{"id":42500,"date":"2023-10-27T01:49:48","date_gmt":"2023-10-27T08:49:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=42500"},"modified":"2023-10-26T17:04:00","modified_gmt":"2023-10-27T00:04:00","slug":"share-delight-of-letters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2023\/10\/27\/share-delight-of-letters\/","title":{"rendered":"Share delight of letters"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cShabbat Saskatchewan,\u201d by Esther Tennenhouse. Part of Otiyot (Letters), a joint exhibit with her son Joel Klassen, which is now at the Zack Gallery.<\/em><\/p>\n

Colourful and playful, dark and ominous, Esther Tennenhouse\u2019s artwork is engaging and thought-provoking, as she offers her take on Torah and midrash, immigration and language, orthodoxy and modernity. Otiyot <\/em>(Letters), an exhibit she shares with her son Joel Klassen, opened at the Zack Gallery last week.<\/p>\n

Tennenhouse\u2019s sense of humour, curiosity, imagination and sincerity come through in the work on display, and in her responses to questions about the exhibit.<\/p>\n

\u201cOt <\/em>means \u2018letter\u2019 (of the alphabet) \u2013 it also means \u2018sign\u2019 and \u2018signal,\u2019\u201d she told the Independent<\/em>. \u201cIt was my first choice of name for the show: Ot \u2013 Starring the Letter Shin. Sounds like \u2018ought,\u2019 as in \u2018thought.\u2019 Ot was visually terse (and sounds adorable). That was why it was Ot in [the] JCC program book \u2013 I had to provide that bit before these pieces were made! Yikes! But it got changed to the longer plural in Hebrew and lost its zap. More truthful, though, as I have so<\/em> many (too many) words of explanation on the wall beside each piece.\u201d<\/p>\n

All the works were made specifically for the exhibit, said Tennenhouse, \u201conly for this place, for anyone who happens to walk into the JCC,\u201d where the Zack Gallery is located.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was driven by my own relationship to the alef-bet: me, a quite secular, second-generation, Winnipeg-born Jew living in Vancouver, of prairie-born parents, who learned my aleph-bet as a child, quite long ago. I think many like me, with my sort of education, walk by these gallery doors, so I thought they might wander in and relate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Born and raised in Winnipeg, Tennenhouse went to Talmud Torah there from age 4 to 11, then to public school. She earned a bachelor\u2019s in English and, while working at the Winnipeg Free Press<\/em>, majored in sculpture at the University of Manitoba School of Art.<\/p>\n

She moved to Aklavik, in the Inuvik region of the Northwest Territories, and then to Yellowknife, where she learned about ceramics at the Yellowknife Guild of Arts and Crafts. She later worked with translucent clays.<\/p>\n

Moving with her family \u2013 husband Ron, son Joel and daughter Timmi \u2013 to Vancouver in 1995, Tennenhouse found a home at Or Shalom, participating in the Talmud and Torah study offered there, reengaging in Jewish education after a break of some 45 years.<\/p>\n

Klassen also attends Or Shalom. His art background includes having drawn at home and working with painter Sylvia Oates \u2013 who he describes as a mentor \u2013 in her Parker Street studio. Klassen has had a one-man show in artist Noel Hodnett\u2019s Parker Street studio, and he was in the Kickstart Disability Arts and Culture\u2019s 2019 group show Nothing Without Us at the Cultch. For the past four years, he has attended the JCC\u2019s Art Hive, which is facilitated by Kim Almond.<\/p>\n

Klassen\u2019s Hebrew letters and drawings are in five of the pieces at the Zack Gallery, said Tennenhouse.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaking letters as individuals, each with their own character, was the most fun to do,\u201d she said. \u201cJan Wilson, a friend and quilter, offered to help if I drew out the correctly sized letters backwards for transfer and picked the fabrics.\u201d<\/p>\n

The letters comprise eight of the works on display, and offer much to think \u2013 and smile \u2013 about. Klassen\u2019s aleph is filled in with leopard print fabric, surrounded in black with a flowered border. The word \u201cwild\u201d comes to mind as one looks at it, not just the wildness of animals and nature, but of human beings. The piece is called \u201cAleph in the Garden.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
\u201cAleph in the Garden\u201d by Esther Tennenhouse, Joel Klassen and Jan Wilson.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI did not shy away from diversity,\u201d said Tennenhouse. \u201cIt\u2019s sort of an underlying element. I felt the show had to offer something to any individual, whatever their history with the alef-bet, and it deals with very well-trodden themes. I felt a need for an element of surprise, which is one reason why Joel\u2019s aleph became a leopard in the garden (of Eden?).\u201d<\/p>\n

A last-minute addition to the depictions is one of the 12 new letters for gender-neutral word endings that were created by Israelis graphic designer Michal Shomer a few years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey appeared in welcome signs outside schools and on IDF buildings, etc., but the kabbalist idea of the power of the alphabet lives on \u2013 the new letters were vigorously rejected by religious factions,\u201d said Tennenhouse. \u201c\u2018Changing the letters removes any kedusha<\/em> (sanctity) the words have or any ability the words have of channeling God\u2019s energy into the world,\u2019 said sofer Rabbi Abraham Itzkowitz. \u2018This project essentially makes Hebrew like any other language.\u2019 Some of the signs were taken down. Religious schools were forbidden to use them.\u201d<\/p>\n

