I
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פסחים נ׳ א
מתני׳ מקום שנהגו לעשות מלאכה בערבי פסחים עד חצות — עושין. מקום שנהגו שלא לעשות — אין עושין. ההולך ממקום שעושין למקום שאין עושין, או ממקום שאין עושין למקום שעושין — נותנין עליו חומרי מקום שיצא משם וחומרי מקום שהלך לשם.
Pessachim 50a
In a place where (the people) were accustomed to perform labor on passover eve until midday, one (may) do so (on that day). (In) a place where (the people were) accustomed not to perform (labor) one (may) not do (so). (...)
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a place
several places
different places
different customs
the ripple effects of exile
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After 70 years
this exile ended
After 70 years
childhood memories come back
(Zarina)
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"I have friends who passed through several countries, lived in some, and been wholly accepted by none. For them, belonging to a mere nation is not an option. They have had to leave their home country, and each appointment with an immigration agency is a new attack, hacking away their dignity, a punishment for not staying in their place.
For people like them, talk of belonging is luxury.
(...)
For yet more, a border is a thousand foot high steel wall, stretching across seas and through human minds.
(...)
(Musa Okwonga, IG @okwonga)
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homelands
plans maps travels
moving moving
borders
moving moving
letters
moving silence
death
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Put a letter between two blanc pages
fill the spaces with
lines
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They carried chains of words with them in jars
like seeds
Some grew into apple trees
some into pomegranates
And they debated them
אימא הכי נמי
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Men travelled back and forth
----->------->------>
<-------
--------->--------->
The women and children stayed in the four walls of the house
producing food, and clothes, and songs, and longing
and Shabbat and holidays,
and support for each other
&&&&&&&&&&&&&
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הללוהו כל־מלאכיו הללוהו כל־צבאו [צבאיו]
Praise Him, all His angels, praise Him, all His hosts.
In the Gemara we find a מחלוקת: is אור the evening, as the stars of light appear in the night?
The Gemara rejects: All the stars that radiate, אור is not a noun but it describes an activity!
If that is so the stars that radiate are required to praise הקב״ה.
Are those who do not radiate light not required to praise?
Isn't it written: הללוהו כל צבאיו
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לאור יקום רוצח יקטל־עני ואביון ובלילה יהי כגנב
The murderer arises in the evening
to kill the poor and needy,
and at night he acts the thief
A Murderer
ARISES
With the אור
A line
from head to hand
from thought to deed
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Lines on paper
lines of footsteps
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The house הבית
and
the terrain השתח
If we share we don't have to murder
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The food האוכל
and
the book התורה
If we share we don't have to thieve
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Lines and chains
of sages:of customs:of concepts:of opinions
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The dividing lines in our heads
The connections we are able to make
How can we shape community in diversity?
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מיתיבי: ״יחשכו כוכבי נשפו יקו לאור ואין ואל יראה בעפעפי שחר״, מדקאמר ״יקו לאור ואין״ אלמא ״אור״ יממא הוא! התם מילט הוא דקא לייט ליה איוב למזליה, אמר: יהא רעוא דליצפיה הך גברא לנהורא, ולא לישכחיה.
The Gemara raises an objection to the opinion that or means evening: “Let the stars of the twilight be dark; let it look for or but have none; neither let it see the eyelids of the morning” (Job 3:9). From the fact that the verse states: “Let it look for or but have none,” apparently or is day. The Gemara rejects this contention. Actually, it is possible that or, in this context, means light in general, not specifically day. There, Job is cursing his fortune. He said: Let it be His will that this man, referring to himself, will seek light and not find it.
Enclosures and openings
they raised an objection
concerning
if אור is related to this or this or this
to עפעפי שחר to יממה to נץ החמה
they kneaded the words of their thoughts like dough
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The opening
could be our journey
towards הקב״ה
and where does the journey
in הקב״ה
begin?
In a book? In death?
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Carrying items,
belongings, produce and ideas
through enclosures
Avraham Faust explains in "Doorway Orientation" (Oxford Journal Of Archaeology, 2020, p. 129 -155), that the wind direction has been used to explain the orientation of houses. The prevailing winds in Israel are westernly and doorways designed to avoid the West are best explained as a response to that wind.
They opened out in direction to the East
journeying to find meaning in Pumbedita
to find halakhic ingenuity
one foot in front of the other towards
orientation
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The residents of Bet She'an had a home place.
The residents of Bet She'an didn't yet know the abeyance of exile.
In love for Shabbat they decided against travels to the market place before Shabbat.
Their children didn't want to keep this custom, they were another generation living in different times.
R'Yochanan reminded them not to dissolve the web the generations.
Which had been woven for the spiritual wellbeing of the future generations.
Teachings are not always convenient.
But sometimes they remind you of the importance of being a future ancestor.
בני ביישן נהוג דלא הוו אזלין מצור לצידון במעלי שבתא. אתו בנייהו קמיה דרבי יוחנן, אמרו לו: אבהתין אפשר להו, אנן לא אפשר לן. אמר להו: כבר קיבלו אבותיכם עליהם, שנאמר: ״שמע בני מוסר אביך ואל תטוש תורת אמך״.
