Dates in Front of Palm Tree, watercolor on paper, 2011
Tuesday night and Wednesday this week is the Jewish holiday of Tu B’Shvat, the fifteenth of the month of Shvat. I like to refer to the day as a birthday party for the trees. One might think of Tu BeShevat as a Jewish Arbor Day. As it a much bigger deal in Israel than outside of Israel, I asked some of my blogger friends in Israel to tell a bit about the holiday. Here are the responses:
Hannah of A Mother in Israel wrote in an email two weeks ago: “It’s pouring here. Tu Beshevat is often wet and muddy, and the worst time of the year for planting trees!” She suggested I share this post she wrote for Green Prophet about this New Year for Trees. “The rabbis wanted to set a specific date during the agricultural season to begin counting the age of the tree. They chose one in the middle of the rainy season, when no one was likely to be planting. That way it would be easier to know whether the fruit, which almost always buds after Tu B’shvat, belonged to this year or to the previous one.” But the modern version does indeed include tree planting.
Julie of Israel Inspirations Art sent me a photo from her son’s nursery school Tu B’Shevat program. This is a cropped detail of one her son’s craft projects:
Mrs. S. of Our Shiputzim added (edited a bit on my part, apologies to Mrs. S. if I edited too much):
“According to the Talmud, it marks the beginning of the new agricultural year – which has halachic and practical significance for those of us who are fortunate to have fruit trees in our backyards – and in many schools, it marks the beginning of the spring semester.
Tu B’Shvat is also the day when kids across the country head outdoors and plant trees, and it’s the day when many families celebrate lovely Tu B’Shvat Seders.
But mainly, Tu B’Shvat is a time to appreciate Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel) and its myriad incredible blessings. Tu B’Shvat is a wonderful opportunity to stop and recognize all the amazing wonders which surround us here in Israel. “
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And this one is for the search engines: how many different ways can one spell Tu B’Shvat • Tu Beshevat • Tu Be Shevat • Tu B’Shevat •Too Be Shevat • Tu B’Shevat • Tu BiShevat • Tu BiShvat • Tu BShvat • Too Bi Shevat • Too B’Shvat
Interpretation of Jerusalem with figures and pomegranate, painting by Anna Abramzon
I “met” the artist Anna Abramzon when she followed me on Twitter recently. I took one look at her Twitter background (good reason to spend time on one’s Twitter background, especially if you are in a design/graphic/visual profession), and I thought, oh, this is lovely line work and color! So I clicked on her website, enjoyed her portfolio, and here she is, agreeing to an interview on my blog.
1) When did you realize you wanted to be an artist?
I don’t really remember a time before wanting to be an artist, it was always just kind of a given. My earliest childhood memories are of turning on my parents’ record player (that’s what we had in the Soviet Union in the 80’s!) and spending every morning listening to records and drawing for hours before the rest of the family woke up. Throughout my childhood my parents really encouraged and fostered my love for art. They saw that this was definitely my calling, so they sent me to classes, found me private tutors and exposed me to amazing artists from a young age. It was a natural progression from that to where I am now. When I was graduating high school I didn’t even apply to regular universities, only art schools, there was no doubt in my mind.
2) How have you used social media (Facebook, blog, Twitter) to promote your art?
I love social media! It has really changed my day to day life in an amazing way. I am totally fascinated by the new dialogues and relationships that social media opens and I am constantly discovering new sources of inspiration online. There are all these new channels open to artists now, it’s such an exciting time. I post new art on my facebook page (facebook.com/AnnaAbramzonStudio) and I share things on twitter (@AAartStudio) and my website (www.AnnaAbramzon.com) all the time. I also occasionally have free art giveaways and special discounts for my FB fans and Twitter followers.
3) When did you start doing Jewish art? Ketubot?
