and increasingly depressing, exploration that I believe can be differentiated from Lewin’s exploration in this issue of Kerem. 

There is a long roster of truly distinguished Jewish women photographers, and although it is still somewhat unusual for an Orthodox woman to be a professional art photographer, the fact that Lewin is one is of only sociological interest.  What is far more significant here is that Na’ama Lewin is using her camera, her art, to explore aspects of Judaism. Her essay quotes the Talmud and Maimonides. If she juxtaposes those texts with her photographs, she must mean for them to comment on each other. That sort of give and take is what we would expect from any Jew concerned with the tradition, but it is not something that has been done by many photographers. 

Max Kozloff is a well-known writer on photography, a teacher, curator, and himself a photographer. In a recent article in Parnassus about the role of photography in the aftermath of September 11, he said, “By and large, photography operates as a secular medium….”  That is true. There was a mini vogue 100 or so years ago for shooting tableaux vivantes of Biblical scenes by Christian photographers, but they mostly have a tacky, even camp, look about them. The medium does not seem to lend itself to religious expression the way music or poetry does, maybe because music seems so apt for dealing with the ineffable, and poetry for discussing abstractions and elevated thoughts. 

The other plastic arts – painting and sculpture – are more capable of handling religious themes, as even a brief visit to the Renaissance section of any creditable museum will show. The painter and sculptor are not as bound to the physical realities of their models as the photographer, so ordinary humans can be idealized into saints, gold-leaf halos can be placed around their heads, and suggestive light qualities can be added to give a supernatural aura to the overall scene. In spite of photography’s relative limitations, however, over the last few decades, an increasing number of Jewish photographers have been using their Judaism – the religious and spiritual aspects of Judaism – as an inspiration for their work. 

Let me make clear what I mean. There is an exhibit currently on view at the Museum of the City of New York by Steve Hoffman entitled “An Intimate Portrait of the Chabad-Lubavitch of Brooklyn.” This is competent work but, although the subject is a religious community, the approach is ethnographic. Hoffman shows us what the people in this community look like as they go about their daily tasks, including their ritual observances. It is not unlike a National Geographic article on a tribe in Africa or the Amazon rain forest. This is not what I have in mind when I talk about the new Jewish photography. 

If you go to www.toddweinstein.com you can view this photographer’s essay, The 36 Unknown. While documenting the WW II death camps, Weinstein felt he had to express something beside the bestiality of the Nazis. He began to notice and photograph what might be faces or other vestiges of absent human beings in the inanimate objects he saw through his viewfinder -- in rocks, in twisted metal, in items encountered on the street. He conceptualized these as being the 36 totally righteous men, the Lamed-Vavniks, that Jewish tradition maintains sustain the world. Without passing on the quality of this work as art, what is new about it is the photographer’s recourse to his religious roots in an attempt to overcome the nihilism of his original subject matter. And it is this impulse that connects this drash with the parsha, Tetzaveh. 

Actually with three parshiot, Terumah, which dealt with the building of the Miskhan, Tetzaveh, which deals with the furnishings of the Mishkan, and Ki Thissa, which deals with the indiscretion of the golden calf. They are a trilogy of related stories, and you may recall the midrashim that claim that the incident of the calf actually took place before instructions for the Mishkan were given, although that is not the order in which the stories appear in the Chumash. Everett Fox says in a gloss on this part of his translation of Exodus that, “The entire section is an object lesson in what the Bible deems it proper for human beings to make....” He points out the repetition of the key word asoh, “make.” So it is not surprising that these parshiot figure in Jewish artworks – for instance, the pomegranates on the fringe of the high priest’s robe – and also figure in discussions of Jewish aesthetics. 

Neil Folberg cited the Mishkan in a lecture he gave at Temple Emanuel a few years ago about the pictures in his book And I Shall Dwell Among Them. Folberg grew up in San Francisco, studied photography with Ansel Adams, became a baal tshuvah, and made aliyah to Israel. With his yarmulke, beard, and talit katan, he is immediately identifiable as an observant Jew. He has tried to develop an aesthetic to guide his photography based on traditional Jewish sources – Torah, midrashim, the Marharal of Prague – and incorporate it with what he’s learned from his teacher Ansel Adams and other photographers he admires, as well as all he values in the other canons of art. 

Folberg asked in his lecture: 

How can any material object contain something that is spiritual? It would seem that matter and spirituality are diametric opposites, and can have no relationship with one another. That is, indeed, the view of certain religions – but most certainly not Judaism. Moses is commanded to build the sanctuary in the Sinai desert with the following commandment:

“Make for me a Sanctuary, and I shall dwell among them…”(Exodus 25:8-9)

Moses wonders how the Divine Presence can be contained within the parameters of anything physical – and in reply he is told it can be done. 

