What can 21st century artists ‘take’ from the Jewish tradition that might enrich their creative process?

This was the question posed to a group of Bay Area artists and writers at the January 12, 2015 session of the Digital Artists Collaborative (DAC) at the JCCSF. Sponsored by 3200 Stories, the DAC brings together a diverse group of artists and creative thinkers to wrestle with big questions, prompting various forms of creation expression to be distributed as digital media. The new initiative, grounded in the concept of Midrash, meets to consider a variety of Jewish “texts” (audio, video, text, and image) and explore their relevance socially, personally, and artistically. The activity is not so much about message as about a "method," one that is deeply identified with Jewish culture.

JCCSF educator Rachel Brodie offered the Judaic practice of “midrash” as a dynamic model for artists to consider. In Judaism, Midrash is the ongoing process by which people seek understanding of the Old Testament and other important texts (Tanakh). It presupposes an interaction between the written words and the readers, between ideas and interpretation, between the mystery of texts and the individual quest for present meaning.

“The Old Testament can be seen as an anthology of the greatest hits of Jewish theology,” Brodie told the gathered artists. “It is full of contradictions. The ratio of words to the questions they raise is infinite. So much is not said.  So much is left to the imagination. Torah forces you to be a dynamic reader. You cannot be passive.”

According to Brodie, Talmud says: “The Torah screams darsheni!—interpret me!”

In the Biblical story of Abraham and Sarah, for example, all the text specifies about Sarah is that she is 'beautiful.' It does not describe her otherwise, nor is beauty defined. In the absence of detail, there is no cause to disagree. We can all define beauty individually, and picture Sarah in accordance with our own imaginations. We can all agree: “Sarah is beautiful.”

But  the text incites us to asks, what does she look like? What is beauty to me? We each insert our own aesthetic and ideas.

Midrash is having to fill in the blanks, to make choices, Brodie explained, Even translation is Midrash: to say a given word means this and not that.

Midrash could thus be seen as a concept, a strategy, for approaching not only texts, but also art, and life itself, she suggested. 

As the artist Jenny Holzer said, “You are responsible for constituting the meaning of things.”

Our question as content producers for 3200 Stories was this: How can we use this process to nourish our creation?  What is art as Midrash?

The story we examined as a group was the Biblical account of the Tower of Babel.  In how many ways could we look at it?

The answer we arrived at: Just about as many ways as there were people in the room.

We gave participants about four hours to pair up and create an “interpretation” in the form of a 15 second video.

The following are the four “concepts” that emerged.