ceiling sleeper

The Cat

While studying Acting at NYU, I trained for a year in the Experimental Theatre Wing, which derives its teaching methods from Jerzy Grotowski. Grotowski was a Polish theatre director and a leading figure of theatrical avant garde of the 20th century. He devised a series of physical exercises to bring the actor into a state of psychological and emotional presence and open pathways to the actor’s inner creativity. These exercises elicit a union of mind, body and spirit so the actor can have truthful and transcendent experiences on stage. Personal experiences are brought to life in the public sphere, invoking catharsis for both performer and spectator. One physical exercise I undertook in class was tiger leaping and somersaulting over my teacher. Another involved moving body parts in isolation to create a "psychophysical" harmony resulting in an emotional, expressive release. Learning the yoga-inspired Cat warm up felt like a revelation. I love it and continue to practice it to this day:

Lie on stomach. Head to the side. Arms to the side. Breathe deeply in out. Turn head to opposite side. Just waking up. Move hands up, palms on the ground next to chest. Lift torso. Sway torso. Open mouth. Release sound. Extend hips to the ceiling. Bend one leg, then the other. Rise up to toes. Lift left leg, open hip. Kick. Feel muscles lengthen off the bone. Full body yawn. Arms strong. Lower leg. Repeat with right. Circle body: hips down, sideways and back up. Undulate. Hiss. Roar. Yelp. Breathe. Kick. Circle. Turn head. Deeper. Fuller. Pull. Stretch. Burn. Animal. Roar. Beast. Allow. Expand. Transform.

The Hasidic community has fascinated me since I moved to New York two years ago. While my liberal, democratic and feminine sensibilities abhor the many ethically problematic aspects of this insular and patriarchal culture, I cannot help but be mesmerized by its visual omnipresence on certain (well delineated) blocks of Brooklyn.

My personal experience with the “Jewish body” is one of circumvention if not fear. Whether because of the desire to assimilate, the allure of fashion or the apprehension of anti-Semitism, the idea of physically expressing my belonging to the “chosen people” seemed extraneous if no absurd while growing up in Switzerland.

While I am far from even considering trading my jeans and heels for “modest” skirts, the sheer mass of “Jewish bodies” on Lee or Kingston Ave steers in me a form of pride and perhaps nostalgia for a form of Judaism that would be completely extinct if it weren’t for these Satmar and Lubavitch enclaves.

In their multiplicity, the beards, the black coats, the hats, the long dresses and scarves become akin to masks or costumes, rendering the individual intangible. It is the hidden mannerism and idiosyncrasies of human nature/bodies that I sought to excavate in a recent series of drawings:

Bashoy (Marriott Matchmaking), 2009 (Digitally displayed watercolors, 1:15 min. loop)

The Bashoy is the first stage of the intricate process of marriage in the Hassid community. It often marks the first time that a young couple lays eyes on each other; it is also often the first time that either of them has been alone with someone of the opposite sex who isn’t a member of their immediate family.

This series of drawings was inspired by a couple whose “first date” I witnessed at the Brooklyn Marriott. While the incongruity of the situation was unsettling, I could not help but be touched by the awkward silences, nervous tics and polite smiles that offered a human glance at a community usually so remote and mysterious to the outsider.

vista

Body Post #2

Teaching the Body in Times of War
Yair Lipshitz

We were studying about the body as a vehicle and obstacle for religious experience when the war in Gaza began. Teaching in times of war always seems to me like a weak political action – and, at the same time, one which must not be avoided. We decided to put a halt to our regular syllabus, and discuss together the religious language which persists in surrounding the modern discourse about the body at war. Not only through terms such as "sacrifice" – but also by the process of dedicating an individual, private body into a "larger" cause, a cause which claims to give the body a new kind of significance and meaning.

