A NEW GENERATION OF HAGGADAH ART
FIVE MODERN ARTISTS REINTERPRET THE EXODUS STORY TO INCLUDE EGGED BUSES, STRAY CATS, THE GEORGE WASHINGTON BRIDGE AND MORE...
BY SARAH BREGER
// n every generation a person is obligated to see him/herself as if he/she had journeyed out of Egypt,” the Haggadah dictates. Since the first known illuminated Haggadah appeared in the 14th century, the story of the Jews’ liberation from bondage has been visualized in innumerable and sometimes surprising ways. For example, the Bird’s Head Haggadah depicts humans with birds’ heads and pronounced beaks. Created in southern Germany, it’s the oldest surviving illuminated Ashkenazi Haggadah, dating to around 1300, and most of its illustrations are found in the margins of the text. On the other hand, the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, produced in Barcelona around 1350, features fall-page illustrations of biblical stories. It is one of many lavish manuscripts from the Middle Ages, when wealthy Jews commissioned Haggadahs for use at their Seders. Manuscript production declined with the rise of the printing press, but Haggadah art flourished. The 1526 Prague Haggadah includes woodcut borders enlivened with the figures of Adam and Eve, Samson and Judith with the head of Holfernes, as well as the Bohemian coat-of-arms. In the 1560 Mantua Haggadah, Abraham crosses the Euphrates in a gondola, and o “OT} the Wise Son is a replica of Michaelangelo’s “Jeremiah” from the Sistine o CO
Chapel. One device that would become standard in later Haggadahs 2 o Cl originated in the Venice Haggadah of 1609: 13 separate woodcuts o
CO illustrating the order of the Seder. The Amsterdam Haggadah of 1695 was 0 m the first to use copper engravings and included a map of the Holy Land > c:1 following the route of the Exodus. S
MARCH/APRIL 2010 / MOMENT 37 A new burst of Haggadah creativity came about in the 20th century, as Jewish artists such as Arthur Szyk, Ben Shahn and Leonard Baskin produced their own. “While the artist until modern times was anonymous, with modernity came the full-fledged act of pride,” says Nanette Stahl, curator of the Judaica Collection at Yale University. These Haggadahs enhanced the traditional narrative, reflecting the tragedy and triumph of 20th-century Jewish history, particularly the Holocaust and the creation of the State of Israel. They also brought to the fore changes sweeping the world: women’s liberation, social justice movements and scientific progress. “People felt free to play with the text and art in modern times, something they dared not do before,” says Stahl. In 1984, David Moss revived the illuminated manuscript, melding sophisticated artistic techniques with a profound knowledge of Jewish history. The popularity of his Haggadah, which marked the relationship between the Diaspora and Israel and his own move to Israel from America, inspired yet another Golden Age of Haggadahs as serious works of art and commentary, with artists taking their cues from subjects as varied as an investment banker’s commute to Israel’s Egged buses. Whether the artist thrives on the interplay between images and words or seemingly ignores the traditional text, each adds a new layer of complexity to the Passover story. Moment has selected five trailblazing Haggadahs created in the past 10 years, each of which extends, distorts and even subverts the meaning of the text.
