Miriam Itzkowitz (Year 10)

J-STEAM at Emanuel School: Mystic Kabbalistic Art

Have you ever thought about the relation between letters, numbers, colours, shapes, music, outer space and the days of the week? Chances are, probably not.

Kabbalah is a form of meditative, mystic Judaism, with an emphasis on art and music. Last Tuesday, a group of students had the pleasure of participating in a Kabbalah workshop, run by Kabbalist, David Friedman.

David gave us an incredibly mind-boggling explanation of Kabbalah, first relating the three primary colours (red, blue and yellow), to the three “primary” Hebrew letters (מ & ש ,א), which were connected to the three primary shapes (circle, triangle and square). While this probably doesn’t make much sense here in writing, visually it’s completely fascinating!

As someone who is also very much interested in philosophy, Kabbalah also relates to those concepts in our perceptions of the world and honestly makes you question a lot of what you know.

We were able to create our own interpretive art work, based on what we’d learnt that day about colour, shapes, letters and their relationship to everything. One of the things that I found really cool is that my three Hebrew initials are the three primary Hebrew letters in the order of the numbers 3, 2, 1 in the Kabbalistic understanding. (מרים שמחה איצקוויץ)   

While I don’t think I’ll necessarily practise Kabbalah as part of my religion, I definitely think that it’s something worthwhile to learn a bit about and of which to have a basic understanding.

We are very grateful to JNF and Neshama Life for generously offering for David Friedman to present at Emanuel School and workshop with several of our High School classes.

Hannah Lax – Year 9

As someone who isn’t very artistic and has difficulty putting artworks together I found myself paying a lot of attention to David’s artworks and the explanations as to why they are how they are. David Friedman is a man from Tzefat in Israel who makes artworks based around Kabbalah and its teachings. The way that he extracts themes from Kabbalistic stories and messages and puts them into artworks intertwined with fractals, cells and gematria astounds me, and the way that he explained it to us was captivating and held our attention for the duration of the class. He mixed Kabbalistic views and teachings with art in the most beautiful way, and I uncovered a new appreciation for religious art through this experience.