Conceptual
artist Mel Alexenberg offers the digital generation a way to find life's
meaning by creating ‘spiritual blogs.’
By Rachel Neiman, Israel 21c, http://www.israel21c.org/from-selfies-to-spirituality/
Mel
Alexenberg is an artist, educator,
writer and blogger working at the interface between art, science, technology
and culture whose artworks are in the collections of more than 40 museums
worldwide.
Alexenberg’s
most recent project is a book and accompanying online project entitled
Photograph God: Creating a Spiritual Blog of Your Life.
The book
explores the interface between biblical narrative, kabbalah and digital
technologies. It demonstrates how to create a blog by photographing God’s
“divine light” … “as revealed in everyday life while crafting a dialogue
between the bloggers story and the biblical story.”
For example,
Alexenberg asked his students at Ariel University to photograph everyday
examples of the seven divine kabbalistic attributes. Among the results:
Hesed
(compassion/largesse/loving all): “… an elderly man responding to feral cats
hungry for love and food. He pets each one and portions out food for them.”
Tiferet (beauty/aesthetic balance/inner elegance): “the birth of a calf, an awesome event expressing deeply felt beauty of seeing new life coming into the world.”
Hod (splendor/gracefulness/magnificence): “… the glorious feeling of young lovers kissing. She photographed their shadow as the hed (echo) of the event.”
Alexenberg’s
own spiritual blog was created together with his artist wife, Miriam, to
celebrate their 52nd wedding anniversary. During each of the 52 weeks of their
52nd year, they posted six photographs that reflected their life together along
with a Twitter “tweet” that related the weekly Torah reading to their shared
five-plus decades:
“God saw all that he had made, and behold, it
was very good. It was evening and morning, the sixth day. (Genesis 1:31)”
“On the
first day of our honeymoon, we bought a cactus plant. On the 42nd year of our
honeymoon, our daughter bought us this cactus.”
“He [Jacob]
had a vision in a dream. A ladder was standing on the ground and its top
reached up toward heaven; and behold! Divine angels were ascending and
descending on it. (Genesis 28:12)”
“Six days
shall you accomplish your activities and on the seventh day you shall desist. (Exodus
23:12) The seventh day is Sabbath … you shall not do any creative work. (Exodus
20:10)”
“We can
enjoy the technological wonders of our era knowing that we are free to tune
out, turn off, and unplug on the next Shabbat.”
To learn more about how to create your own spiritual blog, click on book cover on side bar or see http://bibleblogyourlife.blogspot.com
To learn more about Mel Alexenberg’s extensive body of work, see http://melalexenberg.com
Chaim Meiersdorf - Yeshiva University
Mel Alexenberg is simply a genius. I had the pleasure of watching him in action when I worked for him as Rabbi of the Yerucham Art College in the early 1980's. He had a special knack for synthesizing profound Jewish ideas with the plastic arts. The arts enhanced the Jewish message and visa versa. It is wonderful to see that Mel is keeping up the creative work, full speed ahead.
