Paper Midrash – Thanks for a great 2018!

It's been a wonderful year; we are so honored to have been able to bring Paper Midrash to so many wonderful communities in 2018. We've got a bunch of bookings for the first half of 2019 already; if you're interested in bringing us to YOU in 2019-2020, drop us a line!

Paper Midrash in Stockton, Birthplace of the Fantastic Four

Another great weekend, this time at Temple Israel in Stockton, California! And another great batch of photos to share with you, so you can see the incredible art we created with this congregation! We spent the weekend talking about this week's parasha, Vayigash – in which Joseph reveals himself to his brothers – and we talked about secret identities in Torah (and comic books).

Friday night we presented "Secret Identities: Super Heroes and Torah Heroes"
and Saturday we started our papercutting workshop with our "Intro to Midrash."

I love these pix – using windows to transfer designs from regular paper to watercolor paper.

We turned a roomful of congregants into papercutters!

Rabbi Shawna giving a little guidance to a workshop participant

Some of the final artwork was inspired by the parasha, but very personal as well

Beautiful work exploring Judah's part in Vayigash, created by a workshop particpant

A papercut about reconciliation, one of the parasha's themes

We always end workshops with time to share our work with each other

Rabbi Jason Gwasdoff at work on his paper midrash

Cantorial Soloist Lindy Passer with congregants at work on one of the four community tallitot we made

Having fun getting messy, making tallitot!

Local celebrity Mel making his mark on the Etz Chaim tallit

Painting in the atara for a community tallit

"Shirat HaYam" community tallit

"Vine and Fig Tree" community tallit

"Who Orders the Universe" community tallit

Our papercutters with their finished paper midrash artwork

Part of our community tallit team with the "Etz Chaim" tallit

All Hands on Deck: Fingerprint Mosaics at Camp Newman

You may have already read the whole story – how this summer at URJ Camp Newman my wife (Rabbi Shawna B2) and I led campers in the creation of new tallitot (prayer shawls) for the camp, one session at a time.

Each tallit is a fingerprint mosaic, where each camper had a chance to add their personal mark. The idea was that fingerprints are personal, but combined together they create a mosaic-like pattern, creating a communal work rather than an individual one — and that it would take the fingerprints of the whole eidah (session) to create a finished work. (And a big thank-you to Rabbi Laura Novak Winer, who worked with us on all of these talliot!)

If you haven't read that post, please go check it out on the camp blog: https://campnewman.org/2018/07/06/all-hands-on-deck-fingerprint-mosaics-at-camp-newman/. But here's something the post  doesn't have: pictures of all of the finished tallitot, which we're pleased to share here.

Avodah is dedicated to community involvement and social justice,
so their tallit is a rainbow flag they took to the 2018 Pride Festival

Tzofim's tallit is a Jerusalem skyline, complete with turrets and archways.

Rishonim is out "nature" session, so they made a tree – with a branch for each of their twelve "tribes."

Bogrim made the seven species: grapes, dates, wheat, barley, figs, olives, and pomegranates.

The CITs are celebrating "C-CHAI-T" this year so their handprints surround a chai, with advisors' hands blessing them from the sides. (This shot is the ALMOST-done tallit; we were waiting for two late arrivals to complete it.)

Hagigah's tallit is an abstract representation of waves,
in honor of Camp Newman's first summer "by the bay."

Faculty and staff made a tallit as well – "Miriam's Well," with a quote from Amos 5:24:
"Let justice roll down like water, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream."

And if you want more information on what we can do with your community, check us out on the web at www.PaperMidrash.com.

Making a Tallit Mosaic at Camp Newman

This summer at URJ Camp Newman was my eleventh in a row as an artist with Hagigah, the arts track for 10th and 11th graders. As usual, I spent a few hours a day for two weeks cutting paper with them; after all, that’s what I do in my “real” life outside camp. But for the past three summers I’ve also spent that time making a mosaic with some of the Hagigah campers.

Step one is always the same: we start by studying text. This year we decided on a big piece focused on the idea of community, so I brought a few ideas to the kids to jumpstart their brains, and asked them what community in a camp context meant to them. They came up with a dozen or so great ideas, but when I asked them to vote on their favorites, the choice was unanimous: they wanted to represent the moment in Erev Shabbat services when their counselors hold up their tallitot up to bless the campers with the words of Hashkiveinu.

