“A lion has roared; who will not fear?” (Amos 3:
8) “Go into your houses, my people, and lock your door behind you; hide for
just a moment until the wrath has passed.” (Isaiah 26: 20)
While the frightening coronavirus pandemic requires that you
hide in physical isolation away from everyone, the world of smartphones and the
Internet invites you to come out of hiding and connect to anyone. People
throughout the world look forward to “Awaking and shouting for joy” (Isaiah
26: 19) when the curtain comes down at the end of the plague.
Art Gallery of Nova Scotia
I make the words of the Bible come alive in our age of new
media by having cyberangels fly from the Israel Museum in Jerusalem into the Art
Gallery of Nova Scotia and 29 other museums on five continents that have my
Rembrandt-inspired artworks in their collections. These virtual flights are
documented in my blog Global Tribute to Rembrandt http://globaltributetorembrandt.blogspot.com
that pays homage to the great master on the 350th anniversary of his
death.
The cyberangels arrived from Israel at the Art Gallery of
Nova Scotia through its cafe to illustrate that the biblical words for angel and food are
spelled with the same four Hebrew letters to teach that angels are spiritual
messages arising from everyday life. They arrived as a tray of chocolate cakes came
out of the oven. I digitally enlarged them to be like a work of pop art on the
plaza in front of the art gallery facade. (See attached image.)
When I was head of
the art department at Pratt Institute and research fellow at MIT Center for
Advanced Visual Studies, I was invited to lecture on art and new
technologies at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (now NSCAD
University) and the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. My mixed media artwork "Digitized
Homage to Rembrandt: Spiraling Angels," an etching with chine colle from a
computer-generated image, was accepted by the art gallery's acquisitions
committee in 1987.
I am reactivating a cyberangel team that will be led by the
angel Raphael to herald the grand finale of the coronavirus plague. The angel
Raphael works to heal bodies, minds and spirits. “Raphael” is related to the
word rophe, the divine healer in biblical Hebrew (Exodus 15: 26),
and medical doctor in contemporary Hebrew.
When I opened the Nova Scotia Art Gallery’s website, I
encountered this message: “Given the continued spread of COVID-19 and based on
the guidance of public health officials, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia is
closed to the public and will reopen when clearance is received from public
health officials.” Since the COVID-19 pandemic has closed all 30 museums, I am
sending the angel Raphael team to bring healing words to their homebound staff
with an image of cyberangels flying into their museums when they reopen.
Through a Bible Lens
My latest book Through a Bible Lens: Biblical Insights
for Smartphone Photography and Social Media http://thoughabiblelens.blogspot.com
shows creative ways to see the miracles of the new media age through a Bible
lens. It was published by HarperCollins Christian Publishing shortly before the
coronavirus pandemic erupted. It anticipated the need for spiritual insights
for coping with the radical changes in our lives in physical isolation while
demonstrating how new media can connect us in virtual space. The book
demonstrates to people of all faiths how biblical insights can transform life,
in good times and bad, into imaginative ways of seeing spirituality in all that
we do.
The book’s cover is based upon my artwork in the collection
of the Israel Museum that I created in Jerusalem. It shows cyberangels
ascending from a NASA satellite image of the Land of Israel as they emerge from
a smartphone screen. It illustrates the biblical commentary that the angels in
Jacob’s dream go up from the Land of Israel and come down to earth throughout
the world. “A ladder was standing on the ground, its top
reaching up towards heaven as divine angels were going up and down on it.”
(Genesis 28: 12) A smartphone has the power to make this vision a
reality.
Nova Scotia on the Atlantic coast with British Columbia on
the Pacific coast create the parenthesis of Canada. Moving from NSCAD
University in Halifax, we arrive at Vancouver’s Emily Carr University of Art
and Design. Dr. Ron Burnett, president of Emily Carr U, wrote in his review of Through
a Bible Lens: “The iPhone has changed our culture and our ways of thinking
and acting in the world. This book brings together spiritual thought, everyday
practices of communication and interaction and profound insights about meaning
and purpose in contemporary life in a brilliant and sustained exposition. Once
again, Alexenberg has carved out a unique point of view that deserves the
highest praise and a large readership. Great book!!”
Biblical Insight for Corona Lockdown
The Bible relates how three angels disguised as men,
appeared to Abraham while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the
heat of the day. One of the angels was Raphael the healer. “Abraham rushed
to the tent to Sarah and said, ‘Hurry!
Take three measures of the finest flour!
Kneed it and make rolls!’ Abraham ran to the cattle to choose a tender
and choice calf.” (Genesis 18: 6, 7)
A centuries-old biblical commentary explains that
Abraham ran after the calf because it ran away from him into a cave that he
discovered was the burial place of Adam and Eve. He was drawn to the intense
light emanating from an opening at the end of the cave. As he approached, he
saw the Garden of Eden through the opening. This deeply spiritual person, the
patriarch Abraham, found himself standing at the entrance to Paradise. About to
cross over the threshold into the pristine garden, he remembered that his wife
and three guests were waiting for lunch back at the tent. What should he
do? Should he trade Paradise
for a barbeque?
Abraham realized that paradise is what we create with our
spouse at home. Other visions of
paradise are either mirages or lies. “Enjoy life with the wife you love
through all the days of your life.” (Ecclesiastes 9: 9)
During our corona lockdown, Miriam and I create a Garden of
Eden for ourselves every day in out small apartment in Ra’anana, Israel. How
blessed we are to also live in the age of WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, and
Zoom when we can stay in touch with our children and their spouses, and our
grandchildren and great-grandchildren. After the Passover holiday, our son
Moshe made a WhatsApp call to us to announce that his wife Carmit had given birth
to Arianna Chana and posted a photo of the beaming parents with their new born
baby.
She was born on the seventh day of our counting the 49 days
from the time the Hebrews gained their freedom from slavery in Egypt to their
receiving the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai. Each of these days has a
different name made up of combinations of the divine attributes in Chronicles
1: 29, “Yours God are the loving kindness, the strength, the beauty, the
success, the splendor, and the foundation of everything in heaven and on
earth.”
To be a slave, every day is the same. To be free is to be
able to shape each day in a new way. Arianna Chana was born on the day called
“Foundation of Loving Kindness.”
The writer is author of the highly acclaimed book
Through a Bible Lens: Biblical Insights for Smartphone Photography and Social
Media. He is former professor at Columbia University and research
fellow at MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies. In Israel, he was professor at
Ariel and Bar-Ilan universities and head of Emunah College School of the Arts
in Jerusalem.
Captions for attached images:
Cyberangels arrive from Israel at the café of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia as messengers of good tidings
Cyberangels go up from the Land of Israel on the cover of
Mel Alexenberg’s highly acclaimed book Through a Bible Lens that offers
biblical insights for our new media age
Contact the author: melalexenberg@yahoo.com,
+972-52-855-1223 (in Israel)
Sent to The Chronicle Herald, Nova Scotia, May, 1; The Vancouver Sun; and Canadianart, April 30
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