REVIEW ED
O Brave
Newjudaica
By Beverly Sanders
The Jewish Museum
Reinventing Ritual: Contemporary
Art and Design for Jewish Life
New York,
N Y
Sept. 13 - Feb. 7,2010
thejewishmuseum.org
Below:
Above:
Rachel Ranter
Galya Kosenfeld
F rin g ed G arm ent,
2005,
P a rvkhet
(Torah cur-
cotton fabric, thread,
tain), 2007, polyester
floss and fusible
IKEA curtains, cut
webbing.
and rewoven.
The premise of this provocative survey is
that in Jewish life, presumably in reaction
to consumer culture, there is a thirst for
authenticity and meaning that only ritual,
with its power to bring the sacred into the
everyday, can satisfy. Curator Daniel Be-
lasco of the Jewish Museum has assembled
works by 57 artists, designers and architects,
who over the past decade have rethought
the rituals of Judaism, whether practiced
inside or outside the synagogue. The works
are organized into four sections-covering,
absorbing, thinking, building—within which
the objects relate to such actions as eating,
drinking, counting and praying. For each
piece a wall text describes the ritual that has
been “reinvented” by the artist.
The exhibition reflects how deeply the
practice of Judaism has been affected by
recent social issues as well as by a persistent
Jewish concern with injustice. Feminism,
a fertile source of new rituals, has helped
to bring women from the margins to more
active roles in study and worship. Among
the works representing women’s attempts
to appropriate what have been male reli-
gious prerogatives is Rachel Ranter’s
Fringed Garment,
referring to the striped
prayer shawl, each of its four comers bear-
ing the fringes required by law and tradi-
tionally worn by men. Creating a tallit for
herself, Ranter combined an apron and a
prayer shawl, fusing the female (domestic)
and male (public) roles. A similar combina-
tion of seriousness and playfulness informs
a work by Hadas Rruk and Anat Stein of
Studio Armadillo, a take on the traditional
learning of texts in the house of study. The
plastic chessboard bearing 32 knitted skull-
caps (worn by modern Orthodox boys),
in red and green, is an analogy between this
learning, done in pairs, and a chess game.
That the skullcaps were knitted by female
students at a yeshiva is a reminder of wom-
en’s growing access to religious education.
The impact of environmentalism is evi-
dent in works that champion sustainability
through the use of recycled or humble mate-
rials, enunciating the Jewish ethical prin-
ciples of “do not destroy” and “repair the
world.” These include Ross Barney Archi-
tects’ totally green Jewish Reconstruction-
ist synagogue in Evanston, IL, represented
by a model and photographs, Joe Grand’s
candelabra constructed of galvanized steel
pipe fittings from Home Depot, and Galya
Rosenfeld’s light-reflecting Torah curtain
and ark cover, woven of polyester
i k e a
curtains cut into Star- of David shapes. And
anyone with a backyard interested in com-
bining joyous observance with practicality
might find irresistible the sukkah by Allan
Wexler, who works at the intersection of
architecture, design, craft and conceptual
art. This sturdy cabin is equipped with eat-
ing utensils in which to celebrate the seven-
day fall harvest festival of Succoth, and, the
rest of the year, it’s a nifty gardening shed.
One of the most potent comments on
injustice is Tamara Rostianovsky’s
Un-
earthed,
a cloth sculpture of a haunch of
meat hanging from a hook. While the artist
refers to the kosher slaughter of animals, a
practice meant to be humane, her intention
is to raise awareness of the moral responsi-
bility involved in killing. In cool contrast to
the visceral, as it were, intensity of the meat
piece are the many design objects offering
.journal-plaza.net & www.freedowns.net
Kanter collection of the Jewish Museum.
