What can 21st century artists ‘take’ from the Jewish tradition that might enrich their creative process?

This was the question posed to a group of Bay Area artists and creative thinkers at the January 12, 2015 session of the Digital Artists Collaborative (DAC) at the JCCSF.

Jewish Educator Rachel Brodie offered the Judaic practice of “midrash” as a dynamic model to consider. In Judaism, midrash is the ongoing process by which people seek understanding of the Old Testament and other important texts (Tanakh), one which presupposes an interaction between the written words and the readers, between ideas and interpretation, between the mystery of texts and the individual quest for present meaning.

The story we examined as a group was the Biblical account of the Tower of Babel. How many ways could we look at it? Just about as many ways as there were people in the room.

We gave participants about four hours to pair up and create an “interpretation” in the form of a 15 second video.

The following video “concept” was created by artist Miriam Rosenhaus and Filmmaker Chris Howell.

About the Digital Artist Collaboration:
Sponsored by 3200 Stories, the DAC brings together a diverse group of artists and creative thinkers to wrestle with big Jewish questions through the creation and distribution of original digital content. Grounded in the concept of Midrash – a classic investigative process of Jewish texts – we will meet to immerse ourselves in a variety of Jewish “texts” (audio, video, text, and image). Through the exploration of big Jewish questions, concepts, ideas, stories, themes, traditions and practices the Digital Artist Collaboration will take a “Midrashic Posture” to prompt the production of digital content that uncovers meaning by “creating”.