The midrash elaborates: “At the time when G-d said to Moses, ‘Make for Me a Sanctuary . . .’ Moses wondered: ‘the glory of G-d fills the Heavens and the Earth. How, then, can He reasonably say, “Make for Me a Sanctuary…”?’ 

“The Holy One, Blessed Be He, replies: ‘Moses, it’s not like you think; just takes these twenty planks of wood!…’ (Midrash Shmot Rabba, Seder Terumah 34)” 

It should be clear from this quote that Folberg is seriously engaged with the sources. My guess is he considers each of his photographs, the good ones anyway, to be like one of the twenty planks of wood. That is, the picture becomes a potential dwelling place for the Divine. This is certainly an appropriate concept for his book on synagogues. The photographs have a luminous quality to them, a richness, and although very few people are seen in the pictures, the presence of their congregations is palpable even in those shuls which haven’t had a minyan in decades. 

Neil Folberg’s next book was In a Desert Land: Photographs of Israel, Egypt and Jordan. His debt to Ansel Adams is clear in these pictures of the Sinai, the Negev, the Judean desert, and the other sites that are the backdrop of Biblical history. And there is a striving for a spiritual quality that is frequently realized. But they raise a question that will be asked a lot if this new willingness of Jewish photographs to be influenced by their religion is more than a passing phenomenon: granted the pictures in In a Desert Land have spiritual qualities, how do we know they are Jewish spiritual qualities? That is, would a pantheist, a pagan, a frum idol worshipper, have shown these mountains and deserts and wadis any differently? You can see where this is going. With the limited means of differentiation available to the photographer, how does the Jew manifest his special intentions? 

There is another problem in this movement besides the difficulty of Jewish photographers adopting appropriate idioms. What if the photographer is “wrong” in his understanding of Judaism? Many of you have probably seen the advertisements for Shekhina, the book and exhibit by Leonard Nimoy. There are naked ladies in tallitot and tephillin looking very soulful, but also somewhat silly. Nimoy grew up in an Orthodox environment, and claims to have been influenced in his work by the Kabbalah – a subject about which I claim no special knowledge. Nonetheless, his pictures seem to me to owe much more to a wistful, adolescent New Age spiritualism than to the insights of the Lurianic sages of Safed. So who then is to determine the halacha of aesthetics, to determine this is kosher and this is tref? 

In short, there will be plenty more for Jews to argue about. 

Another reason for associating these three parshiot – Terumah, Tetzaveh and Ki Thissa --with artistic creation is their position in the Chumash. They are set between the parshiot that deal with the giving of laws, that is, with the establishment of acceptable norms of behavior, and the giving of the law is set in turn in a middle of a book that deals with the risks that must be run to achieve freedom. The logic that connects these themes would seem to be this: to create, one needs the discipline imposed by accepting God’s commandments, and this acceptance is predicated on freeing oneself from the pathologies of Mitzraim (Egypt). The difficulties of attaining a successful outcome, of achieving freedom, discipline and creativity, become apparent in the enthusiastic, somewhat mad, dancing of the Israelites around the golden calf. Their surrender to the excitement of idolatry so soon after their encounter with Divinity at Sinai, is a good indication of how difficult it is to achieve the steadfastness needed to make a sanctuary, a Mishkan, but also indicates the necessity of so doing. 

In The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus, Aviva Zornberg provides an elaborate and difficult explication of the meanings of the three related parshiot  She also cites the midrashim that suggest that the incident of the golden calf happened before the instructions for the building of the Mishkan were given and the intricate relationship between the various acts of creation. She suggests that at the heart of these parshiot is “a sustained concern with time and memory, a fascination with both the timeless moment of full presence and the subtle gifts of temporality and process.” Her expression “the timeless moment of full presence” sums up wonderfully what photographers hope they are capturing when they press the shutter release on their camera. Those photographers who think their Jewish inheritance can help them to do that could learn a lot from a close study of Terumah, Tetzaveh, and Ki Thissa. 

As it happens, I ran across Neil Folberg in a photo gallery in Chelsea one day after I had started working on an article on the subject of Jews and photography. I told him that I was intending to quote him apropos of the mishkan to illustrate the way Jewish learning could influence a photographer’s work. 

He gave a deprecating shrug and said, “I don’t know that it’s that important.” 

“The thing I mean about Judaism,” I said, “is that it’s a matter of whether you’re on the outside looking in, or on the inside looking out.” 

Folberg smiled. “That’s good,” he said. “That’s good.”

William Meyers is a New York based photographer. He writes on photography and has presented his illustrated program "Shooting America: Jews in 20th Century American Photography" in many venues.

He can be reached by email at wmmeyers@bellatlantic.net.

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