Rachmana רַחֲמָנָא / iscah waldman
Background
The Babylonian Talmud, Niddah 30B
And a fetus is
taught the entire
Torah while in the
Womb…
And once the fetus
emerges into the
airspace of the world,
an angel comes and
slaps it on its mouth, causing it to forget
the entire Torah
We then spend the rest of our lives trying to regain what we lost...
But not all Torah is given and received in the same way… and part of our learning includes the questions that we feel compelled to add, to learn our Torah
If the womb is the utopian ideal, what is the role of women in all of this?
Why this violent image?
Why does “Sin couch” before we have had a chance to live life at all?
This project focuses on Torah Study/
Re-Discovering of Torah throughout our lives.
I am working on papercuts which are made of images based on texts about Torah and the acquisition of knowledge. These texts are only visible when one interacts with these images using a special light.
Throughout this process, I am interested in Torah, but also the role of the RECHEM (womb) in the acquisition of RACHMANA (Torah/God).
Each stacked papercut is an image which represents a different traditional text which talks about knowledge.
And a candle is lit for it above its head, and it gazes from one end of the world to the other, as it is stated: “When His lamp shined above my head, and by His light I walked through darkness” (Job 29:3). And do not wonder as a person can sleep here, and see a dream in Spain [beAspamya].
BT Shabbat 146a
the snake came upon Eve, i.e., when it seduced her to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, it infected her with moral contamination, and this contamination remained in all human beings. When the Jewish people stood at Mount Sinai, their contamination ceased,
This project was “born” from “birth” - I began thinking about what it means for the rabbis not only to take women out of the equation, but what does it mean for us to take back Torah every day? After passively receiving Torah in utero, how do we actively take it back, reclaiming ourselves in the process?
The Face is held by the viewer - with a light that shines through the philtrum: the place where the angel hits us at birth, enabling the forgetting of all of our learning and now, the opportunity to re-learn all of it again throughout our lives.
Where would you shine a light to Reveal Torah, if you could?
Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 88a
The Talmud gives one description of the moment of Revelation:
Just as a hammer breaks a stone into several fragments, so too, each and every utterance that emerged from the mouth of the Holy One, Blessed be He, divided into seventy languages.
What image would you create that might respond to this text?