Hearts and arts
Tis the season of sinful sweets and bountiful bouquets.
Yet inside the heart-shaped box of chocolates lurks at least one with a jelly center, among the long stemmed red beauties, at least one thorn.
Ah, Shakespeare was right: the course of romance, much less true love, does not run smooth, especially in the Jewish community.
Here, the randomness of Cupid’s arrow becomes the worrisome prick of the likelihood of intermarriage, as marriages between Jews and non-Jews become as ubiquitous as those frilly Valentine’s Day missives and the scores of frantic shoppers searching for just the right one.
And yet, the serendipity of love reminds of its many ways, both to find Mr. or Ms. Right and to create enduring pairings. So, too, it reminds of the multiplicity of Jewish connections that inform both our identity as individuals and our choices as couples.
Let me count the ways, beyond our traditional points of access, that can inspire those romantic pairings.
Visual arts, music, literature, theater, film, dance pulse with Jewish spirit that has the capacity to move us in ways we may have never known. The arts can open our eyes, our ears, our minds. They can strike chords, give voice, inspire emotion. They provide doorways that lead us to spiritual connections, innately Jewish spiritual connections, and they can draw us through those doorways into Jewish places where Jewish life can be at once made, and remade, in a way that is deeply meaningful for us.
So, in recent weeks, a concert of Sephardic music by Ohr Chadash Cantor Ruth Berman Harris and visiting Rabbi Silvina Chemen of Temple Beth El in Buenos Aires enchanted their audience with a melange of songs in lilting cadences of Ladino, ancient Spanish, Hebrew and Yiddish.
And a visit by another rabbi whose Judaism is also both deeply felt and profoundly expressed again reinforced the power of the arts to touch us. Matthew Berkowitz, creator of the Lovell Haggadah, with its beautifully crafted words and images, shared his exquisite work during a weekend Shabbaton sponsored by the local Wexner Heritage Scholars. Berkowitz, both rabbi and artist, later explained, by email from Jerusalem where he heads the Jewish Theological Seminary Israel program, that there are many ways of learning and many avenues for encountering Judaism. Art is one.
“Each of us has a different and unique path into understanding and interpreting the world around us,” he writes. “The visual and performing arts are powerful keys that have the potential . . . to empower individuals to make their own connections with tradition.”
Art forges connections, both between the viewer and the art and the viewer and his peers, says Berkowitz. It can open us up to Judaism, and connect us not only to its richness -- but to each other.
And with love in the air, who knows where those shared connections that bring us closer to Judaism might lead? Just maybe they’ll be the tug at the heartstrings that lead each of us to find our beshert and make our hearts sing.
11 Feb, 2010 >
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