USC FISHER MUSEUM OF ART

Victor Raphael: Travels and Wanderings 1979 - 2009

THE ROOM

By SELMA REUBEN HOLO WITH CONTRIBUTIONS BY; NANCY BERMAN, RUTH WEISBERG, LEWIS BARTH, AND RUTH ADAR

Victor Raphael created a room at the Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, Los Angeles, formally called Nachamu, Nachamu: The Heavens Spread Out Like a Prayer Shawl.

I WILL, AT THIS POINT include a series of reflections on the origin and transformation of Nachamu, Nachamu: The Heavens Spread Out Like a Prayer Shawl, called in its current iteration “The Room” here at Fisher. This essay is largely a compilation of texts and fragments of texts written by Victor’s patrons and colleagues at the Hebrew Union College. We are featuring “The Room” in Victor Raphael’s exhibition, having turned what was originally conceived as a heavenly study space into an installation, a physical space designated now solely for reflection, for meditation, or for sheer aesthetic delight. We are grateful to the Hebrew Union College, our treasured neighbors at USC, for not only letting us borrow Nachamu, Nachamu: The Heavens Spread Out Like a Prayer Shawl, but for allowing us and Victor to transform it, to permit it its own ongoing journey.

First, we hear from Nancy Berman, Museum Director Emeritus Hebrew Union College, Skirball Museum, patron.

There were so many reasons, both practical and philosophical, which led to the commissioning of Victor Raphael’s brilliant piece, “Nachamu… Comfort, Comfort, My People, Isaiah 40:1” for a classroom at Hebrew Union College’s Los Angeles Campus. It was odd but not even one of the classrooms had windows. For hours on end, students neither saw the light of day, whether it was sunny or stormy outside, nor could they avail themselves of a moment of relaxation or fascination visualizing the “real world” of their surroundings. Yet Hebrew Union College is a graduate professional school training rabbis, cantors, educators and communal leaders to deal with that “real world.” These students were learning Jewish theology, history, belief, ethics, values and practices. They would be called upon to lead and to influence current and future generations of Jews by making this 4000-year-old tradition relevant to contemporary existence in “the real world.”

I was first the Curator and later the Director of the Skirball Museum which was housed in that windowless building. Over recent years, I began to hear about the concept of the “artist beit midrash.” The literal meaning of the Hebrew is “house of study” so the artist beit midrash has come to mean a course, a class, a workshop taught by both a professor of Jewish studies and an artist. The artist could be a poet, a musician, a dancer, or a visual artist. What the artist could bring to the Jewish discourse in this context was new ways of mining Jewish material by eliciting creative interactions and interpretations amongst the learners.

At one point, right before the beginning of the new academic year, I realized that there would be no better place to hold an “artist beit midrash” than at Hebrew Union College. This setting would be an important place to experiment with this new methodology to enhance Jewish knowledge and learning through an artistic lens. Why shouldn’t the ideas and images found in Jewish texts directly inform the art that could be conceptualized in those very rooms—art that would speak to the many cohorts of students and educators who would be learning in that very space? But we could also push the paradigm further by focusing the collaborative work on an artistic product, which could be installed permanently in the classroom itself. The barren and windowless classroom would be reinvented and informed with an art work emanating from the learning that took place within its very walls.

I took the idea to Dean Lewis Barth of Hebrew Union College whose “Rabbinic Midrash” course was about to commence. He immediately resonated to the idea and agreed to use his class as the artist beit midrash. Of course we needed to find the right artist for the collaboration. My husband, Alan Bloch, and I were ready to fund the project, but we wanted the professional counsel of Ruth Weisberg, Dean of Fine Arts, at USC... Together Lewis, Ruth and I chose Victor Raphael to be the artist of the “beit midrash” and whose commission would adorn the walls of classroom 105 forevermore.

For professor, artist and students, the experience was stimulating and liberating. Their eloquent words attest to the powerful affect this challenge had on them. Teaching Judaism was energized through the alchemy that Victor Raphael’s artistic intelligence brought to the experience. And in the end, as the students graduate and go out in the world, they will take with them an enriched vision of the power of art to animate the ideas they need to teach and to model. And as new cohorts of students come to study and occupy Room 105, they will look up to gaze at the inspired contemporary artistic reflection of the ancient and eternal Jewish ideas they too are studying.

Ruth Weisberg felt that Victor Raphael was the right artist for the project. Her artistic judgment and her experience in both the art world and the world of Jewish studies was critical to HUC’s decision. Here are Weisberg’s own thoughts, written five years after the commission was first made:

How fortunate we are that in 2005 when Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, Los Angeles launched its first artist-in-residency, Victor Raphael was selected to be the artist. The desired results were twofold. The first was a transformation in the attitude in the next generation of Rabbis who it was hoped would be more open and embracing of visual art. The second was a work of art which would be brilliant in its own right and which would become a vital part of the fabric of the institution. Those of us intimately involved in the initiative, Dr. Lewis Barth, Nancy Berman and myself, were searching for a person who could build a real rapport with students as their involvement was crucial to this mission. We had conceived of a very innovative model for the artist-in-residency that was based on a collaborative process of study, dialogue and reflection involving the artist and 4th or 5th year rabbinical students. We hoped this would serve several purposes. The text, the book and the word are so powerful in Judaism that a counter weight seemed important. Raphael was the perfect artist to bridge the visual/textual divide. The visual editing that his work requires often involves multiple layers of images captured from photography, video transmission and electronic scanning. This parallels the complexity of a deep reading of text.