This tension between the "private" and "public" dimensions of the body in times of war was at the center of our studies. Deuteronomy 20:1-9 places this tension at the center of the liminal moment of going-to-war. During a speech given by the officers to the soldiers, a section is included which might come as a surprise to contemporary Israeli readers: “Who among you has built a new house and not dedicated it? He may go home, lest he die in battle and someone else dedicate it. Or who among you has planted a vineyard and not benefited from it? He may go home, lest he die in battle and someone else benefit from it. Or who among you has become engaged to a woman but has not married her? He may go home, lest he dies in battle and someone else marries her … Who among you is afraid and fainthearted? He may go home so that he will not make his fellow soldier’s heart as fearful as his own.”

We were wondering together what the limits of the private body are in times of war, according to this text. Is this a text which listens with sensitivity to this private body – to what it has to lose, to its fears and hopes? Or is this a text which wishes to leave behind all that is private, and all those who are still attached to it, in order to create a "pure" public body that can do the job: fight, kill and be killed? Indeed, the Mishnah at Tractate Sotah 8:5 portrays a picture in which after this speech – the bodies which remain in the battlefield turn entirely public and "at the rear of the people, they station guards in front of them and others behind them, with iron axes in their hands, and should anyone wish to flee, they have permission to smite his thighs."

That Beit-Midrash session was concluded by reading excerpts from Aeschylus's Agamemnon and Euripides's Iphigenia in Aulis. Tracing the various dramatizations of Iphigenia's sacrifice – a sacrifice ordered by the goddess Artemis as a price to be paid by the army before they are to kill the children of Troy (no-one can have pretenses to kill others without paying the most dear of prices) – I have noticed that in Euripides's theatre, Iphigenia is turning her own body into some kind of performance. At first, she performs a private body – consciously playing the part of her father's little daughter, in order to arise mercy in him and prevent her being sacrificed. Later on, she will drastically change her mind (Euripides covers this moment with layers of irony and ambivalence) and agree to die for Greece and thus turn her own body into a public vehicle for national glory. In both cases, however, the body is performance: the "private" body is no less a deliberate theatrical performance than the "public" one. Indeed, in Euripides's tragedy, it seems that the only way to politically resist the public claim over the body – is to publicly perform it as private. And this strategy, tragically, fails as well.

I left the Beit-Midrash that evening with a heavy heart – still wondering how does one teach the body in times of war? And why?

* * *

Yair Lipshitz holds a Masters Degree in Drama from Tel Aviv University. His doctoral work focuses on the body as a site for commentary on Jewish culture in the theater and in drama. He is a junior fellow at the Hartman Institute. His book, "The Holy Tongue, the comedy version – and the rest of the inter-textual dramas on the Jewish stage in the Renaissance" is due to be published shortly. His debut play, "A Time of Wellbeing" has been included in the anthology "New Voices in Israeli Drama" (2006).

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The Theatrical Body: A Jewish Drama
Basmat Hazan Arnoff

Rabbi Zusya of Hanipoli uttered right before death, “In the world to come they won’t ask me, 'Why weren’t you Moses our Prophet' Rather they will ask me, 'Why weren’t you Zusya'"

This short and often quoted Chasidic story describes a reality which is the opposite of theatrical reality. And in a way, it is a contrast that exemplifies the contradiction between Judaism and theater. Scholar and director Michal Govrin describes the Jewish ritual in this way:

[N]on-permanence is perhaps the most faithful expression of Jewish sacred theatre. This theatre is not performed before an audience, but before the Divine Spectator, who is always before the Jew. Its goal is not to reconstruct the many acts of mythological drama, not to portray convincingly a character from the past, but to work diligently as individual and group in this very present moment through the ritual, in order to sustain the intimate, real relation between the individual, the community and the Creator.

We can talk about an audience (God) and an actor (the Jew), but the very essence of the ritual, the "performed" act, is almost “anti-theater." But theater is not only the art of imitation or mimicry. Something real happens in every performance. The actor “plays a part,” and at the same time embodies with his or her own real and actual body the character that he or she is playing.

