Prague Journal

Friday, March 25, 2005.

Cynthia and I had lunch together and she showed me her exhibit at the Guttmann Gallery. Her “installation” is called “Layered Histories,” an apt name since it not only reflects the differing layers of the visions of its authors (music and images), but also the layers of the manuscript and images of Toledo, Marseilles, and Safed, the three places where the Marseilles Bible is know to have existed. Apparently, the history of this manuscript is only partially known. It was created in Toledo, Spain around 1260, and contains influences of Jewish, Christian and Islamic culture. After the 1492 Expulsion of Jews from Spain by Ferdinand of Arragon and Isabella of Castillia, it was brought out of Spain by the Jewish refugees. It traveled to the Ottoman town of Safed in Northern Galilee, where it was among religious mystics seeking the means to repair the ills of the world (Tikkun ha-Olam). It subsequently disappeared until around 1894, when, mysteriously, three volumes of the Bible were discovered in the collection of the Bibliotheque Municipale of Marseilles, where they reside today. Cynthia has morphed images reflecting place and cross-cultural contact, in a non-linear “narrative” projected on a screen and controlled by an electronic pen on a digitized surface covered with a replica of one of the patterned pages from the Bible. The images are morphed together to create fluid moving clips, and the sounds cross-fade from one to the next, making a very interesting and interactive piece of work.
After a nice lunch at an outdoor café – the weather today is absolutely balmy – we walked around Old Town a bit and then took the metro to Vyšehrad. I wanted to show Cynthia the view, and also to show her the remains of the old castle, the twin towers of St. Peter and Paul, the gothic church of St. Martin, and the cemetery with the graves of Dvořak, Smetana and Mucha.
Services this evening at Bejt Praha were special, not only because Naomie Turetsky and her sons Justin and Jonathan were there, but because of the reason for their presence. The service was a combined Kabalat Shabbat and memorial service for Arnold Turetsky, the rabbi who was instrumental in starting and shaping the culture of Bejt Praha in 1995. Several people from the Jewish community gave testimonials to Rabbi Turetsky, including Rabbi Narrowe who led the service. Howard had known Rabbi Turetsky longer than anyone else in attendance, because he had attended the synagogue in White Plains, New York, where Rabbi Turetsky worked before he retired and started to visit Prague and Budapest. (Naomie and her sons will go to Budapest next week for another memorial service.) The service was bitter sweet. Sweet because of the reflections about a man who touched so many lives, including our own seven years ago. Bitter, of course, because of our loss.

posted by JWinn @ 11:29 PM