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Art As Spiritual Practice in the Jewish Renewal Movement

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Art As Spiritual Practice in the Jewish Renewal Movement In recent years, the religious landscape in North America has been changing. An increas- ing number of middle-class Americans have been seeking intense spiritual experience in diverse religious traditions, including evangeli- cal Christianity and New Age yoga. Jews have not been immune to this trend. Recently, the Conservative movement suggested that local Art as Spiritual congregations sponsor adult education classes Practice in the entitled “My walk with God”; some Reform services incorporate chant and movement; and Jewish Renewal young Jews in a number of major cities have founded “emergent minyanim” to provide an Movement intense prayer experience. While sociologists of American Judaism have studied some of these phenomena, little Chava Weissler attention has been paid to the role of the arts in fostering Jewish spirituality. I became aware of the importance of art while studying one of the oldest North American groups to foster intense Jewish religious experience, aleph: Alliance for Jewish Renewal. This movement, founded in 1962 by Rabbi Zalman Schachter- Shalomi, has roots in Hasidism. Because of its commitment to women’s equality, it is often described as “Hasidism meets feminism.” I dis- covered during my fieldwork at Jewish Renewal retreats and conferences that the arts — music, dance, storytelling, visual media, and crafts — play a major role in the engagement of Renewal Jews with Judaism. Jews involved in Renewal draw flexibly on the resources of Jewish tradi- tion, such as Bible, Midrash, Kabbalah, and Hasidism. In effect, aleph invites its members to play, artistically, with everything from biblical texts to Hasidic tales to prayer, creating new experiences and interpretations in the process. Reflecting a larger trend in Ameri- Photograph: Benjamin Tiven Benjamin Photograph: can society, the Jewish Renewal movement is Elizheva Hurvich, Omer Calendar. distinguished by the quest for an experience Berkeley, Calif, 2000. 28.32 in. approx. of the divine presence. This presence is sought Upholstery fabric, cotton embroidery thread, beads. Collection of Sally Gottesman. through regular spiritual practice, including Used with permission of the artist. prayer, meditation, and chanting. For artists, 31 the visual arts can be such a practice, with the As she explains: very process of making the art a form of medi- This omer calendar was created in the tation. For the viewers, as well, inviting them Jewish year 5760 (2000) during the seven- to perform a ritual, such as counting the omer week counting period between Passover or daily prayer, can also be a spiritual practice. and Shavuot. On one side, seven rows of Conversations with other fellows seven patchwork squares represent the at the Frankel Institute enriched my under- 49 days which bridge the two holidays…. standing of the role of art in the movement. On the other side, embroidered in Hebrew, Consider two examples. Elizheva Hurvich, a is the blessing one recites every night to quilter and fabric artist in her early 40s, is fulfill the commandment of counting for the principal of the Hebrew school of Kehilla these seven weeks. Community Synagogue in Piedmont, Califor- nia, the largest Renewal congregation in the The calendar invites the viewer into the country. A women’s studies major in college, practice of counting the omer and meditating her strong feminist convictions underlie her on the meaning of each day: “Each square can art. Hurvich’s spiritual quest and connections serve as a visual meditation for the day.” Yet with Jewish Renewal began when she was an the omer meditation suggested by Hurvich undergraduate. She sees quilts as something also undermines the usual understanding of of a “women’s constitution.” the period of the omer as a straightforward Among her many quilted works, she progression from Passover to Shavuot: made an omer calendar. According to Leviticus This piece is made out of patchwork fabric. 