Once selected, Raphael participated in Dr. Lewis Barth’s class of 11 rabbinical students. Victor and the students exchanged illuminating lessons on a text that can be translated, The heavens spread out like a prayer shawl. Raphael, who was profoundly inspired by this text and the process of study and interaction with the rabbinical students, did not create a single art work but instead produced a luminous room, which is meant to awaken the soul and stimulate the imagination. Using Chromogenic prints, LED lighting, new wall treatments and copper and metal leaf, Raphael created at one and the same time an artwork, a classroom and a space for meditation.”

The Fisher Museum goers are truly fortunate. Raphael’s room has been somewhat altered as it enters into the domain of the museum. It has become more of a meditative than a study space—according to Victor Raphael’s imaginative direction. The USC audience will experience this important aesthetic exploration of cosmic space and the human response to its immensity. Raphael is making visible not one but two disembodied realms. The results are sensual, engaging and thought provoking. The viewer is pulled into deep space as seen through highly sophisticated technology and is simultaneously invited to contemplate a timeless spirituality based on aspects of the infinite. So this installation is absolutely of the moment but is also accompanied by an ancient lineage: it is tactile and disembodied, abstract and physical. As in the teaching of Jewish mysticism, we are invited to see a glimpse of eternity.

We are grateful that Lewis Barth, then the Dean of HUC, has also contributed his remembrances about the non-traditional decision he was responsible for making: to include a room of art in this seminary: a house of study normally devoted to the word and its interpretation. Nancy Berman conducted an interview with Dean Barth recently. Selections from that interview are included below:

When Nancy Berman called me with a proposal to fund an artist at HUC, I was thrilled. Nancy’s original idea was to have an artist participate in one of the classes and out of that experience engage the students and then create a work of art. That became our guiding theme. Because Nancy offered her proposal just as we were developing a program to visually enhance the College with works of art, the timing couldn’t have been better. I understood the importance of adding a visual dimension to our strongly textually based curriculum, because the professionals we train–rabbis, educators and Jewish communal professionals–needed to understand the role of art in shaping institutional environments. In terms of the process, Barth became the Professor Collaborator. He told Nancy Berman that he is still “not sure if it was pure selfishness or the desire to expand my students and my own experience! Nancy’s call came just a few weeks before I was going to teach an elective in Midrash, rabbinic interpretations of the Hebrew Bible. The text I had chosen was filled with visual imagery, and I wanted to see how that imagery, imbedded in the text, could be ‘translated’ into a powerful visual statement.” When the class first met, Barth “offered the students the possibility of working through the text in collaboration with an artist who might find a way to represent what we were studying. The students were excited immediately about that possibility. For many of the classes, there was no difference in the teaching and learning….then Ruth Weisberg, Dean of the Roski School of Fine Arts at USC, a friend and a collaborator with Nancy and me, gave a full presentation to the students on Art and Judaism...By that time, our little committee had already determined that Victor Raphael would be the perfect artist for the project… .”

Barth continues: “The biggest surprise to me was the way the students took to this project….Their own creativity as well as enthusiasm became a perfect match for Victor’s and a synergy developed that was awesome. In addition, I was delighted to watch Victor’s process, working with the students and then creating the three outstanding pieces that reflected his own “reading” of the text we had studied….It was one of the most thrilling educational experiences of my life.” And, he concludes, “I know that this was a transformative experience for many of the students. The members of the class have now been ordained as rabbis, and whenever we happen to meet, the narrative of the class that we created together is repeated and expanded. As we dealt with other “institutional” aspects of working with artists—agreements, contracts, scope of work—and the like, former students tell me how valuable that was, in addition to the creative endeavor. Hebrew Union College, Los Angeles, has continued to develop this program, with visual arts, dance, drama and a host of events and activities. The original experience was like the flame of a candle lighting other candles. From a lasting perspective, the College dedicated a room to Victor Raphael’s works—a place of study, of prayerful meditation, and an example to future generations of students of how environment transforms experience.”

And, finally, to end this reflection on “The Room,” it is appropriate, at a university museum, that we memorialize a few of the words in the inaugural speech given by one student who was key to the success of the project.

Ruth Adar writes: What do you get when you combine one teacher of midrash, eleven rabbinical students, and a world-class multimedia artist? Or How do you put windows into an HUC classroom without blowing holes in the wall? The answers to those questions lie behind the copper-clad door of Room 105. Last year eleven unsuspecting students signed up for a one term class on ‘Homeletical Midrashim’ taught by Dr. Lewis Barth. We did not know that we were embarking on what would become a year-long project, indeed, that four members of the class would be ordained before the work was complete. The class studied the 16th Pesikhta of the Pesikhta de Rav Kahana, a 5th c. collection of midrashim. Pesikta #16 is a homily on the haftarah for Shabbat Nachamu, “Nachamu, Nachamu Ami” [Comfort, Comfort My people]. About two weeks into the course, Dr. Barth told us that this was not an ordinary midrash class. Donors Nancy Berman and Alan Bloch had offered HUC the commission of a work of art. Our task was to learn Pesikta #16, and then teach it to an artist named Victor Raphael. He would then create an interpretation of the midrash, a major work of art, for permanent installation at HUC Los Angeles….Over this time, the initial “work of art” became instead an installation that would, we hoped, transform one of our HUC classrooms into a space for sacred study….This midrash class was an education for all of us. It is our hope that the result of all this work is a worshipful study space, a room that offers comfort and inspiration for both teachers and students….The title of the work is, Nachamu, Nachamu: The Heavens Spread Out Like a Prayer Shawl.

The rest is history….. “The Room” lives in another land, the USC Fisher Museum of Art, for a while. A stranger. A friend. A traveler.

Selma Reuben Holo, Director, USC Fisher Museum of Art