Cyberangels Fly from Israel to The Met and MoMA 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.
I make the words of the Bible come alive in our age of new
media by have cyberangels fly from Israel into The Met and MoMA in New York
City and 28 other museums on five continents that have my Rembrandt-inspired
artworks in their collections. These virtual flights are documented in my Global
Tribute to Rembrandt blog that pays homage to the great
master on the 350th anniversary of his death.
The cyberangels arrived from Israel at the cafes of each of
the museums since 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.
I am reactivating a cyberangel team that will be led by the
angel Raphael to herald the grand finale of the coronavirus plague. In Jewish
and Christian traditions, 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 staffs with an
image of cyberangels flying into their museums when they reopen.
Rembrandt’s inspiration for creating cyberangels began when
I was in a synagogue in New York listening to the chanting of the biblical
portion about artists Bezalel and Oholiav building the Tabernacle. I was
translating the Hebrew words into English in my mind when it struck me that the
Bible’s term for “art” is malekhet makhshevet, literally “thoughtful
craft.” It is a feminine term. Since I’m a male artist, I transformed it into
its masculine form malakh makhshev, literally “computer angel.”
When the services ended, I ran to tell my wife Miriam that I
discovered that my role as a male Jewish artist is to create computer angels.
“To do what?” was her response. I reminded her of an article that our son Rabbi
Ron Alexenberg had sent us a week earlier when he was archivist at HaRav Kook
House in Jerusalem. Rabbi Abraham Isaac
Kook, a down-to-earth mystic who served as the chief rabbi of pre-state Israel,
described the light in Rembrandt paintings as the light of the first day of
Creation.
I felt well equipped to create computer angels. I was head
of the art department at Pratt Institute, America’s leading art college, where
I taught “Fine Art with Computers,” and research fellow at MIT Center for
Advanced Visual Studies where I taught “Developing Creativity for the
Electronic Age.”
My latest book Through a Bible Lens
that offers biblical insights for the new media age was published 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.
The cyberangels reach out to countries attacked by the
coronavirus “separated into their lands, every one according to his
language, according to their families, into their nations” (Genesis
10: 5). They convey God’s message that the nations of the world are not meant
to speak one language as in the disastrous Tower of Babel episode. Each nation has its unique and distinct voice
to contribute to the grand planetary choir singing God’s praise in health and
peace.
The spiritual power of digital culture in shaping the future
was recognized early on by the
Lubavicher Rebbe, the 20th century’s great Jewish leader who was educated as a
scientist. He wrote: “The divine
purpose of the present information revolution, which gives an individual
unprecedented power and opportunity, is to allow us to share knowledge –
spiritual knowledge – with each other, empowering and unifying individuals
everywhere. We need to use today’s interactive technology not just for business
or leisure but to interlink as people – to create a welcome environment for the
interaction of our souls, our hearts, our visions.”
Author of Earth Angels: Engaging the Sacred in
Everyday Life and professor at
Lesley University, Dr. Shaun McNiff wrote in his review of Through a Bible Lens: “The most recent, and arguably one of
art’s most complete and compelling integrations of the sacred and profane. The
book is packed with wisdom and learning about Talmudic tradition, creative
expression, and cyberangels. It reads like a swift and soulful breeze. I
love every “byte” of it.”
The core concept of my book is particularly relevant
to how we deal with our lives in lockdown hiding in our homes until the wrath
has passed. (Isaiah 26:20)
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)
The Midrash, 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 our ancestors gained their freedom from slavery in Egypt to their
receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai. Each of these days has a different name
made up of combinations of divine attributes. 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 yesod b’hesed, “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, http://throughabiblelens.blogspot.com, and
in Hebrew: Dialogic Art in a Digital World: Judaism and Contemporary Art. He
is former professor at Columbia University, head of the art department at Pratt
Institute, 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 arrive from Israel at the café of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York with the original Rembrandt and Alexenberg’s digital interpretation
in their collection
Cyberangels arrive from Israel at the terrace café of New
York’s Museum of Modern Art with Alexenberg’s new media versions of a Rembrandt
angel drawing in their collection
Cyberangels go up from the Land of Israel on the cover of
Mel Alexenberg’s highly acclaimed book Through a Bible Lens: Biblical
Insights for Smartphone Photography and Social Media
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