Masquerades and Humor

by Susan Weinberg

We recently convened over seventy artists representing six cities for our 4th Jewish Artists’ Lab retreat.  Having previously met in Madison, Milwaukee and Minneapolis, we now had the opportunity to expand to one of our newer labs in Kansas City.  One of my favorite aspects of the retreat is the opportunity to interact with artists from other labs. We welcomed many familiar faces and introduced ourselves to new ones.  We also enjoyed getting to know the city better and Kansas City proved to be a place filled with interesting museums that could easily have occupied more of our time.

We began our gathering at the JCC where we visited with our fellow artists and viewed the Kansas City lab show. It was a bit of a preview for the Pecha Kucha yet to come.

Our keynote began that evening with Arlene Goldbard, author of The Culture of Possibility.  Goldbard's focus is on the importance of culture and art in America and she addressed ten reasons art plays a critical role in our society.  She had a receptive audience in a room of artists for a perspective that advocates the role of art in opening us up to possibilities.  She told me that she hoped to write an essay on this topic and will share it with us when it is available, stay tuned.

After her talk we broke for Story Circles.  We were each asked to tell our group a story that spoke to topics about the role of creativity in our life.  Those of us in the listening role were asked to focus on listening rather than engaging directly.  I found that early interaction made a number of attendees memorable to me by sharing something that mattered to them.

Then it was time for the Pecha Kucha, one of the highlights of this retreat. The Pecha Kucha was an opportunity to share six images in 90 seconds to introduce ourselves and our work to the group.  While nervously approached by many, it received rave reviews as this was something which we hadn’t fully addressed in past gatherings.  I found that I appreciated learning more about those in other labs, but also those within my own city.  While we often know the work artists present in the lab, it was a valuable opportunity to learn more about their work outside of it.

Retreats are always jammed with activities and our one full day was no exception. If I were to characterize it, I would say it was devoted in large part to the performing rabbis.  I am beginning to appreciate the range of talents that rabbis bring to their role, it seems they have to be able to carry a tune and a bit of theatrics also proves useful.  Rabbi Glickman of Beth Shalom spoke to us on American acting that originated in the Yiddish theater and was influenced by the Moscow Arts Theater and the Group Theater (Stella Adler, Lee Strasberg).  Rabbi Glickman trained in theater before joining the rabbinate.  He began the discussion by referencing "Umanute" which means "art" and "Emonai" which means "faith".  Both come from the same root as "Amen" and are about deep emotional truths, having a belief that is not provable.

He shared a number of passages from the Tanach that involved disguise and deception through costume.  These included such favorites as Joseph when he is in the employ of the Pharaoh and is incognito when he encounters his brothers (Genesis 41:41-46, 45:1-3), Judah and Tamar (Genesis 38:14-25), Saul and the witch of Endor (I Samuel 28:6-14) and the Jacob/Esau narrative (Genesis 27:15-27).  We discussed the reasons behind disguise.  Joseph's rather theatrical presentation echoed Pharaoh's masquerade of God. Pharoah needed his advisors to be "gift-wrapped" to promote that belief.  Joseph was given the name Zaphenath; Zaphenath means "a hidden thing".  The wife he was given was named Asenath which means "something that has to be deciphered".  There were many layers of masquerade in this text.  I found myself considering that masquerade is very much a part of being an outsider passing as an insider.  In the vein of theater I thought of the many actors who report they are shy, but not on stage.  That external shift through costuming can begin to cause an internal shift.

The take away that I found fascinating is that disguise was so integral to the flow of Jewish history.  The child of Judah and Tamar became the ancestor of Ruth and David and had it not been for disguise we'd be speaking of Abraham, Issac and Esau. 

Glickman concluded with the very thought-provoking statement that written Torah is to oral Torah as a book is to a story.  Transmission of story is done person to person.  Story is the virus and we are its host.  When there are no people, there is no story. 

One of our other presenting rabbis was Rabbi Moshe Waldoks who talked of Jewish humor as a response to injustice and as a vehicle of breaking barriers that divide communities. He rejected the idea that Jewish humor is laughter through tears and argued that it is also more than we suffered and then we moved.  Neither did he feel that it was based on self-deprecation.  Rather it was the art of parody, of taking an established known entity and turning it on its head to find a deeper truth.

He related humor to the art of Midrash where we seek something in the text, pull it out and make it our own to arrive at a different understanding.  Humor is to awaken us and is by its nature anti-authoritarian.  He noted that you can't have a sense of humor and be a fanatic as you must hold two different thoughts at the same time. You have to be able to understand someone else's perspective.  Humor is also used to create social cohesiveness in a group by scapegoating. He took us through the evolution from Jewish mother (and mother-in-law) jokes to Jewish American Princess jokes.  Once they moved outside of Jewish groups, they began to die out.  Such jokes can only be told by insiders lest they carry an anti-Semitic tinge.

