Tobi Kahn: Portrait of Unknown Jewish Objects,Menachem Wecker

Tobi Kahn: Sacred Spaces for the 21st Century

Through January 24, 2010

The Museum of Biblical Art

1865 Broadway at 61st Street, New York

www.mobia.org/

More than four decades later, Tobi Kahn still remembers the talk (derasha) he gave at his bar mitzvah. Like other boys born during the 49-day period between Passover and Shavuot called the Omer, Kahn was left in an interesting predicament come bar-mitzvah time. Should he recite a blessing when he counted the Omer each day based on his newfound adulthood, or did his counts as a youth (katan), due to the nature of his evolved responsibility, preclude reciting a blessing for lack of a contiguous relationship to the commandment?

This is not the place to resolve the legal question, which has been widely addressed by commentators including Rabbeinu Yosef (Yosef ben Moshe Babad, 1800-1874), author of the Minchat Chinuch, and Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (1903-1993). I am more concerned here with the artistic implications of the ritual of counting the Omer, which Kahn has helped me realize are not sufficiently considered in the Jewish community.

The Omer should be fertile aesthetic soil for artists. The ritual is essentially a redundant action repeated with slight variance (the numbers change) over a seven-week period, during which two different modes of categorization co-exist (days, weeks). Jewish museums and galleries should be packed with technologically innovative, sculpturally creative and vibrantly colored Omer counters.

But the counters I grew up with were anything but artistic. There was the Lakewood Yeshiva's take on Post-It notes, a bluish slip with Hebrew text. I've seen box-like counters with a knob that twists a slip of paper bearing the numbers and kitschy illustrations of Jerusalem. One of my sisters just told me that she thinks getting text- and email-alerts reminding her to count this past year helped her remember to count each day for the first time in her life. I assume the alerts were utilitarian in design.

Saphyr II. 2004. Omer Counter. Acrylic on wood. 72 5/8 x 58 5/8 x 24 11/16 inches.

All photos courtesy of MOBIA

This is why attention must be paid to Tobi Kahn's "Saphyr II" (2004). The acrylic-on-wood Omer counter, roughly six feet by five feet by two feet, is a fresh and abstract take on the counter. The title of the work, which is on exhibit at the Museum of Biblical Art through January, is intentionally nonsensical as are many of Kahn's pseudo-Hebraic titles, though "saphyr" sounds like the same root "SaPHaR," to count.

As Kahn describes it, the 49 pegs of the sculpture, which resembles an assemblage one would expect if Italian Futurist sculptor Umberto Boccioni decided to tackle a bed of stones, are the same shape but can only be returned to their slots in a unique configuration.

Kahn intends the giant Omer counter to end up in a public space. He even has two spaces picked out: the Supreme Court or the Knesset building in Israel. To the artist, the counter's theme of community building while maintaining individuality would suit the Israeli governmental center well. But he's not sitting around waiting for a call from the prime minister's office. He has gotten many requests for smaller counters - the large one took three years to complete - and he has been obliging collectors.

Ykarh II. 2008. Havdalah candlestick holder. Acrylic on wood. 10 1/8 x 2 ¾ x 4 1/8 inches. Spice box. Acrylic on wood. 4 3/8 x 3 ¾ x 3 ¼ inches.

Kahn also adds a religious clause into the sale contract. Remembering that his grandmother used to make cheesecake for her grandchildren who completed the counting, Kahn says he has not missed a day since his bar mitzvah. He wants his patrons to share that experience, so he tells them if they buy the counter, or his havdalah candles and other ritual objects, they must use them. One gets the sense that Kahn the artist and the observant Jew would be thrilled if Omer counters became as prevalent and hip as iPods.

Ahma. 2008. Shalom Bat Chairs. Acrylic on wood. Each, 70 3/8 x 20 7/16 x 26 3/8 inches.

There is more to the exhibit at the Museum of Biblical Art - its first show of a living artist, which it wanted to be a believer, Kahn says - than just the Omer counter. Of particular interest is "Ahma" (2008), or so-called "Shalom Bat Chairs." The term literally means "hello, or welcome daughter," and it is modeled on the ritual that welcomes a son called a shalom zachar. The chairs are used for naming daughters. Where a chair is symbolically reserved for the prophet Elijah at Jewish circumcisions, Kahn's four chairs feature images based on the attributes of the matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah.

Here Kahn courageously tackled a motif that lacked a tradition. Growing up, he was struck by a photograph by Robert Capa of a Yemenite man holding a baby and decided that when he had a child, he wanted to hold it in the same loving way. He told his wife Nessa Rapoport, whose writing appears alongside Kahn's art in the MOBIA catalog, that he wanted to carry their child into the synagogue for the naming ceremony and have those assembled stand up for the child. Kahn created a chair for Elijah for his son's bris, but when his wife had their second child, a daughter, there was no established ritual for a girl's naming ceremony. Rapoport, an author of several books and an essayist and poet, researched a way that the ceremony could be halachic, creative and liturgical.

Mezuzot. 2008. Acrylic on wood. Varying dimensions.

The chairs Kahn created, which are on permanent loan to the Abraham Heschel School in New York for free use, are rife with metaphor. The legs are on different planes to show that the infant must embrace her past, but it will not block her future. The images on the four chairs are different to symbolize the way children are so different. There are even places on the back of the chairs to write the names of the children.

The rest of the exhibit also reflects an almost fanatic attention to detail from the symbolism in the actual works to the color of the walls (toned down, meant to convey sacred space). Not only do the objects have to work halachically (he insisted on kosher food and mevushal wine), but also functionally, so "there's not a havdalah candle which burns your fingers, or an Aron Kodesh [ark] door that doesn't close."

But however much Kahn cares about Midrash, he doesn't want his work to become a "Where's Waldo?" gimmick. "When you create art it's like creating a golem and it goes out in the world and does its own thing," he says. "I don't want to be too specific that it steals the experience away from the viewer."

Kahn achieves that balance of educating his audience about Judaism and art simultaneously. During the course of our phone interview, Kahn invoked the names of many artists, including James Turrell, Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Serra and Scottish architect Rennie Mackintosh. One would expect Claes Oldenburg to be proud of the gigantic Omer counter, but Kahn should be celebrated for more than just making small ritual objects larger than life. At stake in his work is the question of how Orthodox Judaism and art can co-exist. The Museum of Biblical Art has a lot of guts to show such work, and more importantly, Kahn deserves recognition for devoting his career to it.

Menachem Wecker welcomes comments at mwecker@gmail.com. He is a painter and writer, residing in Washington, DC.

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