As a theater teacher in a modern Orthodox high school for girls in Jerusalem some years ago, I faced a problem that has branded much of my work as a theater director that followed. As part of the girls' studies in the 12th grade, it was required to put on a production. As their teacher and as well as a person who believed deeply in the power of theater, my challenge was to find plays that would be both meaningful creatively and appropriate within the norms of the community. We had worked on adaptations of significant stories like S. Y. Agnon’s A Simple Story, Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav’s The Seven Beggars, and Yair Lipshitz’s adaptation of The Book of Esther, entitled Not of the King Alone. Each one of these works provided the necessary elements for crafting a great script, but each also posed a challenge: they included male parts, and the cast consisted only of young women.

Leaning on historic theatrical traditions of single gender casts I started to investigate options for dramatic reversal. My most favorite form of this reversal has always been drag. The point of departure of this artistic form is its exaggerated theatricality. It does not at all pretend it is reality, perhaps because its entire existence is a charade. The essence of drag is the grotesque depiction of the body. The drama happens as it is – a gap between the gender and body of the actor and the gender of the character. Witnessing this combination is like holding your breath while watching the tight rope walker in the circus: Will he make it or not?

One of the seminal plays in the history of Jewish theater (and my personal favorite) is The Dybbuk (Yid. דער דיבוק אדער צווישן צוויי וועלטן). A play completed in 1914 by S. Ansky, it relates the story of a young bride, Leah, who is possessed on the eve of her wedding by a dybbuk – a malicious occupying spirit believed to be the dislocated soul of a dead person. Set in Eastern Europe in the end of the 19th century, Ansky's story revolves around a pair of ill-fated lovers – penniless Chanan, a devout student of Jewish mysticism and Leah, the young woman he adores and is destined to marry. When Leah's greedy father breaks the marriage contract to marry Leah off to a richer man, Chanan dies instantly; his soul, however, lives on as a Dybbuk, entering Leah's body in order to gain possession of her lover for all eternity. After various nefarious deeds come to be revealed, the rabbi, aided by other rabbinical judges, finally succeeds in exorcising the Dybbuk, using incantations and rituals followed by blasts of a shofar. Meanwhile, Leah must confront a choice between marriage to a man for whom she feels nothing or an unworldly union with her dead lover's spirit.

Playwright and scholar Yair Lifshitz writes of this work in an article in Hebrew entitled “The Dybbuk: The Jewish Body in the Entanglement" that
with no doubt the body in The Dybbuk is indeed a site, a location in the simplest sense – a place, a space which is being penetrated into. Chanan’s spirit relates to Leah’s body as its ‘habitation’…There is not only the tension between a pairing, a shiduch, made in advance and the active way in which one can abolish it but also a tension between body and soul.

The stage performance of The Dybbuk tells the story of the male and female grafted together into one body, which makes a very complex syntax of physical gestures – a feminine body being controlled from the inside by the spirit of her male lover, the drama not only the external drama of the play, but the physical drama of the body.

In my current work as a director, Binding, a dance theater piece in collaboration with Jesse Zaritt, one of the sections of the performance deals with the ritual of sotah, the testing of an adulteress woman. In this ritual a woman suspected of committing adultery is brought to the Temple and is made to drink bitter water in which the name of the divine is dissolved. After she drinks – a grand drama of the body begins: if she is "guilty" she experiences a brutal change of her body. Some say that this leads to death. If she is innocent she conceives seed. What a wild drama of the Jewish body! In Binding, a pairing between a woman and the name (or spirit) of God is performed by a male dancer, with a masked face, a naked upper body, and an ancient ritual earns a whole new meaning.

Facing the challenge of working in single gender casts years ago created for me an opportunity to examine and challenge the traditional templates in which I saw male and female and to create alternatives that might, through a narrow reality, create a wider view of the "Jewish" body. Combinations of male and female in the same entity allows the simple and extreme drama of the body itself to open up the mind in a new, surprising, and often conflicting ways.

* * *
Basmat Hazan Arnoff is a writer and theater director and a member of the faculty of LABA: The National Laboratory for New Jewish Culture at the 14th Street Y. She has served on the faculty of Skirball, Brandeis Collegiate Institute, Kolot, and Elul, the last two based in Israel. She is the author of Mayyim Hafoochim, a novel, and works as a theater director. Her play, LeShem Yichud, won the award for best ensemble at the Akko Theater Festival. She recently adapted David Grossman's See: Under Love for the stage in Tel Aviv and New York.