I was always an artist and a very proud, active Jew, but I had a hard time merging the two identities. As an artist I longed to paint about my passions, including my love for Israel and my Jewish identity, but painting scenes of Tel Aviv or Jews praying at the kotel just didn’t excite me. I struggled a lot with this in art school. While I wanted my art to speak honestly about who I am, I was also wary of becoming cliché or cheesy. After college I moved to Israel where I lived for four years. In Israel I found myself drenched in “Jewishness” every single day. In Israel being a Jew is so easy and inherent that you no longer really have to think about it. Ironically it was this immersion which finally allowed me to gain enough distance and perspective to be able to paint about being Jewish while staying away from overplayed, obvious imagery. It was also there in Israel that I met and married my husband. We had one of those uber intense, passionate love stories that would have made cynical art student Anna gag a few years prior. Naturally I wanted to channel all these new found lovey dovey romantic feelings into art as well. That’s how I got the idea to paint our ketubah, our wedding invitation and pretty much everything else that could possibly be painted for a wedding. After our wedding, other people started asking me to create ketubot for them. I found that people were coming to me specifically because I was not a typical ketubah artist. My work always was and remains quite figurative, which is not what people usually expect from Judaica and I think that was the appeal… that I came from a different background with a different vision, which allows me to create a contemporary, modern twist while maintaining the beauty, colors and and symbolism of traditional of Judaica. Be sure to visit Anna’s new site of ketubot.
4) What is your favorite part of being an artist?
I am never bored.
5) Where do you look for inspiration?
I have so many artists who inspire me! Some of my favorites are: Egon Schiele, Lucian Freud, Francesco Clemente, Goya, and Noshitomo Nara and I am often inspired by my favorite authors as well, I am a huge book nerd.
6) What are the hard parts of being an artist?
It never stops… it’s a job you can’t leave at the studio. Sometimes I’ll be having coffee with a girlfriend and I’ll think “Oh man, if I could just focus on this moment and stop drawing her in my head!!!!”
7) Can you talk a little about Valley of the Ghosts – it seems to be a comic strip about life in the Ukraine for a Jew. Is this autobiographical?
Valley of the Ghosts is a work in progress… it’s a very long term project that I have been coming back to for a few years now. It’s a graphic novel about a group of new immigrants in Israel. It’s a compilation of stories based on actual people I knew, and it is partly autobiographical as well. The title “Valley of the Ghosts” is a translation of “Emek Refaim” in Hebrew, which is the name of the street I lived on in Jerusalem.
8) You do a variety of artwork, from comics to caricatures to paintings – what is your favorite medium or style?
That’s a hard question… it would definitely be between figure/portrait painting in watercolor and comics. They are just so different… figure paintings and portraits allow me to express emotions really organically, while comics allow me to articulate thoughts in a much more tangent way. It’s really two different languages but there is quite a bit of overlap as well, because it’s two parallel ways of creating a narrative… I think I need to keep mixing things up and developing all my different styles in order to grow as an artist.
Thank you so much, Anna, for this wonderful interview.
If you liked this interview, perhaps you will enjoy one of these related posts:
lighting a candle at Dunkin Donuts for Chanukah, a Rutgers Hillel event
On Tuesday night, the first night of Chanukah, the daughter, her friend and I wandered over to our local Highland Park Dunkin’ Donuts for a Rutgers Hillel candle lighting. We just went because it was a convenient time while we were waiting for the rest of the family to come home. The guitar playing and singing were quite nice, and thank you to Rabbi Esther Reed of Rutgers Hillel for the role she played in organizing the event. It was a fun way to start Chanukah.
The game of dreidel (yiddish – the Hebrew is sivivon) is associated with Chanukah because when the Assyrian Greeks came to see if the Jews were studying Torah, a practice which was banned, the Jews would take out the spinning top and play that game instead. The four Hebrew letters on the dreidel are Nun, Gimel, Heh and Shin – short for Nes Gadol Hayah Sham (a great miracle happened there). In Israel the dreidel has a Peh instead of the Shin, for Nes Gadol Hayah Po (a great miracle happened here).
There is a game with the dreidel that involves pennies and taking the pot of pennies if you get a gimel, giving it in if you get a shin, half the pot for heh, but it is all luck. My kids just spin them and spin them and spin them. What do you do with your dreidels?
I did the above drawing with black marker, then I colored it in with Photoshop. I promised my daughter she could color in the original with colored pencil. If she does, I will post that version as well.
Chanukah starts next week, and I wonder if I will have the energy to take new photos. I’ve taken so many Chanukah photos already. Any suggestions on a new twist? Which Chanukah photo is your favorite?
[nggallery id=1 images=20]
This gallery is built with the NextGen gallery plugin for WordPress – I’ve been using this for a client, so I thought it would be fun to install the plugin on my own blog and show off some photos. It might make doing JPiX (Jewish Photo Blogger’s Carnival) a lot easier, too. Hm.
