#hebrew calligraphy

[koenji]

Ron Cohen (רון כהן, Israeli, b. 1957) "שיר השירים אשר לשלמה" / Song of Songs of Solomon.

[writer-at-the-table]

Marriage Contract by Ben Shahn, 1961, Ink, watercolor, paint, and graphite on paper

Most decorated Jewish marriage contracts use ornamental motifs as framing devices for their written Aramaic text. Ben Shahn's Ketubbah is a marked departure from this model. In the superb execution of this document, the artist has integrated floral and foliate decorations within his lyrical Hebrew calligraphy, the predominant design element.

While Shahn's artistic personality emerged through the religious themes in his illustrations for the 1931 Haggadah for Passover, he would not return to such subjects for many years. The artist spent most of the 1930s and 1940s as a social realist painter. Along with so many other painters and sculptors during those difficult years, Shahn felt that art could help right the inequities of society. His terse visual commentaries on such topical subjects as the Sacco and Vanzetti case, Nazism, poverty, and labor problems brought him great recognition as both a humanitarian and an artist. It was after World War II that he turned inward through what has been called his transition from social to personal realism. During this period he incorporated allegory and religious and philosophical symbolism in his work, often based on his own cultural heritage.

Shahn's updating of the traditional ketubbah results from his changing stylistic and subjective concerns. He became fascinated with letters, both Hebrew and English, which became essential elements in his work. This calligraphic preoccupation led to his 1954 illustrations for The Alphabet of Creation, a book which related a parable of the origin of the Hebrew alphabet. His own combination of these twenty-two letters become a personal stamp and appears on most of his prints and drawings after 1960, including this Ketubbah.

Like the butterfly stamp of James Whistler and the Japonist monogram of Toulouse-Lautrec, this symbol shows Shahn's stylistic inspiration as coming from outside mainstream Western culture. The expressive style of Shahn's Hebrew characters changes with the meaning of each theme he depicts. For this Ketubbah, which is presented at the joyous celebration of marriage, he develops a commanding but elegant Hebrew appropriate to the legal nature of the document and the solemnity of the moment-a calligraphy markedly different from the flame-like evanescences in his tribute to the Feast of Lights, Hanukkah. As had been the custom of Hebrew scribes throughout the ages, Shahn adds eccentric elements to certain letters. Most notable here is the oft-repeated, stylized Star of David.

Shahn's meandering floral and foliate forms refer to Psalm 128:3, a common visual allusion in Jewish marriage contracts: "Thy wife is a fruitful vine in the midst of thy house, thy children are as young olive trees set around thy table." (Kleeblatt, Norman L., and Vivian B. Mann. TREASURES OF THE JEWISH MUSEUM. New York: Universe Books, 1986, pp. 192-193.)

[the-tipsy-tailor]

min hametzar karati Yah anani vamerchav Yah

from a narrow place I cried out to Yah, Yah answer me with expansiveness.

[kiragecko]

I’ve finished my direction cards!

(Images described in alt-text.)

Cards showing how 17 different cultures chose and organized cardinal directions in the early medieval period. These are some of the more well known cultures - I'll link the whole set (in much better quality) in a reblog.

(That's what you're supposed to do with links these days, right? Tumblr's rules are weird.)

[imaginarius13]

What if...?

[leahbasavraham]

Opening page of Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Portugal, Lisbon, 1490

[uwmspeccoll]

Typography Tuesday

THE HEBREW LETTER FORMS OF DAVID MOSS

Born in in Ohio, American-Israeli calligrapher, designer, and artist David Moss began his calligraphy career in 1968 and is credited with the contemporary revival of the hand-illuminated ketubah. Moss also works as a book artist in both fine-press editions and handmade books, and he completed his famous Moss Haggadah in 1984, an illuminated manuscript done in the traditional manner on vellum. This manuscript has been reproduced in different versions by his American publisher Bet Alpha Editions in Berkeley, California. In all his productions, Moss’s approach to the Hebrew letter form is shaped by the character of the content, from the loose and lyrical flow of the Song of Songs and the somber square letters of Lamentations to the ritual monumentality of the haggadah and the individuality of each ketubah. The examples shown here are from:

Solomon's Song of Songs, with a new English translation by Yoni Moss, six etchings by Zely Smekhov, and Hebrew calligraphy by David Moss, letterpress printed on handmade paper and published in 1999 by Bet Alpha Editions in Berkeley, California, in an edition of 100 copies. (Images 2 & 3)

Ekhah [Lamentations], with wood engravings by Leonid Gorban and Hebrew calligraphy by Daṿid Moss, letterpress printed on handmade paper in an edition of 120 copies by Bet Alpha Editions in 1997. (Images 4 & 5)

The Moss Haggadah: A Complete Reproduction of the Haggadah Written and Illuminated by David Moss for Richard and Beatrice Levy, third edition, published by Bet Alpha Editions in 2000. (Images 6 & 7)

Love Letters: A Celebration of Jewish Love and Marriage in Words and Images by David Moss, published by Bet Alpha Editions in 2004. (Images 1 & 8-10)

View our post on the Moss Haggadah.

View our other Typography Tuesday posts.

[noonlight-stims]

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