Diaspora

My interest in memory and place led me to wonder how Judaism survived and how we, as Jews, relate to “place” and “home.” After the destruction of the Second Temple, Judaism became a “portable” religion as the Torah replaced the Temple as a sacred center. European Jews have been exiled from 109 locations since 250 CE. Since there were periods when Jews lived in harmony with neighbors, these expulsions led to intense learning and writing to understand the catastrophes. From the straightforward, almost banal list of dates and places of Expulsions to Weather Shocks, which abstractly represents the effect of bad weather on Jewish expulsions, to Wisdom’s Wandering: this series of monoprints and large painting Wisdom’s Wandering emerged with an iconographic language comprised of symbols of community—land, home, streets—arranged as a pattern within the context of a geographic place. Layers evoke history, and fractured space suggests the paths of movement and exile from one place to another.

The painting Wisdom’s Wandering explores one of these writings called The Shattering of the Vessels by a Jewish mystic named Ari. Light filled the darkness in the story, and ten holy vessels came forth, each filled with primordial light. The world would be perfect if they all arrived intact, but the vessels were too fragile to contain such a powerful, divine light. They broke open, and all the holy sparks were scattered like stars. Studying the Torah, observing the Law, and performing good deeds made it possible to gather the sparks, fulfill the great mitzvah of tikkun olam, and repair the broken world. The myth explained why God had sent exiles far from home — their destiny was to do holy work to collect the divine sparks.