Avinoam Damari, Yellow Badge

Photo is courtesy of my dear friend, Avinoam Damari, who works in the Israeli Educational TV in his working hours and on the mosaics on the fence of his house in his spare time. Avinoam Damari wrote to me that this Yellow Badge mosaic is a reminder for the Jewish people to do what is necessary in order to never again be in a situation of holocaust.
I find it interesting that although Avinoam Damari’s family is from Yemen – and didn’t suffer in Europe during WWII - he chose to express his Jewish identity by the Yellow Badge.
Another interesting point is that he chose street art, which becomes part of everyday life, and not art that is closed in galleries and books.
IMHO there are too few art works in the Israeli neighborhood – it seems that Israelis carry the traumas of their previous generations, and find it hard to invest in beautifying their environment, afraid that they will have to leave it in the near future.
These considerations make a respected room for this Yellow Badge mosaic in “my virtual exhibition” titled “Star of David on a Yellow Badge”.

BTW I think that showing art on the internet is a kind of art street that makes art works accessible to those who never put a foot in a gallery.
Copyright: Avinoam Damari, 2007

Tanya Preminger

Photo is courtesy of sculptor Tanya Preminger who wrote to me:

In Passover, the feast of freedom, appeared in the fields of Arsuf-Kedem [ 2 km north of Herzelia, Israel] a huge Star of David made off chrysanthemum, which fills our land with its flowers in spring. This display was made by a group of environmental sculptors lead by Tanya Preminger. After WWII the ;became in our consciousness a symbol of suffering and death. By creating it from flowers in the field these sculptors want to renovate the original symbol which means flowering, blossom, life, independence and freedom.

It reminds me of the verse from Jeremiah 33:11

For I will restore the fortunes of the land as they were at first,' says the LORD.

But since every day our enemies try to make us disappear I’m afraid that the end of times is delayed. Anyhow I think that this enterprise is full of good vibrations and it is a right movement in the right direction.

Tanya Preminger was born in the Soviet Union in 1944. Since 1972 she lives and teaches in Israel. She is married and has 4 daughters. Tania works in various art media: sculpture, landscape art, installation and photography.
photography of Shlomi Waserman.
Copyright: Tanya Preminger 2007

Judith Weinshall Liberman

Photo is courtesy of Judith Weinshall Liberman who sent me the following caption:

YELLOW STAR is a wall hanging - a work on fabric - and is part of Judith Weinshall Liberman's Holocaust Wall Hangings series. Forty-five of the Holocaust Wall Hangings, including YELLOW STAR, are in the permanent collection of the Temple Museum of Religious Art of the Temple Tifereth Israel in Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A., where these works are on permanent display in continuous rotating exhibitions. During the Nazi occupation of Europe, Jews were compelled to wear a badge to distinguish them from non-Jews. The required badge, which varied from region to region, was usually a yellow star on a black ground or a black star on a yellow ground, often with the reference to "Jew" in the local language indicated at the center of the star. This wall hanging, which is 51" by 51" (130 cm by 130 cm) and was created in 1994, treats the badge not as a badge of shame but rather as one to be worn with pride. The image here is that of a regal coat adorned with stars. The yellow stars edging the front and sleeves of the coat suggest a garland of flowers, or lei, a symbol of hospitality and farewell.

Born in Haifa, Israel, Judith Weinshall Liberman came to the United States after completing high school. She earned four American university degrees in social studies and law.

All rights reserved to Judith Weinshall Liberman 2007 

Reality In The Mirror Of History

"Reality In The Mirror Of History" photo is courtesy of Ori Raz , Israeli post modern artist, poet and writer.
Ori wrote to me that this work is titled “reality in the mirror of history” and it is quite different from works of others who deal with the yellow badge. Ori explains that the background is like a children’s world, like a garden of Eden. In the middle of the work there are two Palestinian prisoners and an Israeli soldier. The red dots on the hands of the Israeli soldier remind us of the suffering of Jesus. The yellow badge reminds us of the times when Jews were victims. Message: we, Jews, should have learned our lesson from history and not inflict suffering on others.