THE ELIYAHU SIDI HAGGADAH (2007) Eliyahu Sidi, a Paris-born Israeli artist, draws on elements of regional folklore and contemporary life in Israel. Sidi’s art is representative of a tumultuous and varied life that includes hiding as a child during the Holocaust, living as a young boy in the newly established State of Israel, serving in Algeria as part of the French army and a stint as a dairy farmer in France. In the 1970s he moved to Israel, became Orthodox and produced numerous works inspired by biblical and Talmudic texts. The playful and colorful paintings are reminiscent of Shalom of Safed, in corporating Kabbalistic and esoteric images. But there’s a zaniness to them as well; they are as likely to feature stray cats and Egged buses as matzah and maror. Sidi’s illustra tions are strongly related to the text, which is incorpo rated into 55 watercolors. In each one he photocopied
Q CO the relevant lines of text and glued them to his paint X ings. Sidi was not averse to inserting humorous captions o in English, French or Hebrew. How can one not smile at
UJ ce the phrase: “Don’t make bricks. Make Matsot”? 3 O O
38 MARCH/APRIL 2010 ALL MY BONES SHALL SPEAK PASSOVER HAGGADAH (2000) Former New Orleans resident Barry Ivker uses layered paper and linoleum cuts to illustrate every paragraph of the Haggadah text. The series of 111 artworks, which took Ivker five years to complete, forms a visual commentary on the narrative. Ivker plays with darkness and light, using abstract shapes and lettering to tell the Exodus story. While many copies of the first printed edition of his Haggadah were destroyed during Hurricane Katrina, Ivker, who now lives in Alabama, managed to save the original artwork and has since reissued his Haggadah. Its name comes from the phrase in the Book of Psalms, included in the Nishmat prayer, said in the second half of the Seder. He dramatically evokes the custom of eating eggs at the beginning of the meal with a bright white egg on a black page and uses orange slices to portray the contemporary American custom of placing an orange on the Seder plate in honor of women.
MARCH/APRIL 2010 / MOMENT 39 THE ARCHIE GRANOT HAGGADAH (2008) It took 10 years for Archie Granot to create his Haggadah, the first to be comprised entirely of papercuts, each sheet carved with a surgical scalpel and intricately layered. The world- renowned artist, who emigrated to Israel from England, handcut every word of Hebrew text, using abstract geometric shapes to represent the Passover story. For example, the words of Dayenu appear in the shape of round matzah in the State of Israel’s colors of blue and white. Where the text recalls slavery in Egypt, the words are shaped into a pyramid, the paper woven behind it to look like a brick wall. In the tradition of medieval Hebrew manuscripts that often conclude with a final page in which hitherto anonymous scribes or artists revealed details of themselves, Granot finishes his Haggadah with his own hand-cut colophon in which he notes, “A cutting blade is my scribal quill and papercutting is my art.”
40 MARCH/APRIL 2010 THE LOVELL HAGGADAH (2008) Created by rabbi and artist Matthew Berkowitz, the Lovell Haggadah is unusual in that it is both a work of Torah scholarship and a work of art. The text is strongly egalitarian: The Four Sons become the Four Children, “so everyone can identify with the characters and put themselves into the story.” Surprisingly, Berkowitz chose characters from the Bible for the four, depicting the prophetess Deborah as the wise child, King Ahab as the wicked one, Lot as the simple child and Adam and Eve as the children who do not know how to ask. Like many of his predecessors, Berkowitz often uses the letters themselves as decorative devices. In one image, Mount Sinai and an Egyptian pyramid mirror each other, a message that true freedom is found by observing the commandments, and a reminder that the children of Israel went from being the slaves of the Pharaoh to being servants of God. The Haggadah, with its 27 illustrations, is named after the family for whom it was created.
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MARCH/APRIL 2010 / MOMENT 41 THE MORIAH HAGGADAH (2003) For Avner Moriah, a secular Israeli, his Haggadah serves as a commentary on modern life. Slavery in Egypt, for example, is akin to everyday drudgery. In one roundel—a device he uses to show the cir cularity and repetitiveness of life as well as the cyclical nature of Jewish history—he depicts 14 events of the Exodus narrative and juxtaposes them with the 14 corresponding parts of the life of an invest ment banker friend in Englewood, New Jersey. Inserting a commute across the George Washington Bridge into the Passover liturgy, Moriah asks, “Am I free or not?” Moriah uses Assyrian and Egyptian stick figures to represent the historical period of the Exodus. His artistic undertaking coincided with a trying time in his life: his wife’s chemotherapy treatment. As Moriah puts it, “When I started, the images were really small, but as she got healthier, they became more colorful and more lively. When I finished and she recovered, I realized that I had painted my own journey out of Egypt.” o
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