23:15, Jews are to count the 49 days between It can be read from the left to right, or reaping the first sheaf of the barley harvest reverse. Its way of telling time is not a and bringing it as an offering to the Temple, a traditional, linear, numerical reading. process that begins during Passover and con- Like the tradition of “women’s” arts, which tinues to the holiday of Shavuot. On each day, speak in the tastes of food, in cookbooks, one recites the blessing for the counting, and quilts, children’s clothes, and costumes, then counts the day, for example: “Today is the in a day-to-day life, this piece is soft, ninth day, making one week and two days of with uncertain “boundaries,” as the em- the omer.” In the medieval period, the counting broideries move from square to square, acquired mystical significance. Because it without much regard for the grid format. was considered important not to miss a day’s counting, calendars for keeping track of the Although some formal features of this work days were created. resemble other omer calendars that take the What can such an ancient agricul- form of seven-by-seven squares, Hurvich tural practice mean for us today? “I really love suggests a different vision of counting of the counting the Omer…. I love the challenge of omer, a “women’s omer.” The handmade quality remembering each day,” Hurvich said. Rather of the piece is one of its most striking features; than count on the basis of a calendar created the viewer can picture the hand stitching the in advance, as is the usual practice, Hurvich, fabric. Hurvich’s palette is feminine, with soft inspired by the repetitive, meditative, and blues and purples; her medium is soft fabric. modular character of the quilt, used the very Typical of other Jewish Renewal artists’ work, process of counting to create the “calendar.” she breaches the boundaries of the squares. 32 In these ways, she emphasizes the quotidian Shaffer’s tallitot are like simple shawls nature of women’s lives and the ways in which with tsitsit [ritual fringes], and they invite the women’s art is embedded in and transcends worshiper to a very particular sort of prayer. In life’s routines. his brochure, Shaffer writes, “I use a blend of Stephen Shaffer lives in rural Nellys- cotton, silk, and rayon to achieve a soft, flow- ford, Virginia, about 35 miles from Charlottes- ing, and embracing curtain between the inner ville, where he and his wife attend a Renewal world of prayer and the world surrounding the congregation. He earns his living as a weaver, individual…. Let the outside world slip away making and selling prayer shawls, tallitot, as you enter the private inner world of prayer.” woven of rayon, silk, and cotton, in the colors When he finishes each tallit, Shaffer performs that are associated, in Jewish mysticism, with a ritual in which he consecrates the use of the the sefirot, the ten emanations of divinity. Like prayer shawl to its new owner, donning it as a Hurvich, for whom the repetitive nature of the sacred garment in the traditional way for the artistic process was a spiritual experience in first time: its own right, Shaffer characterizes the weav- After a tallis is all finished, I do the berakhah ing of tallitot as “meditative.” “My tallit — every on tsitsit, wrap myself in the tallis, do a fiber has passed through my fingers…. Weaving Shema, and if people have asked me for a tallitot is much different than weaving bolts of special prayer, I do it at that time. Sometimes cloth or scarves. I put a lot more intention into people ask for health. If it’s a generic tallis, it. I davven [pray] at the loom before weaving, not for a specific person, after the Shema, and I say tehillim [psalms] for it… to keep I just pray that whoever prays in that tallis, that connection flowing. Art and spirituality their prayers will reach Hashem [God]. flow together.” Indeed, a brochure pictures him seated at his loom, a kippah on his head, Shaffer’s brochure stresses that each tallit is intimating the similarity between weaving woven with intention and prayer, “infusing and prayer. “I just feel really blessed,” he said, [it] with the quality and essence of its sephira.” “being able to weave tallitot, bringing my voca- The explanations on his website of the sym- tion and my avocation together. Being able to bols and qualities associated with each sefirah work with spirit, and actually make a living invite the wearer who dons these garments to at it, is a real blessing. It keeps me focused on meditate on or embody these qualities. spirituality every day through my work.” About Both Elizheva Hurvich and Stephen a third of his income comes from the tallitot Shaffer enter a world of religious experience as he sells in Jewish Renewal venues. they quilt and weave, and both create new Shaffer fashions his tallitot in ac- ways of engaging in traditional Jewish practices. cordance with his understanding of the color Counting the omer becomes as much a medi- symbolism of Kabbalah, as described in Aryeh tation on women’s work as on the ancient Kaplan’s Meditation and Kabbalah. He intensi- Israelite harvests, and Jewish prayer becomes fies the spiritual experience of weaving prayer an occasion to slip into quiet contemplation shawls by keeping the connection between the of the mystical qualities of divinity. color and its mystical meaning in mind as he works: “I’m aware that I’m weaving Gevurah [the fifth sefirah, associated with the color red], for example.” 33 Judith L. Goldstein L. Judith 34.
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