Silent Witnesses - Yona Verwer

Every week we feature several artists participating in our current exhibit Silent Witnesses: Synagogues Transformed, Rebuilt, or Left Behind - Artists Respond to History.

  

This art exhibit is organized by the Cultural Heritage Artists Project, in collaboration with the Jewish Art Salon, JWalks and the Holocaust Memorial Center. February 22 - April 14 in Metro Detroit. Exhibit info here.

Yona Verwer

A Cemetery Dodges the Wrecking Ball 

The 1967 Dodge is an homage to my parents in the Netherlands, car enthusiasts who often bought a vehicle made in the Chrysler factories of Detroit.

I produced this work influenced by Joan Roth, a photographer whose work I have admired for years. For generations Roth's family was affiliated with Congregation Shaarey Tzedek, which is now the caretaker of Beth Olem, the oldest Jewish cemetery in Michigan.  

My work is centered around this burial place, a religious site that has seen as much urban change as the community's synagogue buildings. At one time this cemetery was in a peaceful setting, but as the manufacturing plant of Dodge Chrysler expanded the cemetery became surrounded by an industrial parking lot. Eventually the Dodge plant closed, and without moving, the site is now located on the grounds of General Motors. Thanks to state laws Beth Olem Cemetery is restored and accessible to the public once a year. 

Silent Witnesses - Siona Benjamin

Every week we feature several artists participating in our current exhibit Silent Witnesses: Synagogues Transformed, Rebuilt, or Left Behind - Artists Respond to History.

  
This is an art exhibit organized by the Cultural Heritage Artists Project, in collaboration with the Jewish Art Salon, JWalks and the Holocaust Memorial Center. February 22 - April 14 in Metro Detroit. Exhibit info here.

Siona Benjamin

The Kadavumbhagam synagogue in Ernakulam, South India

3 frames 11" x 14" /one video photo frame 5" x 7"


The terrorist attack that occurred in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) on November 26-29, 2008 was a massacre of both resident Indians and visiting foreigners. These attacks brought notice to the world of the existence of a small but ancient group of Indian Jewish people that inhabited the Indian subcontinent for approximately 2,000 years.

I was brought up as a Bene Israel Jew in a predominately Hindu and Muslim India in Mumbai, and I was immensely disheartened by the lack of media and news coverage.  My American friends asked many questions. “Did Jews first inhabit India upon the establishment of the Chabad house?” “If not, then what did the local Jewish population look like? This dialogue with my friends was the impetus for this proposal.

Silent Witnesses - Julian Voloj

Every week we feature several artists participating in our current exhibit Silent Witnesses: Synagogues Transformed, Rebuilt, or Left Behind - Artists Respond to History.

  

This is an art exhibit organized by the Cultural Heritage Artists Project, in collaboration with the Jewish Art Salon, JWalks and the Holocaust Memorial Center. February 22 - April 14 in Metro Detroit. Exhibit info here.

Julian Voloj is one of the exhibit organizers.

Julian Voloj
Detroit Revisited
Suite of 9 Photographs 

Every year thousands of Americans visit Europe, searching for remnants of a once-thriving Jewish culture. Countries such as Poland and the Czech Republic, though their Jewish communities have nearly vanished, have become places of pilgrimage for Jewish heritage tourists. In the United States, however, while Jewish culture thrives American Jewish heritage is usually forgotten.

Shaped by Books: The 42-Letter Name

This Print Folio and Its Sources will be on display at Trinity College, Hartford CT,  in the Watkinson Library from March 6 to April 13.
  
The 42-Letter Name, an artist's book by Trinity Fine Arts Professor Robert Kirschbaum is a visual commentary on concepts found in early Jewish mysticism relating to The Creation.  

The exhibition explores early influences on Kirschbaum's work, including family prayer books and drafting manuals, and material from the broader spheres of modern art, ancient cosmogonic imagery, and contemporary material culture.  The show was curated by Sally Dickinson, Associate Curator, Watkinson Library.
300 Summit Street, Hartford, CT 06106 Phone: [860] 297.5184

Silent Witnesses - Mel Alexenberg

Every week we feature several artists participating in our current exhibit Silent Witnesses: Synagogues Transformed, Rebuilt, or Left Behind - Artists Respond to History.