In the last few years I have opened the door for creation with colored Xerox photographs. I have used these to create compositions of four creations under a single new frame-creation that created a new composition. At times I have added color with my brush. I have always taken an interests in textures of peeling walls and the graffiti - I have taken pictures of both. In abstract-realistic backgrounds I would find images - to this day I do not know if these images were the creation of the all mighty or the fabrications of my own imagination. I would create contours around the images, limiting their area, and then set them against the abstract backgrounds that I have photographed. After a while I have begun creating with abstract backgrounds while doing spatula creation on paper with different texture. I used expressive spatula strokes, once again discovering images. These images - the figments of my imagination -I would once again define with contours that would differentiate them from the background.

Copyrights: Ori Raz 2007

Ancient Jews with Ancient Tattoos

Photo is courtesy of "minicloud" who published it on Flickr.
Professor Meir Bar-Ilan sent me a translation from Hebrew of his (surprising!) article titled: Jewish Magical Body-Inscription in the First and Second Centuries. Here are some excerpts:

(Ezekiel 9:4-7)… And the Lord said to him, "Pass through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and you shall mark a sign upon the foreheads of the men who are sighing and moaning over all the abominations that were done in its midst." …This indicates that a mark on the forehead was a symbolic guardianship protecting the righteous, … Seemingly, the symbol inscribed upon the righteous was the last letter in the ancient Hebrew alphabet. 

Several hundred years after Ezekiel, we encounter the ritual of marking the righteous – described as an event –in Revelations, a book authored around the end of the first century, the last book of the New Testament. The prophesizing author repeats his description several times and in various forms (7:3, 9:4, 14:1, 17:5, 19:12,16, 20:4, 22:4.). These verses prove beyond any doubt, that the author of this book availed himself of previous Jewish sources on the subject of marking the forehead as well as other subjects, and he treated the markings as an actual event…

Chapter three of Mishna Makot…Evidently, according to R. Shimon, it is prohibited to tattoo the name of God on the body – and this seems to him to be the plain sense of the verse – but an ordinary tattoo, has no prohibition…

From here is evident, that the Rabbis were not only aware of the tradition to write the name of God on the body, but that they contended with it in their legal writings…

The Israelites would wage battle with no arms, only with the name of God inscribed on their bodies as it says in Deuteronomy. After they sinned God’s name peeled away – the guardianship signifier was removed, and therefore the Israelites perished.

Holocaust, Dick Ben Dor

The picture is courtesy of the painter, Dick Ben Dor, who wrote to me that it is 1.40 meters high. (The translation is mine)

It starts in the bottom of the paintings in the most black periods with rivers of Jewish blood which continue in all the periods while every layer is a period, but the blood current continues. In the top we see the state, and the pink upward indicates the hope to a better future and prosperity.

Copyrights: Dick Ben Dor , 2007

Robert Fisch

Photo is courtesy of Robert Fisch who sent me the following caption:

In my book "Light from the Yellow Star - A Lesson of Love from the Holocaust" I have painted the illustrations because I felt that, as one who was there, I could justifiably attempt to describe the desolation of those who were part of the Holocaust. The intent of the book was to make an imaginary walk of a reader through the Jewish cemetery near Budapest where my father is. In the cemetery Holocaust memorial walls are names of those whereabouts are known by location contain biblical quotations.
Page 34-5
"AFTER ALL THIS, SHOULD NOT THE WORLD TREMBLE AND
EVERY PERSON MOURN?"

In this painting I used barbed wire to illustrate ghettos, concentration camps, isolation. Even outside there is no hope. The shred of yellow star represents being branded and tattooed. It suggests loneliness, deprivation of dignity, and the residue of the survivors; tattooed persons become merely numbers in sequence, impersonal objects, no longer individuals. Red typifies the existence of horror, torture, suffering, bleeding. Black symbolizes hopelessness, despair, death. Even after death there is no peace. Each line, form, and color is a different shade of sorrow.

"EVEN THE STONES WEEP"
I have tried to give the illusion of walking with me in the cemetery to share how I felt and what I felt among the weeping gravestones -in reality and in my dreams. Let these words be the flowers for those who did not return.
Dr. Robert O Fisch
E-mail fisch001@umn.edu

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Minneapolis MN 55403
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