Many Jewish people were the foundation of radio and television even if the content wasn't Jewish.  There was word play and fast talking that began to create a comfort with a Jewish style.   This allowed us to acculturate and allowed others to accept us without even being conscious of the underpinnings that made that possible.

I found myself contemplating our theme of Outside: Inside.  While the discussions were often not tied back to the underlying theme, they did address the theme of otherness through masquerades and humor. Masquerades create boundaries and bridge boundaries, humor can create boundaries or dissolve them.  We've begun to circle around our topic.

Coming next.... the Barcelona Haggadah and Artist as Other

Di,di,di,di

Over sixty artists from five cities gathered in Milwaukee for the third Artists' Lab retreat. Music was central to this retreat with Joey Weisenberg leading the way, charming us with a joyful smile into participating in nigguns, drawing us closer until we clustered around him and song filled the room. Di, di, di, di we sang, our voices moving up and down with the melody. While the niggun, a wordless melody, is rooted in Hassidic tradition, Joey brings it to different arms of Judaism. Music proved to be the armature on which this retreat was built with our Shabbat services as well as other events enriched by Joey's melodic voice and welcoming manner.

So what else was this retreat? Certainly an expansion of our community. We had many opportunities to interact with our fellow artists, welcoming familiar faces and quickly forming connections with new ones. We started out by gathering close to the familiar people from our own lab, but we quickly broke out of our comfort zone in a session with Helene Fischman. Fischman did a series of exercises that married image and text as well as collaboration within our artist lab community. She moved us from words to image as we developed a visual response to each other's words. Finally we were asked to write of a moment when we felt pleasure in our creativity. We shared our narrative with another participant who was called upon to draw what we described. As I began to build a relationship with a new member from Kansas City I could feel the walls between our individual labs crumbling.

Our retreat was also an opportunity to interact with the city. We walked through the city to our lunch and then along the water to the Milwaukee Art Museum, located next to the water and very appropriately resembling a ship. When it is open the wings lift on either side. You need to wait for specific times to witness this unless you are Mick Jagger, who we were told got a special performance of the wings. While most of the museum was closed for renovation and the addition of a new wing, we were able to explore the Larry Sultan photography exhibition and have a behind the scene's tour of the work in progress.

It had a rather otherworldly feel to see artwork shrouded in wrappings, just hinting at what lay beneath, quite Christo-like with everything becoming a new kind of artwork seen through fresh eyes.While most of the artwork has to be protected from the light, the sculpture gallery is visually extended by the magnificent expanse of water just outside its windows.

After our tour of the museum we gathered for Havdalah, led again by Joey as Robyn held the havdalah candle aloft. As Joey invited us to gather close he told the story of a miracle in the temple where even though everyone was so close, when they bowed down they didn't bump into each other.
We concluded our day with yet more music, music of the Yiddish Theater. The performance was in the Zelaso Center which was once the synagogue for Emanu-El and still had the bones of its legacy with stained glass windows illustrating Jewish themes with a bit of an American twist. Freedom was illustrated by a bell. Wisdom, our theme for this year was of course illustrated by the Torah. As it was night, we had to look closely for the imagery.

Miryem-Khaye Siegel

Wisdom

The performance space was the perfect size, small enough to actually feel the music. It was an extraordinary event with three female vocalists who were each musically talented and had an excellent comedic sense which lent itself to many of the Yiddish songs. David Jordan Harris was kwelling a bit as the talented Miryem-Khaye Seigel had been his student.

Joanne Borts

We ended the day late at night and groaned a bit at the early start time for the following day. In an interesting juxtaposition we were taken to the new Emanu-El B'ne Jeshurun campus, the same synagogue that was once housed where we heard the evening Klezmer performance. Our groans were quickly forgotten when we entered the space.

Breathtaking and spiritual best describe it. The first thing you notice is that there are no stained glass windows. Instead large vertical windows slice the walls surrounded by images created by Tobi Kahn. Through the windows trees draw your gaze upward. The overall effect is rather Zen-like.

It was a wonderful illustration of what can be accomplished when you incorporate the arts and represented the work of a number of those in the Milwaukee lab. Philip Katz of the Milwaukee lab designed the sanctuary and shared some of the elements with us. He actually grew up down the street from the old synagogue and his study of synagogue design led into his work with this project. He described the space as a blend of opposites, solid and void.

Nina Edelman did the richly colored Torah covers and the cover for the ark. Barbara Kohl-Spiro played an important role in making it happen.

The landscaping was also an important part of the facility as it functions in lieu of stained glass.

At the entrance to the building lies a sculpture by Richard Edelman. It is a shofar shaped of cubes. Before we left the facility we listened to Tekiah Gedolah blown on a traditional shofar magnified by the large sculpture.

Our sessions concluded at the JCC where we did some small group discussions, had an opportunity to see the lab show of the Milwaukee artists and to share our work with each other. Overall we gave the retreat an emphatic thumbs up and would encourage others to attend the next retreat. The takeaway was certainly a sense of greater connection with the entire lab of artists and a newfound appreciation for the city of Milwaukee.

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