That said, Tennenhouse told the Independent<\/em>, \u201cWhat first tickled me into this aleph-bet project was the poetry and passion of the ideas of the early mystics. They conceived of letters of the alef-bet existing even before the creation of the world \u2013 all 22 were vessels of the divine, all things were created by their combinations. Meditative\/ecstatic kabbalah taught that individual letters were something to meditate upon, which led to ecstasy, one of the steps to sense of union with G-d. American calligrapher Ben Shahn, who titled one of his books Love and Joy About Letters<\/em>, quotes the 13th-century Rabbi Abulafia, who said the delight in combining letters is like being carried away by notes of music.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tennenhouse and Klassen\u2019s \u201cShir<\/em>\u201d (song, poetry, chant, in Hebrew) is truly delightful, like a page out of a children\u2019s book. A multimedia piece, it depicts several animals and the sounds they make, both in Hebrew and in transliteration, though the giraffe just \u201chum[s] at night.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two other works are striking, both on their own and in contrast to each other: Sinai 1 and Sinai 2.<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
Detail of “Sinai 2” by Esther Tennenhouse and Joel Klassen.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The latter features three bright yellow flowers, surrounded by green. \u201cIt is a triangle canvas which is about the mountain bursting into bloom when Moses came down with the Ten Commandments \u2013 this was a midrash from the 1500s. The triangle has flowers by Joel. I asked him to put flowers on it, envisioning little flowers here and there \u2013 he just went swoosh woosh on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sinai 2 is a vertical rectangle with whites, greys and blacks depicting a furious ball of activity on top of the mountain that includes the Hebrew letters.<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
“Sinai 1” by Esther Tennenhouse.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe Torah tells of fear, awe, the shaking mountain, seeing sounds, lightning, Moses\u2019 anger, the breaking tablets,\u201d said Tennenhouse. \u201cLooking back, I overburdened the canvas [with] anger, though laying on the 231 Gates \u2013 a diagram from the Sefer Yetzirah which shows each letter combining with each other letter of the alef-bet \u2013 because I see the story of the giving of the Torah as a sort of creation story for our intense embrace of literacy. The diagram relates to Rabbi Abulafia\u2019s talk of combination of letters but distracts visually from the anger\/violence, [the] mountain, fear.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is so much more in this exhibit.<\/p>\n

\u201cCursive Handwriting: Kovno Testament\u201d is a stark, unfinished work, featuring the words, written in his own hand, of Lithuanian writer Eliezer Heiman, who died in the Kovno ghetto during the Holocaust. It was to have three more samples of cursive, said Tennenhouse. \u201cI left room for them before I put on the image of Heiman\u2019s tablets. Those spaces stayed empty. Everything else edited themselves out because of what happened in Israel on Oct. 7.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is the multimedia triptych \u201cShabbat Saskatchewan,\u201d which Tennenhouse said \u201cis me trying to use real photos and documents to create some presence of my mother\u2019s grandparents and parents.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt ended up being centred on great-grandmother Esther Dudelzak Singer, Baba Faige (Fanny) Singer and my mother with her sisters,\u201d she said. \u201cYiddish was their mamaloshen<\/em> (mother tongue) and the Sonnenfeld community was religiously observant.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Owl and the Pussy Cat\u201d adds colour and vibrancy to Edward Lear\u2019s black and white drawing of his nonsense poem, the Yiddish translation of which \u2013 by the late Marie B. Jaffe \u2013 fills the two side panels of this triptych. Tennenhouse couldn\u2019t find much information out about Jaffe, she said, \u201cBut, thanks to Eddie Pauls at the Jewish Public Library in Montreal, [I] learned she immigrated to New York in 1909 from Lithuania.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tennenhouse began to see the owl and the cat in their boat as sailors braving the rough seas, traveling around the world to find \u201cDi Goldene Medine<\/em>,\u201d \u201cthe Golden Land,\u201d America.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou might say \u2018Saskatchewan,\u2019 too, is about leaving home, traveling across seas and finding a new place but keeping your language and culture,\u201d said Tennenhouse.<\/p>\n

Otiyot (Letters) is on display at Zack Gallery until Nov. 12.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cShabbat Saskatchewan,\u201d by Esther Tennenhouse. Part of Otiyot (Letters), a joint exhibit with her son Joel Klassen, which is now at the Zack Gallery. Colourful and playful, dark and ominous, Esther Tennenhouse\u2019s artwork is engaging and thought-provoking, as she offers her take on Torah and midrash, immigration and language, orthodoxy and modernity. Otiyot (Letters), an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42502,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[989],"tags":[2466,9732,22688,8704,22687,6691,40],"class_list":["post-42500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-visual-arts","tag-art","tag-esther-tennenhouse","tag-joel-klassen","tag-multimedia","tag-otiyot","tag-painting","tag-zack-gallery"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}