Art as Midrash

by Ofra A. Backenroth

Recently, during an introductory Bible course, a student at the Jewish Theological Seminary’s undergraduate List College was examining Rembrandt’s famous drawing of the binding of Isaac. The teacher wanted her students to understand the text using interpretive resources that differed from the usual tools. The student was struck by “the extreme power” of the image of Abraham caught off guard by the angel grasping his arm. As he takes his eyes away from Isaac to glare at the angel, the student sees that Abraham needs only the slightest restraint to stop from slaying his son.

In a class at the William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education, students created paper collages to tell the same biblical story from just one character’s point of view. To convey the impressions of the two servants who accompanied Isaac and Abraham, one student used yellowish footprints illustrating the servants’ lack of any personal characteristics. Isaac lags behind as a turquoise footprint, the color of heaven and innocence. Pointing toward the altar, Abraham is in the shape of a knife, in black, the color of darkness and blindness. At the end of the journey, a fragmented Isaac somehow returns home, Abraham is gaunt and frail, and the servants are wrinkled and distraught.

Another student depicts Isaac looking up at his father’s outstretched arm looming over him, dagger in hand. Isaac is saved by heavenly interaction – God or angel – represented by a blue strip of paper holding Abraham’s arm.

These students have read the text and discussed it in the traditional way, but their awareness has been enhanced and they have become more fully engaged as they recreate it visually. The art helps fill in the gaps in the biblical narrative.

For generations, verbal midrashim have used the laconic way the biblical stories are told to interpret and expound on the text. But as am hasefer, the people of the book have avoided visual representations and only in the past few years have the arts gained recognition as a legitimate tool for understanding sacred text.

Why use the arts to teach text? In the traditional Jewish model, students explore both what the text says and what it means to say. But their imaginations are engaged more fully, and they can better identify with the characters, when they create personal artistic interpretations. By interacting with the content, rather than just memorizing it, students make the Bible more vivid and relevant.

Barry Holtz, the Theodore and Florence Baumritter Professor of Jewish Education at JTS, posits in Back to the Sources that the “Torah remains unendingly alive because the readers of each subsequent generation saw it as such, taking the holiness of the Torah seriously, and adding their own contribution to the story.” Given the opportunity to interpret the text by creating their own artistic midrashim, students fulfill the most essential mitzvah of Judaism, becoming links in the long chain of those engaged in the interpretation and the teaching of Torah.