Judaism through comics (Jerusalem Post)
Comments(4) Avraham studied drawing and painting in art school, and has been passionate about reading and creating comic books since childhood. Yet something was missing from his life as a secular artist, and seven years ago he started to become more observant. For four years, Guy stopped creating art, which didn’t seem as important to him as learning Torah and performing mitzvot.
The 29-year-old started studying in Yeshivat Abirin Yaacov with Rav Avirevach in Tel Aviv seven years ago. He continues to learn every day, though the now married father of two is working once again as a full-time artist.
[…]
Hatzelem, a graphic novel, illustrates the life of a cubist man in a cubist world, and his quest for a circular form. The work is somewhat autobiographical, an allegory for the artist’s own search for spiritual truth. The idea for the circle within the square comes from Jewish sources, illustrated as geometric diagrams of a square within a circle, and another one of the converse, in the Babylonian Talmud (Succot). Hatzelem opens with a text by Rabbi Isaac Luria (Ha’arizal), discussing the square steps to the higher levels of this world and the primordial round steps that will return in the world to come. It closes with another dozen Jewish sources – midrashim, Etz Ha’hayim, Sfat Emet and the Zohar among them – all discussing the symbolism of the circle and square. But Barchil uses only a minimum of text, and only as a framing device. The viewer is shown the mystical narrative through the elegant black-and-white pictures alone.
category: Comics, Popular Culture, Rhetoric and Poetics
Hi. I wrote this article that was published in the Jerusalem Post on February 23, 2006. In the future, if you would like to quote directly from someone else’s work, please cite the writer’s name at least. A link to the full text would be nice for readers too. Thanks, Ella
Ella, Thanks for identifying yourself and I apologize for not including your name with my blurb. I misunderstood linking to the actual article with your byline as being enough for attribution. I assure you and anyone else reading this blog that I am not so careless with my scholarly work and I will not repeat such a mistake anymore here.
Bobby, it looks to me like you did follow the conventions of blogging, which includes a link to the article itself and the source.
However, to avoid confusion, when I blog on my own site, I also add the author’s name after the quotation.
Thanks, Dennis. I guess I took users for granted before now and need to lay a few more breadcrumbs down. Something to keep in mind as I work on Discourse Chronicle 2.0…