By Steve Weatherbe

SIX years ago, rabbi Harry Brechner of Victoria’s Congregation Emanu-El proposed gathering artists and poets from both his own congregation and other faiths to study Jewish sacred texts and create.

“I thought it was a fabulous idea,” says Barbara Pelman, a former high school teacher, who has organized what has turned into an annual event every year since. It goes by the informal name Calling All Artists and drew 35 participants this year, though only 18 finished their projects in time for the opening in early September.

Pelman, who instructs English teachers at the University of Victoria and has published two books of poetry, adds:  “I'd like to see other faith communities doing the same thing in their churches and mosques. It’s a spiritual practice to be creative. To make something from nothing is an imitation of godliness.”

First time participant Nicole Faucher, who describes herself as an unorthodox Anglican, agrees: “It would be wonderful to see this happening in Christian churches.”

Late in September, the products of five two-hour sessions with rabbi Brechner went on display at the synagogue, all interpretations by the artists and poets of this year's themes of death, memory and the afterlife.

On opening night, the artists each explained their process. The event closed with Louis Sutker leading the 100-plus audience in an original song called ‘The Body and Soul Tell Each Other Goodbye – Country and Western Style.’

Brechner says the concept came to him as he realized how many artists, many of them professionals, were in his congregation.

“Artists often work alone. I thought this would be a way for them to connect with each other and also to explain their process,” he recalls.

Pelman confirms that the annual sessions have created a solid, ongoing fellowship and several close friendships for her with other artists.

Another consequence has been to bring back people who had fallen away from the practice of their faith.

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Brechner sees the art as a kind of commentary on Jewish sacred texts and adds that commentary is a very important part of Judaism. “The Torah, the five books attributed to Moses, should always be considered in the context of the Talmud,” he says. The Talmud is the oral tradition also credited to Moses combined with several centuries of commentary by rabbis.

“Take the phrase an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” Brechner continues.

“God forbid that because one person loses his eye God wants two people walking around without an eye.

“Commentary on this injunction says it is intended to set a fair level of compensation: if a person’s injury costs him his livelihood, then the person who injured him owes him a livelihood.”

Several of the poets taking part were clearly moved by the idea of angels leading the soul gently through its transition from the material world to the afterlife.

These lines from organizer Pelman can be found in her poem ‘Soul Grieves the Body’: “Now is the time / For silence. Now the angel Dumah / folds her four wings around your reluctant soul / unties the knot that binds you to your failing body.”

Others chose to describe God’s love more directly: Anglican priest David Howells created a shallow bowl containing lines of sacred Hebrew text.

He told the first night audience the piece “combines the effortless curve of God’s holding of us, contrasted with the clunky hand-made hammered slabs, depicting human efforts to understand.”

Nicole Faucher started out with the intention of creating four oil paintings on tall panels, one for each of the archangels, to be topped by a horizontal panel depicting Shekinah, or God’s Holy Spirit.

It was too big a project. Instead, she completed several small, light-filled water colours, showing worship spaces, always with open doors. “Because the afterlife is left vague in Judaism, in my paintings one doesn’t really see what is on the other side of the doorways,” she says.

For Faucher, a onetime professional artist, this was her first painting since the breakup of her marriage 18 years ago. She concludes, “I am very, very happy to have participated. It opened up that side of me all over again. It has been very healing.”

October 2010