Beit Midrash Studio Holds First Exhibit

In its weekly sessions this year, the Beit Midrash Studio program for the Visual Arts has explored various Rabbinic and philosophical texts, responding to their ideas and motifs through drawing, painting and sculpture. Thus far, some of the topics examined and expressed include: "the moment of creation"; "seedlings (zra'im)"; and "faith, as it resides in light and darkness (emunatcha baleilot)." These various themes were the subjects of the artwork created by the programs fifteen participants, in a recent Chanukah exhibition at Midreshet Lindenbaum.

In the words of the artists themselves, the words on seedlings expressed different aspects of "potential, promise and pre-differentiated growth." The artwork on the theme of "Faith in the dark of night" included a skillfully painted piece (in the artist's words) "of cracking land surface, signifying the unstable quality of faith. As soon as the crack appears, entire canyons form as one question of faith causes an entire upheaval." Yet, observers distinguish sources of light emerging from the various formations of abyss. This, and other words,, were based upon texts from Tractate Avoda Zara 8a, and selections from the Chassidic master R. Zadok of Lublin, on faith and darkness. Another painting of a young girl holding a candle, a window and two flaming towers in the distance in intended, in the artist's words "to explore the dual potential of fire as destruction and as the light of hope."