  

This is an art exhibit organized by the Cultural Heritage Artists Project, in collaboration with the Jewish Art Salon, JWalks and the Holocaust Memorial Center. February 22 - April 14 in Metro Detroit. Exhibit info here.

Mel Alexenberg
Bar Mitzvah in a Brooklyn Mosque

I was born in the Brooklyn Jewish Hospital (now Interfaith Hospital), celebrated my bar mitzvah in my Uncle Morris' synagogue at 1089 Coney Island Avenue (now a Pakistani mosque), and was married in the Park Manor Jewish wedding hall on Eastern Parkway (now an African-American Baptist church).

My Uncle Morris founded a storefront synagogue in Brooklyn that he named Congregation Beth Abraham for my father.  He was the rabbi of the congregation.  He lived in the two floors above the shul with his wife Dora (my mother's sister) and their six children.  My parents, my sister and I spent all the Jewish holidays in their house.  We had only to run down a flight of stairs to participate in the services.  

On the Sunday following my being called up to the Torah as a bar mitzvah on Shabbat, we celebrated with family and friends in Uncle Morris's shul as he sang with the accompaniment of a choir.  My parents sat with my sister and me in front the bima draped with an American flag. When my uncle retired, he sold 1089 Coney Island Avenue to a Hasidic group that later sold it to Muslims who redesigned the synagogue to serve as a mosque.    

Silent Witnesses - Miriam Benjamin

Every week we feature several artists participating in our current exhibit Silent Witnesses: Synagogues Transformed, Rebuilt, or Left Behind - Artists Respond to History.

  

This is an art exhibit organized by the Cultural Heritage Artists Project, in collaboration with the Jewish Art Salon, JWalks and the Holocaust Memorial Center. February 22 - April 14 in Metro Detroit. Exhibit info here.

Miriam Benjamin
My Synagogue Came on Aliyah

I came on aliyah in 1949 from my birthplace, Paramaribo, Suriname, when I was 9 years old.  60 years later, my synagogue followed me and came on aliyah. The Tzedek ve-Shalom synagogue established in 1736 on the northern coast of South America was dismantled and shipped to Israel and reconstructed at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. My father, Moshe Yehuda Benjamin, chanted the Torah portion on Shabbat in the two synagogues in the Dutch colony, both the Tzedek ve-Shalom (Justice and Peace) Sephardi synagogue and the Neveh Shalom (House of Peace) Ashkenazi synagogue.  Neveh Shalom, established in 1735 and reconstructed in 1835, still stands in the center of Paramaribo next to a mosque built in 1984.

I rushed to be the first person in synagogue on Friday evenings after the sand floors were raked smooth so that my footprints would be the first to show.  Both synagogues had sand floors to symbolize the Diaspora wanderings of the Jewish people just as they wandered in the Sinai desert sands on their way to the Land of Israel.

International Jewish Art Salon Session at Skirball Center

Monday March 12, 2012, 7:30 - 9PM
 

Skirball Center of Adult Jewish Learning.

1 East 65th Street  New York, NY 10065. (212) 507-9580.

The Skirball Center for Adult Jewish Learning at Temple Emanu-El, NYC, in collaboration with the Jewish Art Salon is pleased to host an International Artists Session with Jacqueline Nicholls (Great Britain) and Ken Goldman (Israel). Moderated by Tobi Kahn.

7:30 - 8:30PM The artists will show and discuss their work and answer questions. Session starts at 7:30 sharp, March 12th.

8:30 - 9:00PM Meet & greet.

RSVP required by March 7! jewishartsalon@gmail.com

Our session at Graphic Details

All attendees at our February 22 session came away with a new appreciation for the art of graphic novels. At the Y.U. Museum's Exhibit "Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women" we were met by curators Zachary Levine, Michael Kaminer, and Sarah Lightman.  We viewed the unique and prolific niche of graphic storytelling by Jewish women and explored the intersection between Jewishness and gender in comics and graphic narratives.

Featuring original work by 18 of the most influential creators, Graphic Details showcases work of all-stars from the pioneering Wimmen’s Comix and Twisted Sisters artists of the 1970s and 1980s to the superstars of the new generation. While the influential role of Jews in cartooning has long been acknowledged, the role of Jewish women in shaping the medium is still largely unexplored. Exhibit runs till April 14.

Photos of the event here.