Cyberangels Fly from Israel to the Smithsonian to Herald
End of Corona Plague
By Mel Alexenberg
“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.
Smithsonian
Institution’s National Museum of American History
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 Smithsonian's National Museum of American
History in Washington, D.C. and 29 art 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 National Museum of American History 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.
Gary Kulik,
chairman of the museum’s Department of Social & Cultural History wrote
about the gift from Pratt Graphics Center of my new media artwork that I
created there: “It gives me great pleasure to acknowledge, on behalf of the
National Museum of American History, the receipt of "Digitized Homage to
Rembrandt: Day Angels" kindly presented to our Division of Graphic Arts.
This lithograph from a computer-generated image is a most valuable addition to
our collection.”
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. Since the COVID-19 pandemic has
closed the 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.
Dr. Ori Z. Soltes, professorial lecturer of Theology and
Fine Arts at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., wrote in his review of Through
a Bible Lens:
“For those of us familiar with the diverse and exhilarating
work of Mel Alexenberg as an artist, educator and profound thinker, this latest
book offers precisely the four things we would expect. The narrative thinks
brilliantly outside the box. It synthesizes the realm of the abstruse and
transcendent with the realm of the concrete and immanent. It crisscrosses
disciplines, from science and technology to philosophy and mysticism to art as
both historical and creative phenomena. Finally, the entirety is managed in a
style both accessible and inviting. Those with prior knowledge of any or all of
the disciplines from which Alexenberg draws will smile again and again in
affirmation, and those entering without prior knowledge will be thrilled to
understand things that they thought might be beyond them. This is one of those
books that other thinkers will wish they had somehow thought about how to
write, and to which readers of diverse sorts will simply respond by saying:
wow!”
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 radiant 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
Captions for attached images:
Cyberangels go up from the Land of Israel on the cover of
Mel Alexenberg’s latest 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)
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