Friends – During my third-ever date with my good buddy Sarah Elana (who, God willing, I'll be marrying before too long), we went to the Surrealist and Dadaist exhibit at the Israel Museum. On display was an object that caused an unprecedented uproar in the world of 1930's art criticism and theory, but, in these days of Pop-Art and 15-mintue-fame, seemed almost markedly antediluvian - a mass-produced porcelain toilet bowl signed "R. Mutt." In the 30's, Marcel Duchamp exhibited this bowl along with many other "readymade" objects as part of a statement that "art does not strictly belong within the walls of the museum - it belongs wherever you allow it to happen; ANY mass-produced, everyday object can contain within it aesthetic subtleties and possibilities for interpretation undreamt-of by even the greatest master-painter! Also, the special position awarded to the 'art object ( painting, sculpture, or installation)' as a one-of-a-kind, priceless, and unreplaceable fetish contributes to the preposterous fallacy that artists and art deserve an elevated, untouchable status in society and culture."
Of course, we know what happens when people start to capitalize on this idea - as an old friend of mine informed me recently: "This year in the prestigious Turner Art Prize in London, not a single painter was selected to be a finalist; it was all 'conceptual' claptrap. For example, a guy who wads up paper and blue- tack putty and sticks it to the wall won first prize. Isn't that every bored office worker everywhere? Where's the skill, the triumph of human spirit over matter? And wasn't J.M.W. Turner, the prize's namesake, a painter? He wouldn't even qualify for his own award nowadays!"
In other words, pals and gals - when you look at the outer form of someone else's idea and attempt to reproduce it without looking to into the inner depths of the consciousness from which the idea originated, you wind-up not only failing to reproduce the idea exactly, but you also destroy that idea's accessibility for anyone else! R. Simcha Bunim of P'shishke comments on this phenomenon in the Torah, when Isaac must re-dig the wells of his father Abraham after they've been filled-in by the Pelishtim. Every person's path towards holiness, says R. Simcha Bunim, must be filled with an "inner liveliness" which comes from that person's unique insight into the world. The Pelishtim, as it turns out, wanted SO MUCH to follow Abraham's example of lovingkindness towards all creatures that they imitated, action for action, his path towards holiness. However, maintains R. Simcha, without looking towards the "inner liveliness" and uniqueness from which Abraham maintained his path, and without looking towards their own "inner liveliness" and uniqueness, they could at best only imitate the external form of Abraham's path - a process which, conversely, caused his wells to become re-filled with dirt (their exclusive attention to Avraham's externality created only more externality) ! When Isaac came along to re-dig these wells, it was necessarily with a consciousness that "I am approaching my father's path of lovingkindness THROUGH MY OWN PATH of discipline and self-restraint; Abraham's path can only be relevant to me once I've forged my own path; from there, may our paths converge."
When we proceed on our paths toward holiness, we must hope that they will converge with a Higher path at some point, that we may dig anew and find untapped wellsprings within ourselves and our paths that we never expected to find. We must ask, "What's on the inside of this mitzvah, of this lesson, of this quality, and what is inside me that can come out THROUGH this mitzvah, lesson or quality? Am I simply copycatting someone else's path because I can't come up with any better ideas myself, or can my self-consciously-chosen path towards holiness converge and correspond with a more vital model? Am I opening the pathways for chiddush (renewal, synthesis) in the world of holiness, or am I contributing to the closure and sealing of those pathways for myself and everyone else?" We should be blessed this and every Shabbes with the correct balance of self-assertion and self-nullification necessary to merge our individual paths with the path that God has chosen for us
Jerry Silverman
|
Jerry Silverman is a former student of Yeshivat Bat Ayin. He is working in new media, designing and managing media projects. He lives in Riverdale, NY with his wife Sarah and their two children. |