S4E14 What is the Role of Images in Jewish Teaching? (w/ Sara Harwin)

*****  CALL FOR ARTISTS!  Art/Lab is inviting Pacific Northwest contemporary Jewish artists to apply for the 2027 Artist Fellowship Cohort, which begins in January 2027.  Be part of this nine month artist laboratory that explores the intersection of Judaism, creative expression, and contemporary culture in order to inspire new works. The theme of this fifth cohort is Democrisis.  More information on the Cohort and a link to the application is at artlabpdx.org *** There is an interesting tension in our work at Art/Lab.  Think about how much of Jewish life runs through words. We're called the People of the Book. Our central practices are reading, arguing over texts, and praying from a book. Our story of the creation of hte world turns on words creating reality. And there's a long wariness in our tradition about images. The second commandment casts a long shadow.  And yet at Art/Lab we are creating space for and holding up Jewish creative work of all kinds: writers and poets, yes, but dancers, directors, painters and visual artists of all kinds.  The Kabbalists noticed that in Genesis, God creates the world by speaking. That would mean the trees, the sky, the light itself are all a kind of divine speech. If that's true, the line between word and image is blurrier than we usually assume. Every one of us learned to see before we learned to read. A one-year-old doesn't start with a book. We start with pictures. Then the letters slowly take over, and we forget we ever knew how to receive a story any other way. So I wanted to talk with someone who has spent twenty years trying to bring adults back to that place, and then lead them through images to the Hebrew letters. Sara Harwin is a Portland artist. Her project, Illuminated Letters, unfolds across an entire gallery like a Torah scroll. It is a work that brings together the Jewish mystical tradition with visual and written expression in a totally unique way. We talk about light, roots, sacred geometry, the doubt she had before writing the names of God, and what lives in the white space between the letters. This was a really rich conversation.  Enjoy my conversation with Sara Harwin. The Art/Lab Podcast: Conversations About Jewish Arts and Culture is conceived of and created by Rabbi Josh Rose, and is a program of Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture.  Notes and Links Illuminated Letters (Sara's project site): https://www.illuminatedletters.net Fred Harwin on OPB's Oregon Art Beat: https://www.opb.org/television/progra.... The piece profiles Fred's work hand-painting prosthetic eyes for his clients. Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education, where the project was first shown in 2014: https://www.ojmche.org Emil Weddige, Sara's lithography teacher at Michigan: https://tacoma.emuseum.com/people/586... Yaacov Agam: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaacov_.... He died on June 21, 2026, at his home in Rishon LeZion, aged 98. Lawrence Kushner, The River of Light: https://parnassusbooks.net/book/97815... Lawrence Kushner, The Book of Letters: A Mystical Hebrew Alphabet:   / 238256   Rabbi Hanina ben Teradion and the ascending letters (Avodah Zarah 18a): https://www.sefaria.org/Avodah_Zarah.18a Rabbi Akiva and the crowns on the letters (Menachot 29b): https://www.sefaria.org/Menachot.29b