Judaism and Artistic Expression


Editor's Introduction



A novelist visited the court of a Hasidic master. The Rebbe asked the writer, "What is your profession?"
The novelist replied, "I write stories."
"Things that happened?"
"Stories that happened or could have happened," explained the novelist.
"But they did not?"
"No"
"That means you are writing lies!" exclaimed the Rebbe.

For the Hasidic master, the representation of characters and events which have not participated in man's historical reality is false vision. More than one writers has handled the image which Byron uses in Don Juan, to describe poets: "they are such liars,/ And take all colours--like the hands of dyers." For it is the function of the artist to take all colours. A prism takes all colours and separates them into patterns which can be seen clearly. So the artist. He grinds a new lens for the audience, for us, with which to better see ourselves. Clear vision is never dishonest.

A religious scheme of action, a code of values, is set forth in the laws of the Torah and in the spiritual and social ideals of the prophets. We can use this religious scheme as a lens to look out at the world, and to look into our selves. Is the lens of the artist made superfluous by the visions refracted by religious practice? Is it a dangerously sharp glass through which to peer? Does the lens enhance our religious vision? In the following essays, three students discuss the questions.

Jewish tradition teaches that not all things are appropriate subjects for our vision. The biblical prohibition against crafting graven images is a commandment calling our attention to the issue of art within the religious world. As a restriction, the prohibition is vague. As a signal it is quite clear: choose carefully the subjects that you fashion with your imaginations.

Art attempts to re-organize and to re-present our environment. Art functions in the arena between our reality and the imagined ideal. This arena is the same spiritual space in which religion operates. Here, the two imaginative contestants for man's mind, art and religion, struggle together.

Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, an eighteenth century Jewish scholar, writes on the boundaries inside of which we ought to live: "when man abides by the limits, arrangements, and intentions ordained by the Creator, then the mundane activities themselves become acts of perfection." Human action within the religious frame is art. Human thought within our tradition, is beauty. As Chaim Nachman Bialik writes, our sages, authors of the Talmudic texts, sculpted in human life. What room, then, exists within the religious frame for what we label "art?"

Our texts do not provide us with comprehensive rules on artistic creation. Although frustrating at times, this uncertainty is also encouraging: it is a call to define and redefine the role of the individual imagination within the Jewish tradition.

The author of the Psalms, our greatest poet, concludes his ultimate song, Psalm 150, with these words "Praise God with the blast of the shofar, praise Him with lyre and harp, praise Him with drum and dance, praise Him with organ and flute, praise Him with clanging symbols, praise Him with resonant trumpets!" This grand symphonic festival, a great musical dream of imagination, illustrates our goal. It is the challenge of art to create the fantastic harmony of creative imagination. It is the challenge of our religion to guide the imagination to God. It is our goal to meet the dual challenge.

-- Ben Spinner


Ben Spinner is a member of the Columbia College class of 1998.

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