'"Änatomy of a Drawing"'

Sharpened my pencils, graphite in hand, a three-minute pose. She's precariously positioned, the clock is ticking. At the top of the body, my pencil is racing, tracing the contours - head, hair - remember, look side to side - shoulders, near - far, torso, check the arms, in, out, indicate where, get back there later, right leg, bended knee, damn, left leg is foreshortened. Quick, make your mark, get the feet in. Okay, 30 seconds left - shade the left side, rub it in. Finished.

Hello from Jesse Zaritt,

I am looking forward to being a part of this online community.

Here is a link to an excerpt of MORIAH, a dance solo created in collaboration with Basmat Hazan, Manju Shandler, David Tirosh, and Amnon Wolman.

 http://vimeo.com/5101194

Healer, Heal Thyself

When I think about being disengaged from one’s body and one’s life being consumed by work with little enjoyment, my study and work as a massage therapist springs to mind, as it reverses both these ideas. Massage therapy is about engaging with another’s body to promote healing; I derive deep enjoyment from this highly rewarding work. I believe that an elevated, or holy, connection between two individuals is at its core. Being that work is a major part of our lives, it is important to seek out the work that is most meaningful to us, that enriches our lives and the lives of others. "To love life through labor is to be intimate with life's inmost secret."-Kahlil Gibran.

Below is an excerpt from a piece I wrote about my experience with massage therapy.

***

At age twenty-three, I enrolled in the School of Healing Arts for massage, where I was immersed in the world of holistic therapies. I learned about what it means to heal the whole person, mind, body and spirit, as opposed to standard medicine, which compartmentalizes the body and the mind, often treating just diseases and not whole people.
Compassionate teachers introduced me to touch as medicine. I learned to quiet my mind by sitting still with my eyes open and listening for the farthest sound. I learned to give selflessly, lengthening muscles and creating space between tissues. An ounce of prevention is worth an infinite amount of cure. Deep breaths massage us from the inside.

The first spa I worked in was called SK Sanctuary, named for its owner, Stephen Krant. The name “sanctuary” couldn’t have been more apt; the place was beautiful with its chandeliers, salmon colored walls, roses, silver-framed Victorian paintings.
My favorite thing about SK Sanctuary was its monthly breast cancer night. The spa closed to the public, open only for breast cancer patients and survivors. They provided two free half hour services and a dynamic speaker on topics like therapeutic dance, singing, yoga for cancer patients, support groups, food, new cancer study developments. There were sometimes song or dance performances. These women’s bodies had been diseased, poked, prodded, radiated, chemotherapied, surgeried; they were in deep need of therapeutic touch.