Just discovered one tiny technical problem with the NextGen Gallery – if I want to pin a photo (I just joined Pinterest), I have to put one directly into the post and not only use the gallery. So here’s one:
Update on July 2013: Having problems with the new version of NextGen Gallery. May go back to Reverted to the old version. Oh, well, it was nice while it lasted.
Update on August 9, 2013: updated to NextGen Gallery 2.0.7 – so far, it works.
Update in December 2014: Version 2.0.66.33 – still works.
Welcome to JPiX – the Jewish Photo Blogger’s Blog Carnival, Fall 2011 edition. Thanks to everyone who participated. We have a village in France, Rosh Hashana challah, Kfar Adumim, an olive oil factory, havdalah, a Jewish wedding, a lion in Jerusalem and more.
Left to right: Ilana-Davita, G6 and Wing Chun Jew (aka Jacob da Jew):
Batya:
Chosid’s Blog (Leah):
Real Jerusalem Streets (Sharon):
Cosmic X:
Mrs. S:
Leora:
I hope you will take the time to visit the photographers’ blogs and leave comments. The next JPiX will be in the spring. If you want to participate, please submit an entry here. If you are brave enough to volunteer to host, please contact me, and we can discuss the details.
Last week I saw this brown mourning dove wander about in my yard.
Soon after he noticed that I was following him (her?) around with my camera, he settled on this high phone wire in the back of my yard.
Oh, by the way, did you know that Noah sent out a dove: “And he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground.” But before the dove, he sent out a raven. I didn’t have any ravens showing up in my back yard.
My neighbor’s burning bush is quite spectacular – bright red at this time of year. Ah, another Biblical reference, except the burning bush doesn’t show up in the weekly Torah reading until winter time.
Here’s the how the dry oak leaf hydrangea flower looks – this photo was taken the same day as the red hydrangea leaf photos.
Note that this post is not called The Diamond in the Window (book by Jane Langton). It’s a post about Noah, who was considered a righteous man in his generation.
So here’s the question: was Noah a righteous individual who might have not been so great in a different generation or was a shining light unto all the generations? And why is he looking at this diamond?
Or maybe he’s really looking out the window:
For the answer to these and other tantalizing questions, you will have to visit my friend’s Harry’s post Noach – Is righteousness relative?
The illustrations of Noah with diamond and window were executed by me (with some critical helpful feedback from my daughter) with pen, ink, and then a lot of playing in Photoshop. The aim was whimsical and playful.
Etrog, watercolor on paper by Leora Wenger, October 2011
What is beauty? Is it the Doryphorus, as the Greeks believed, the young man with the slender, slightly bent posture? According to Judaism, strangely enough, the elderly are considered beautiful, as it says in Kedoshim 19:32 –
“Rise in the presence of the aged and honor the face of the old man”
מִפְּנֵי שֵׂיבָה תָּקוּם, וְהָדַרְתָּ פְּנֵי זָקֵן
Honor the face of an old man could also be translated as “ascribe beauty to the elderly.” Who has knowledge like an elderly person? Who has overcome so much and come so far?
Note the word used here: hadar. Hadar is also used to describe the etrog. Unlike other fruits, the other “lives” for a long time on the tree and does not fall off on its own. The word in Hebrew is dar, similar to hadar. Does the etrog watercolor remind one of an older person? How?
(Credit for these ideas goes to Rabbi Bassous, for helping me remember parts of his speech to my husband, and for help with locating the pasuk to my middle son).
In honor of my father, my favorite elderly person, and in memory of my aunt, my father’s older sister who died earlier this year and who lived admirably as an older person (she was also an artist). In memory of my dear mother – her yahrzeit is next week. And in memory of Linda Greenberg, who tragically lost her battle with cancer this week and will never experience old age.
May it be your will, LORD our God and God of our fathers,
that those who hate us be ended (yitamu – from tamar, dates in Aramaic)
Would you go on a date with a girl named Tamar? Tamar is the Hebrew word for date, so you can play with words and come up with some funny phrases.
If you are getting ready for Rosh Hashana, you may want to read this post: Symbols for Sweet New Year – the Simanim to double check if you got everything you need.