As with every project, this one started as page after page of sketches.

I sketched out a few ideas and found a way to express what they wanted to show, and then we got to work. In just six one-hour sessions, these 20 campers completed 24 square feet of mosaic.

The first tiles laid were the black outlines of the tallitot.

The campers have taken to calling the tile adhesive "cream cheese."

The mosaic was built in two pieces, on two separate tables – with 10 campers around each one.

We even had a "faculty art night" which was open to all of the rabbis, cantors, educators, artists, medical and office staff, etc. – always nice to open up the activity to more people when we can.

Way to go, Laura and Lindy!

They chose the colors; they chose to add a hamsa and a Jewish star and flowers on the tallitot; they picked the words we added to drive home the message of community (words we all shout during the tallit-waving). After a day of grouting, we were done – and the result was spectacular!

The campers designed the colorful tallit designs themselves.

Protective eyewear was provided AND REQUIRED for everyone while breaking tiles.

What really got to me, though, was how the mosaic-making process was a microcosm for the camp experience. Not everyone came to the table with the same experience or ability; not everyone had the same interest in every part of the process; but we all had to work together to get it done – and we did.

The design started to take shape and we began to get excited!

Everyone learned how to choose and break and combine tile to create an image, and the resulting mosaic was truly a group effort. It’s a representation of the community we choose, and the community we build – steeped in religious and cultural traditions, but constantly being remade and renewed by every single camper.

We'll be officially unveiling the mosaic at the 2017 Peachy Levy Hagigah Festival next week – so it'll be up in time for the 70th anniversary celebration, when my wife and I will be leading all of the hundreds of celebrants in making ANOTHER mosaic... we hope you'll join us!

"Rainbow Over Ararat" adapted for tallit-like garment

It's raining, so this feels like a great post to put up today.

Last spring I created a Noah's Ark papercut titled "Rainbow Over Ararat" as a donation for the annual Temple Ahavat Shalom Early Childhood Education Center (ECEC) fundraising luncheon.

I was contacted a short while ago by some folks at St Thomas' Church, Stockton Heath, in the United Kingdom. They were welcoming a new curate with a stole for her to wear, and wanted to make something with Noah's Ark as a theme. Joanne Ridley, the seamstress-artist, asked if she could use my papercut as a basis for the design. She offered to make a donation to the ECEC, and I said "go for it," and she's just finished it. That's the new curate, Lore Chumbley, wearing it in the photo above.

(The church TOTALLY looks like the Platonic ideal of an "old English church" and is, apparently, of historical interest.)

Here's what Joanne said about the process of making the stole:

Briefly, I tacked all the fabrics onto a foundation of muslin, then covered each "join" with a very narrow strip of white bias binding to replicate the papercut. I layered this up like a quilt and quilted through everything to hold it all in place then I (heart in mouth) cut it into the two pieces needed for the stole, sewed those together at the back neck edge and finally bound the edge with blue fabric to match the sky.  I did extend the waves downwards to make the balance right for the stole's length.

I think it's a beautiful adaptation of my work, and I'm so proud they wanted to use it. Here are some photos taken while the stole was being made, and one of the original papercut.

 

Paper Tefillah series: "Ahavah Rabah" papercut

I've completed my "Ahavah Rabah" papercut -- part of the "paper tefillah" series I'll be showing this January in Memphis, Tennessee. (Details about the show are forthcoming.)

The "Ahavah Rabah" prayer focuses on the love God shows for us by giving us the gift of Torah and the mitzvot (commandments). The pomegranate represents the mitzvot -- it's said that it contains 613 seeds, the number of mitzvot in the Torah. The prayer mentions the four corners of the earth, which is a cue for worshippers to gather together the tzitzit (which have knots also representing the 613 mitzvot) at the four corners of their tallit and hold them together, so the four corners of this piece are backed with salvaged pieces from genizah-destined prayerbooks that reference the prayer, the mitzvot, and tzitzit.

The pomegranate is backed with comics that reflect the rich juicy color of the fruit, and there are quite a few goodies hidden in this one. It's best seen in person, but until the show you can enjoy these close-up shots. And as always, you can click the pix to see them larger.