One particular night, the topic was the therapeutic value of music making. The speakers passed out percussive instruments to all the staff and spa-robed attendees. There were bongos, xylophones, morrocas, drums of varying shapes and sizes. The women in charge led us in beating the instruments and raising our voices in unison. I joined the breast cancer survivors in singing, screaming, pounding. We hollered and laughed.
When it was over, I found my client by way of her nametag.
“Hi, I’m Amanda.” I smiled and shook her hand. She appeared to be in her mid-thirties, short dirty blonde hair, scraggily, growing back after chemo. Her handshake was both solid and soft.
“Lucy, “she said.
I walked her back to the dimly lit massage room, replete with carpeted floor and three-bulb chandelier. I had lit one tea candle and placed it in a purple glass, which sat comfortably on the marble counter next to the sink. Soft Sanskrit chants and the sound of bells echoed off the walls.
“How are you doing tonight, Lucy?”
“Oh great,” she said, “It’s so wonderful that you do this.”
“I’m glad you were able to make it! When was the last time you had a massage?”
She thought for a second, “Probably about a year ago.”
“Wow, well it’s time then. Are there any particular places causing you discomfort today?”
“Ughh, my whole body aches! I had a double mastectomy just a month ago, so I think I will need a pillow under my chest in order to lay flat. My neck and shoulders are especially tight. Really anything you could do would be welcome.” She said all this, not as a complaint, but in the way that we report mundane grievances to friends like, “Oh, the line at the bank was so long,” or “Can you believe it, Ben and Jerry’s was out of my favorite ice cream.”
She smiled at me. I smiled back.
“All right, well, I am going to focus on your neck, back and shoulders, then flip you over and we’ll do some neck work, then scalp and face. Sound good?”
“Oh yes, please, anything.”
“Well place your robe on that hook. Then go face down underneath the sheet and I’ll be right back.”
When I returned she said, “The table is so warm, I feel better already.” Standing at Lucy’s side, I placed my hands gently on her back over the sheet, one at the bottom of the lumbar spine, one at the top of the thoracic. While my palms rested there and warmed these spots, I asked her to take two deep full breaths, to send the breath to every cell of her body, helping her to become fully present in the room. Her back rose and fell under my hands. I breathed with her.
After three deep breaths, I peeled off my hands and walked to stand behind the top of her head. I pressed her shoulders gently away from her neck, then, with the heel of my hand began a series of focused compressions into the muscles from the shoulders down to the sacrum on either side of the spine. I pressed the sacrum gently away, creating length through her vertebrae.
I pulled the sheet down to her waist and tucked it under her hipbones, exposing her back. Coated my hands in the heated massage oil. Rubbed my palms together fast to create heat. Ran my hands from her shoulders to her waist, up the sides of her body back up her neck. I pulled with my fingertips at the occipital ridge, the crook where the neck meets the skull, creating length. Then I clasped my hands into fists around her hair and pulled lightly at the scalp. I repeated these warm up strokes four times, prepping the skin and muscles for deeper work.
Firmer pressure. Forearm strokes. Leaning into her muscles.
“Is this pressure okay?” I asked.
“Yes, thank you.”
Hooking the upper trapezius with my forearms and sustaining the pressure all down the back, slow and deep, I felt the muscles begin to quiver and release. She breathed. I breathed.
The muscles along her spine (erector spinae) were taut at first. I placed my left thumb over my right and sank into the muscle at the top of the back, allowing the muscle to accept me. Not forcing my way. Then it began to loosen, pulling me along its river down to the bottom of her back.
I placed a rolled up towel under the front of her shoulder so the scapula was elevated. Ironing the underside with my forearm, I reached my thumbs beneath the blade and moved slowly up and down, feeling the muscles snap, shift, pop beneath. Her inhalations and exhalations had become much more full as she fell deeper into relaxation. Reprieve.

Welcome

Shalom Alma / LABA artists,

I want to welcome all of us to this shared space floating somewhere in between New York City and Tel Aviv, and wish us a meaningful exploration of the theme of the Body through Jewish Text and contemporary art.

As the LABA artists upload profiles I am adding a link with bios and images from the recent LABA festival

We invite you to begin the conversation with your thoughts, comments, questions, and inspirations on materials posted by the leaders of our two respective institutions, Ruth Calderon and Stephen Hazan Arnoff. New faculty texts and materials will be posted each week.

Enjoy!

Anat Litwin
Associate Director,
LABA: The National Laboratory for New Jewish Culture at the 14th Street Y

Body Post #1

view from the balcony, or America.

Ruth Calderon

In the 1960s, at Ben Gurion Airport, in a special balcony for those sending off travelers, we would wave goodbye to my father. The waiting room was a place neither here nor there. It had the feeling of excitement that comes with traveling abroad. After two years of living in America, I feel as if I am in that balcony again — not quite here nor there. My perspective as an Israeli living abroad temporarily places me in the air, somewhat outside, out of place. I know that my impressions are arbitrary and location related; like the blind man feeling the elephant — many things would seem different if I lived in a small Midwestern town, or on the West Coast or even in a different New Jersey suburb. Impressions will also seem different after I return home and resume my familiar routines.

