Riffing on Fences

 
by Susan Weinberg

In our recent lab, we welcomed Rabbi Jeffrey Schein who brought a rich energy into the room. Schein is a Jewish educator and Reconstructionist rabbi who has recently made Minneapolis his home.  He began by noting that he was in mourning for his mother who recently died at age one hundred. Together with Rabbi Davis, he had weighed whether he should be teaching during this period of mourning. Together they concluded that this was acceptable if he dedicated his teaching to his mother. A soul is sped on its journey by Tzedakah and study in their memory, thus our session was doubly fruitful, inspiring thought and helping to speed a soul onward.

Schein began our session by talking about an exhibition he attended at the Weisman Art Museum on the artist-scientist Santiago Ramon y Cajal, a Nobel prize winner in 1906. The exhibit was on the art of the brain. People used to think of the brain as a classical orchestra, coordinated and even dare we say, orchestrated.  In fact Cajal said, it is more like jazz with variety in how connections form. Neoplasticity implies that our brains are malleable, not always rigid in which part performs what.  As I reflected back on our session, I realized it too was much closer to jazz as we riffed on the topic of fences from a variety of perspectives.

Riff #1: We began by selecting an image of a fence, some with space between, some visually open, others walled in.  Schein asked us to imagine pushing against it. What did it feel like to push on the fence from the outside? from the inside? Some fences allowed interaction and thus altered social relationships in positive ways.  Others acted as true enclosures, shutting out the outside world, perhaps hiding a secret garden.

Riff #2: We then journeyed into the Tanach to revisit our old friend Ruth who Schein termed a fence rider, one who sits atop a fence, choosing which side to join. Ruth, of course, ultimately joined her mother-in-law while her fellow sister-in-law chose to remain in Moab.  

Riff #3: We continued our journey to Bezalel, the first all-round craftsman and the chief artisan of the Tabernacle.  The passage in question, Exodus 36:1, had three interpretations.  One speaks of his skill with his hand, yet another talks of his wise heart while the third talks of his wise mind. We concluded that a wise mind brings together both skill and heart. Each aspect has its place.

Riff #4 builds on Riff #3 : Having set the stage, Schein shifted to artwork and our need to be inside as we work on a piece, outside as we assess it. So too we use both our wise mind and our wise heart.  Inside affords us an emotional connection, outside activates our critical thinking. We often need the perspective of removing ourselves to come back refreshed to create. Mordecai Kaplan notes that "The Sabbath represents those moments when we stop our brush work in order to renew our vision of the canvas."

Riff #5: The Pirke Avot tells us to "Make a Fence Around Your Words." We understood this to mean to be accountable, words are important and we must understand the dynamics of communication and speak with intentionality. "Say Little, but Do a Lot," the Pirke Avot cautions us.

Riff #6:Often we create fences around habits.  We were asked to consider a list of habits. "How is this productive?" he asked. "How is it not?"  I chuckled at one he offered on completing an assignment two days before it is due.  I'm more prone to allow a month. I need lots of fence.

Riff #7: He shared a passage with us from Proverbs 4:14-15. Enter not into the path of the wicked...Avoid it, pass not by it; turn from it and pass on. Rabbi Ashi offered this explanatory parable: The verse may be illustrated by the parable of a man who guards an orchard. If he guards it from without, the entire orchard is protected, but if he guards it from within, only the part in front of him is protected, while the part behind him is not protected. (Sefer Aggadah, Bialik and Ravnitsky).  We turned to each other and considered the meaning of this passage.  "Bad Feng Shui, " I replied, still not grasping the relationship to the proverb. 

Riff #7 feeds into #8 Another interpretation shortly arose when we closed our discussion with a powerful poem by Amir Gutfreund which raised the question of which way a compass points at the North Pole.  The answer: it goes crazy and points everywhere.  Often we look to a destination from outside and it becomes our North Star.  When we arrive, we need a new set of tools to guide us from within. Israel is such a destination, driving the needle mad. (Handout-Fences). Similarly our man in the orchard sees less clearly when he is too close, better when he takes a step outside to see the bigger picture. 

Riff #8 echoes Riff #6: At the close of our session, the rabbi introduced us to two videos on Tiffany Schlain, Connected, the Trailer and  Technology Shabbat. Together they remind us of the need to create personal fences to manage our dependence on technology. 

Pretty jazzy!

Navigating an Unpaved Road

.

by Susan Weinberg

Where or when have you felt God’s presence?  That was the question with which we began our Lab.  Our assignment was to have that discussion with another person starting ten feet away and then gradually closing the distance.  I  began by considering what “God’s presence” meant to me. In fact I often find that sense of something beyond myself in the act of creation, when a kind of magic takes over and results in a creation that surprises me, leaving me somewhat amazed that it was done by my hand.  When we reconvened we were asked how it felt as we closed the distance.

Some reported that they felt God’s presence getting thicker as they got closer, some preferred closeness, others a more comfortable distance. For many physical closeness felt more appropriate for an intimate topic.