As the mishna discusses the requirement to observe local customs, the Gemara relates: The residents of Beit She’an were accustomed not to travel from Tyre to market day in Sidon on Shabbat eve. In deference to Shabbat, they adopted a stringency and would not interrupt their Shabbat preparations even for a short sea voyage. Their children came before Rabbi Yoḥanan to request that he repeal this custom. They said to him: Due to their wealth, it was possible for our fathers to earn a living without traveling to the market on Friday; however, it is not possible for us to do so. He said to them: Your fathers already accepted this virtuous custom upon themselves, and it remains in effect for you, as it is stated: “My son, hear your father’s rebuke and do not abandon your mother’s teaching” (Proverbs 1:8). In addition to adhering to one’s father’s rebuke, i.e., halakha, one is also required to preserve his mother’s teaching, i.e., ancestral customs.
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The Rabbis quarreled and advised on both sides of the lines.
Between regions and concepts
crossing physical borders and restrictions
somersaulting the restrictions of their minds.
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פסחים נ״ד:יב
אמרי, חללה הוא דנברא קודם שנברא העולם, ואור דידיה בערב שבת
The void of Gehenna was created before the world
Before times and places
But its fire was created on Shabbat evening
Put one foot
in front of the other
build a world on words and deeds
out of Sinai
every day
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Moving through space "with all your limbs"
"(...) You ought to think of doing good with all your limbs and with all your thoughts (...) all should be for the sake of Heaven (...)"
- Orchot Tzaddikim 16:13
אורחות צדיקים ט״ז:יג
לכן תחשוב שתעשה הטוב בכל איבריך ובכל מחשבותיך, ותבחר מכל איבר ואיבר קצת קלות וקצת כבדות, והכל לשם שמים
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Did they turn the words of the Tora over and over while walking, while moving their limbs?
.
משנה אבות ה:כב
בן בג בג אומר, הפך בה והפך בה, דכלא בה. ובה תחזי, וסיב ובלה בה, ומנה לא תזוע, שאין לך מדה טובה הימנה
.
Ben Bag Bag said:
Turn it over, and [again] turn it over, for all is therein.
(Pirkei Avot 5:22)
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Did their limbs ask questions?
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And later?
Staying in enclosures
while
the book
traveled
and expands even now?
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The rabbis traveled in and out of the חג with compassion and imagination
crossing spiritual borders and restrictions
How to travel in and out of ancient problems and opinions today with compassion and imagination?
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Rabbis
and routes
and seasons
and fathers and mothers
and songs
and the void
and disputes
and knowledge
and thieves
and empathy
and the sea
twisting
braiding
twining
taking up
changing
transforming
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Weaving words weaving worlds
Spinning a long thread
from afar
to be extended
into
every now
מקומות שנוהגים
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פסחים פ״ז:ב
אמר רבי אלעזר אפילו בשעת כעסו של הקדוש ברוך הוא זוכר את הרחמים
Even in a time of anger of the Holy One, Blessed be He, He remembers the attribute of compassion
(Rabbi Elazar, Pesachim 87b)
II
The watercolours are painted in relation to landscape.
I imagined people traveling from the land of Israel to Babylon, traveling the text of the Tora and the traces of exile.
The travelers were looking for advice, acquiring knowledge, to exchange ideas and commodities and for simply maintaining relationships.
And they discussed different customs. How to stay one people and how to stay true to diverse local customs?
The pages of the Talmud is a landscape of letters, to be travelled through with amazement and questions. Each page has its own shape, its own floor plan.
I painted the landscapes from a bird's eye view.
Ancient Mesopotamia included the holy city Pumbedita, the cradle of the Babylonian Talmud. Today the city is called Fallujah in the nation state of Iraq.
The area of Mesopotamia was always a difficult area, although it is acknowledged as the cradle of civilization. It was here that intensive year-round agriculture was first practiced. Mesopotamia was often a terrain of conflict and also todays nation states built on this landscape are tragically shaken by the brutal historical reality of modern day wars with its use of weapons of mass destruction.
What is left of the spirit of the holy debates of the Pumbedita academy? Did there survive any physical or spiritual traces to be discovered after all?
I also wondered how the landscape between the Mediterranean Sea and Pumbedita was shaped in the times of the rabbis and how their thinking was influenced by these very landscapes, by the sparsity and vastness of the space, dotted here and there by some fertile places rich in water.
I imagined the desert landscape interspersed with a few main roads along rivers.
It must have been a strenuous and risky endeavor for travelers to visit Pumpeditha.
In recent years also Syria became a war zone.
The right for home was destroyed and longing became the norm again as so many times before in human history. Large refugee flows have moved west and north, many of them trapped in barely bearable situations in refugee camps along Fortress Europe.
It would be wonderful to travel peacefully in real life in the footsteps of the rabbis neglecting cartographic lines and political conditions.
Ancient Israel - before the second exile, before the large Jewish refugee flows - is presented in our Gemara as a flourishing place. This is a community which experienced displacement, exile and trauma, but also the return to the land. People live safely in their cities after all, in physically and spiritually intact communities expressing themselves in diverse customs.
It must have been a beautiful and rich life back then, even if danger was lurking around the corner at times, like the thief arising with the light.
In retrospect, we know that also this peaceful time was a temporary one.
But isn't it stated: "The sun also rises and the sun also sets"? (Ecclesiastes 1:5)
There is a chance for change, for peace and wisdom at all times, בב"א.
But we have to work for it.