Image of the Week: Shechinah (The Sabbath Bride)
© D. Yael Bernhard
Shechinah (The Sabbath Bride) is the image for the cover and the month of November in my new calendar, The Jewish Eye 5781/2021 Calendar of Art. The word Shechinah comes from the Hebrew root meaning "dwelling" or "settling." She is imagined as a mythic figure – the Sabbath Bride – she who inculcates the indwelling presence of divine spirit. That presence fills the weekly holiday – a sacred time of soul renewal and rest.
In his book The Sabbath, Abraham Joshua Heschel – one of the leading Jewish theologians and philosophers of the 20th century and friend of Dr. Martin Luther King – describes the Sabbath as a time when we "care for the seed of Eternity that is planted in our souls." He describes Judaism as a religion "centrally concerned with holiness in time." "Some religions build great cathedrals or temples," Heschel writes, "but Judaism constructs the Sabbath as an architecture of time. Creating holiness in time requires a different sensibility than building a cathedral in space."
It seems paradoxical to conceive of something as ineffable as time, and as elusive as spirit, as a form of architecture. The very thought of it intrigued me – and in a moment's spark, kindled the idea for this painting. A physical construct for a mythic presence began to take shape. Infused with divine spirit, the temple-bride grew in my mind's eye. The quest to use form to evoke something formless is as old as art itself – and never fails to engage my imagination.
"Sanctity is a quality we create," Heschel writes. "We know what to do with space, but how to we shape sacred time?"
By making it a sacred process, not a thing. The painting, too, captures a process – my experience of the Sabbath and all I know about it, up to the moment I finished the last brushstroke – as well as that of all Jews, for what is more sacred, and more common, to all the Jewish people than Shabbat?
The color came easily, calling for sunset and twilight hues. It is where the two meet that sacred time begins and ends. I tried to create a a tension between warm and cool transitional colors. The warmer colors
are open space and the sunset that fills it; the cool purples and blues are the temple in time, with her indwelling sacred presence.
Many influences – prehistoric relief carvings of arched patterns; open-lattice sculptures from Ivory Coast; hand-painted Russian nesting dolls; Purim groggers from Prague – are woven into this geometric composition of angles and openings. Much of the work involved simplifying what came out as far too complex at first. She could be simplified further, or made more intricate. The painting sprouted several new versions of itself as I worked on it – little seedlings set aside for the future.
The Shechinah dwells within, ever growing and changing.
Some readers may recall reading my post by the same title a year ago – a monochromatic study I did for this painting. A friend and collector responded to that post and offered to buy the final piece, giving me a welcome excuse to work on it. This Sabbath Bride now overlooks the table where my friend lights her Shabbat candles each Friday night.
The Jewish Eye 5781/2021 Calendar of Art is available in my webstore ($18 including shipping) or on Amazon ($18 prime).
A good week to all!
D Yael Bernhard