With that warm up we entered the gate of our topic, that of fences. We began with a passage on our handout (Four Cubits of the Law) from the Berakhot 8a which talks of how since the Temple was destroyed, God’s presence is only revealed in the four cubits of Halakha.  Halakha is Jewish law and represents a house of learning or the teachings of Judaism.  Four cubits is about six feet. Not a very large house.  

But wait a minute, we don’t follow all of those laws anymore.  What about sacrifice? The rabbi suggested with some bemusement that some would claim that is only on pause until the temple is rebuilt.  What about additions to the Seder service, a glass of wine for Israel?  Perhaps it is a distinction between Halakha and traditions offered another of our group.

Halakha is pretty restrictive.  A rather entertaining spoof imagined Xmas as a Jewish holiday and what restrictions might surround it.  Are we to be bound by countless rules? And what happened to Jews questioning, isn’t that in our DNA? Rabbi Marc Angel noted that Judaism respects and encourages dissent within the boundaries of normative Judaism, but not outside of it.  So what does that mean?  To be within it must evidence respect for sages, substantiated positions and a commitment to the Divine origin of Torah. 

Deuteronomy 4:1-2 specifies that we are not to add or delete anything from God’s word. Sounds like God was a strict constructionist.  Rashi chimes in and say, “Not to worry, that means you shouldn’t add a fifth text to tefillin or a fifth species to your lulav and etrog.”

Rambam says, “Not so fast Rashi, it also means you can’t make up a brand-new commandment.” No more innovation by the prophets.  He goes on to say that fences are permissible if they allow us to preserve the Torah.

So what about those fences?  In the Pirkei Avot 1:1 after the Torah was transferred, the “Men of the Great Assembly” noted we should “make a fence for the Torah”.

What do we mean by a fence?  Rabbi Irving Greenberg described it as cordoning off a broader area so people will stop before they enter forbidden territory.  Hmm, perhaps filling up the gas tank when it is down to one bar rather than beeping at me.   In a more religious vein we are to light Shabbat candles at sundown, but we create a fence of 18 minutes before sundown in which we light the candles.

Up until this point, I must confess that this all felt rather foreign to me as a secular Jew.  I don’t concern myself with Halakha and I don’t live in a world of absolutes.  Then we entered the world of practicality where I live.  In 1 Macabees 2 after Jews were murdered while refusing to fight on Shabbat, Mattathias and his friends considered the value placed on living as overriding Shabbat observance. Those beliefs were drawn on during the Holocaust when practice was not always possible. 

Rabbi David Hartman in A Living Covenant wrapped it up by noting that the Torah is not a complete finished system. We were given an arrow sign at Sinai. Halakha translates to "walking". It is an unpaved road and does not expect passive obedience to the wisdom of the past. It is through the oral tradition that we become a partner and divine Word was only a beginning point to be elaborated on through analysis and interpretation. Ah, this I can live with.

 It occurred to me as we had this discussion that I come to this from the background of a secular Jew. When grappling with material that is outside my experience and orientation, I often try to find a framework that makes sense to me. That may be a different perspective than someone who lives in that world. In many ways I am a bridge between the world of secularism and my heritage, finding points of connection where possible and considering ideas that frame the values of Judaism. And a bridge between worlds seems quite appropriate to our theme.

The second half of our session was led by Artist Lab member Jonathan Gross who brings us a marriage of science and art.  With his interests spanning both realms it was a natural attraction between him and the work of Joseph Cornell who studied science and created art with scientific concepts interwoven. The theme Jon explored was crossing boundaries and focused around Cornell's work in a series on Celestial Navigation and specifically the piece called the Celestial Navigation by Birds.  This glass fronted box contained a number of objects related to the concept of navigation.  Jon introduced us to wind roses which line the background of the box. A wind rose chart looks at the direction of the wind, the probability that it would be blowing in a given direction and its intensity.  At one time these were much valued and highly guarded charts and few survived.  

Cornell was a bit of a punster and created puns both visually and with words.  Many of his artworks make use of the word "Rose", some are called Roses des Vents, literally wind roses and a painting of his friend Marcel Duchamp dressed as a woman named Rose Selavy (Rose C'est la vie -it's life).  Cornell made visual puns by using a rose with a spiderweb within it to power a boat in one of his images.  The rose was a probabilistic symbol and was about navigating one's way through life.  

Jon shared the concept behind the Celestial Navigation by Birds which was documented in a 1958 Scientific American magazine with which Jon was coincidentally familiar. The experiment was to show that birds navigate by stars at night.  To test this, birds were placed in a cage with blotter paper and the cage was in a planetarium.  An ink pad was on the bottom so the birds would get ink on their feet when they jumped in the direction they wanted to fly.  By changing the stars above in the planetarium and seeing how the birds followed this change,  they were able to document that birds do in fact navigate by the stars. 

On the back of this piece is a celestial map with someone with a telescope and another person with binoculars.  Jon noted that we impose patterns on the stars, not unlike the way we view artwork. Cornell signed his work backwards, signifying that it was in code, much as Leonardo da Vinci wrote his scientific work backwards. 

In closing Jon shared with us a quote from a letter to the editor of a German magazine that noted we engage in art when we communicate "through forms whose connections are not accessible to the conscious mind, but are recognized intuitively as meaningful."  (click for Jon's presentation)