And yet, the time spent in this “in-between zone” is a blessing. The past two years have given me a new understanding and appreciation of what Israelis take for granted. The experiences have shown me how complex Jewish American identity is and stirred in me a desire to engage new behaviors and ideas.

Here, then, are the ABC’s of Jewish America as they appear from my waiting room:

PHYSICALITY – When I come back to America after a visit to Israel and put away my clothes in the closet, I have the feeling that it is not just my lighter-weight clothing and casuals that I am putting away – but also my body. Perhaps it is due to the weather which plays much less of a role here. People walk around here as if in a disembodied state. – no slaps on the back, no hand-touching or hugging. Even in the gym, everybody works on their bodies as they would work on maintaining a piece of equipment. After the workout, they shower and go back to their Protestant show. Not sensual or sexy – not personal. Bare skin is less exposed here – you see fewer hands and feet. Almost no one walks barefoot. Mothers hug their children less often in the street or on the train. Toddlers are wrapped up in their strollers or carriers. Teachers also avoid touching children – perhaps out of fear of lawsuits. Etiquette requires distance between people. Only construction workers dare to compliment a woman on her appearance or whistle at her and women rarely allow themselves to appreciate it.

WORK – The real religion of the continent. “Sweet is the sleep of the laborer, whether he eats little or much”. Workers live in order to work. When you ask how someone is doing, he will answer first concerning his work. The children do work at school, complete projects, develop their skills and bring home the fruit of their efforts and their report cards. At the end of kindergarten, there is graduation. The youngsters work hard in class and then spend hours on homework. They push themselves to get into a good college. This is their work. The parent leave for work while it is still dark and return home after dark. Until 5:00 no one moves; they eat at their desks out of plastic containers. At 5:00 the secretaries leave and the executives compete with each other as to who will stay the latest. The offices are ugly. Dolls and balloons attempt to give the gray plastic cubicles a personal touch of home. We aren’t here to enjoy ourselves; we are here to work.

Even keeping their bodies in shape is work. The gym is an obligatory part of the American worker’s schedule. Parenting is also work, and sometimes even marriage and sex life.



Ruth Calderon
Founder and Executive Director, Alma Hebrew College


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There Goes the Neighborhood
Stephen Hazan Arnoff

The tabernacle is equal to the entire world; [and it is] also equal to the creation of a human being which is itself a smaller version of the world. What does this mean? When the Holy One Blessed Be God created His world, God created it just like a woman creates her baby — starting from the belly button and everything grows from here and there on four sides; so too did the Holy One Blessed Be God create the world from the foundation stone of the Temple first, and from this emerged the world. And why is it called the foundation stone? Because from it the Holy One began to create His world.

-Midrash Tanhuma, 9th century

As described in the Bible, the mishkan, or tabernacle, is akin to a theater-in-the-round, exposed on all sides to the community that lives amongst it. Part of the resonance and complexity of the tabernacle that Tanhuma teases out is that the root of the Hebrew word for tabernacle, mishkan, shares its meaning not only with the word for God’s presence — shekhina — but also with that of the word for neighbor — shakhen. Quite literally, three key semantic elements of the Hebrew root s-kh-n enliven the complicated prototype for Jewish community and holiness grounding the Israelites in the desert.

Consider the mishkan as the world’s first Jewish Community Center, a JCC or matnas: Jewish by virtue of a covenant expressed in the hovering shekhina, God’s presence; Community in the tabernacle’s being fully exposed and open to every engaged shakhen, or neighbor, in the Israelite camp; and Center since the tabernacle serves as a hub — whether the community is stationary or in transit — for all life occurring around it.

So here is my question: what combination -- if any! -- of Tel Aviv and New York and Art and Text can or should bring our communities towards the rich meanings of being shakhenim or neighbors who are central, open, and even holy to each other?

Stephen Hazan Arnoff
Executive Director, 14th Street Y of The Educational Alliance
Founding Director, LABA: The National Laboratory for New Jewish Culture

מעבודותיה של מיקה אורסתיו The works of Mika Orstav

אורז Rice

פורצלן
Porcelain