Shortly after the creation of Sisters, Rabbi Norman Cohen suggested Avodah create another dance midrash piece based on the Akedah portion of Genesis (22: 1–19) where God commands Abraham to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice. The Joseph Gallery of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion was planning an exhibit of paintings by Frederick Terna called “Articulation of Hope: The Binding of Isaac.” Norman thought an Avodah concert featuring a new piece based on Terna’s paintings would be excellent to include in the series of programs related to the Exhibition. I had mixed feelings about focusing on these lines of text as they were very difficult for me to relate to. I agreed and we set the date for December 13th, the last of the programs so I could wait until the paintings arrived at the college and I could see Terna’s visual interpretation.
About a week before the opening, Norman called to let me know that the paintings had arrived and suggested I walk through the gallery with him to look at them. This would also give me an opportunity to discuss the text with him and gain some more insight into these critical lines that play such a strong role in Jewish life… not only read when that portion of the Torah is read but also read on the High Holiday of Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year).
As I walked through the gallery, studying each painting carefully I was struck by the strong role of the angels and the ram that is finally sacrificed instead of Isaac. A painting entitled An Offering Set Aside shows the ram as an egg in a womb of perhaps an angel. Once I saw that painting I thought I might have a place to begin.
In my file I found a brochure that HUC-JIR created for the exhibit that includes a biography of Terna and a scholarly essay written by Norman on Frederick Terna and the exhibition. Norman notes:
Drawn to the piercing questions of the Akedah, Frederick Terna has wrestled with this text for many years. As a Holocaust survivor he has found in this story one vehicle to deal with his own life experiences and to express deep-seated emotions in a most creative manner.
Norman also refers to the one painting that had the most poignancy for me in beginning the creative work on the piece.
An Offering Set Aside reminds us that from the very outset of creation, the ram, the salvational vehicle and through its horns, the symbol of the messianic, is waiting. Programmed into human existence from its inception is the potential for redemption.
When I left Norman that day after seeing the paintings, I had a hunch where the new piece on the Akedah would begin. I also was impressed with Terna’s paintings which while sometimes showing the pain and suffering of the text also had a softness and nurturing quality to them using feminine colors. Perhaps that could calm my uncomfortable feeling of creating a piece on text that I found extremely puzzling and which did not have a woman’s voice in it at all. It was a story of a father and son with Sarah, the mother, not even mentioned.
In reflecting back on developing this new piece on just nineteen lines of text from Genesis I realized it brought together elements that both challenged and inspired me. It required that I do research and make sure I was aware of traditional midrashim as well as contemporary thought. It involved collaboration with Rabbi Norman Cohen, an outstanding scholar; Mark Childs, a cantor I had just worked with in creating “Let My People Go,” and a wonderful group of dancers. And then there were the paintings of Frederick Terna to inspire and point me in new directions.
When I looked at traditional midrashim on the nineteen lines it was fascinating to me to see that the phrase “after these things,” which is part of the opening line of text, had lots of midrashim. Hum… we could work with this in dance… indeed what were “these things” that might have caused God to put Abraham to such a test as to sacrifice his son?
I had also recently read a book called The Thirteen Petalled Rose: A Discourse on the Essence of Jewish Existence and Beliefby Adin Steinsaltz. In the book he talks about angels in Jewish text, suggesting that each is a manifestation of a single emotional response or essence. Angels were an important part of Frederick Terna’s paintings and so Steinsaltz’s words became particularly meaningful for me as I prepared to meet with the dancers and begin work on the new piece.
It would be an interesting journey working with the four dancers to create the piece, and both Norman Cohen and Mark Childs had agreed to collaborate and even perform in the first performance. Luckily I have a video of the final rehearsal for the performance, which I will refer to in the next blog on this piece. I also have two other videos of the piece: one that is done five years later and a third that was done eight or nine years later. As I watched all three videos one evening I was struck by how a piece evolves over time — from when Norman Cohen and Mark Childs were part of the piece, actually moving on stage with the dancers; to a performance with a cantor alone singing and narrating the story; to the dancers handling singing, chanting text and narrating as they move. I will share more about this over the next several blogs.
Before closing this blog I want to share more about the painter Frederick Terna. The program for the exhibition of his paintings on the Akedah includes a section that he wrote:
About twenty years ago, leafing through one of my old sketchbooks, I came upon a drawing that resembled a person wielding a knife over a smaller figure. It made me pause and I wondered who I feared or who I had wanted to kill. Searching for an answer and not finding one, I wondered about the prototype, the archetype. Abraham and Isaac came to mind. I opened a new sketchbook, put aside the old one, and proceeded to play with the idea.
He continued to explain the relationship of his paintings to the Holocaust:
During World War II, I spent more than three years in German concentration camps. Painting around the theme of the Akedah has become one of my ways, though not the exclusive one, of dealing with those years.
I was curious if Frederick Terna was still alive; since he was born in 1923 he would be 96 now. I Googled and found that he is indeed alive and he had an exhibit at St. Francis College in Brooklyn Heights, NY in the winter of 2017.
On a website called The Ripple Project there is a wonderful interview of him that is called “A Lesson in Civility” and I quote from it. Here’s a link to read more and see some recent photos which I hunch are from about 2017:
A writer from the Ripple Project asked Fred what he thought of the Presidential election. His response is described:
He closed his eyes for [a] second, as he often does before he begins to speak, as if to enhance the drama. Tilting his head right and with a wry smile said: “I’m disappointed, confused, and surprised but not worried. Dictators don’t last, it’s against human nature. We just need to keep our civility.”
As the discussion continued:
Fred responded in a deeper tone, the smile was gone: “When we were in the camps, facing death, humiliation, starvation, anger, not knowing if we will live another 10 minutes… we still kept our civility. We always knew the Nazis wouldn’t last, it’s against human nature. It doesn’t matter what the Nazis did to us, how much they screamed and yelled at us. When we were alone in the room, at night, we were civilized. We knew that our civility is the key to survival, our humanity and civility will outlast the Nazis. It might take a month, a year or ten, but it will outlast them.”
I am indeed very humbled and inspired by both the paintings and words of Fred Terna. Civility is something for all of us to keep in mind each and every day.
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