Jacob Frank's Dreams of Profanation Many of the sayings in Jacob Frank's The Collection of the Words of the Lord take the form of dreams or visions — modes of speech that resist verification and refuse the binary of true and false. By casting revelation in this indeterminate register, Frank unsettles the epistemic and nomian boundaries that ordinarily separate the holy from the profane. If, as Carl Jung suggests, the unconscious might produce a dream “which proposes an irrati

A Song of the Sabbath Sacrifice And so the gods of lead and brass, The idols and their thrones, The teraphim made of fibreglass The mummified skulls and bones, Are tossed inside a whirl of wind And shattered into shells. But deep inside the kellipot The light of Yahweh dwells. And from the pieces Something new arises in the land, A temple of the sabbath king Built by Ezekiel's hand. With cherubim and fan-leaved palms Carved in the walls of paradise, And the air perfumed with

Seven Worlds God turns -- and the fishes dance blue gold silver beneath a yellow sky. Another turn, the boughs of thick trees become as air: invisibly light. The third turn, nothing but pea-green lizard eyes and cochineal blood. The fourth, an angel with four faces tolls the caked air with a dead bell. At the fifth there is only a fagged-out planet and the light of dead stars. The sixth, and it is said, “the former worlds shall not be remembered.” The seventh, and the land r

Vir Heroicus Sublimis (1950-51) by Barnett Newman 'It Is a Place, Makom, Where Each Man May Be Called up': Being and Time in Barnett Newman's Art 'Even if you don’t know Newman’s place in art history, walking into a space full of his paintings can inspire contemplation. They give you nothing and everything to look at, these huge canvases whose only subject is themselves, enveloping you in the moment, confronting you with seemingly pure fields of color and contrast.’ (Molly Gl

Adam (1951-52) by Barnett Newman Barnett Newman and the Art of Not Making Graven Images Barnett Newman was born in 1905 to Abraham and Anna Newman, Jewish immigrants from Poland who came to New York City in 1900. Although not religious, Barnett’s father was a passionate Zionist and a supporter of the National Hebrew School of the Bronx. As well as attending Hebrew school, Barnett and his brothers and sisters were educated at home by Jewish scholars from Europe. He went on to

Judaism, Panentheism and Spinoza’s Intellectual Love of God It is a popular misconception that Spinoza was a pantheist or even an atheist. He was not. Like the medieval Kabbalists, Spinoza was a panentheist. Judaism, Panentheism and Spinoza’s Intellectual Love of God Panentheism, meaning “all-in-God,” is situated somewhere between pantheism and classical theism. For pantheists, the world is identical to God, while for classical theists, the world is completely external to G

Onement, 1 (1948) by Barnett Newman The Sublime Art of Barnett Newman The problem of a painting is physical and metaphysical, the same as I think life is physical and metaphysical – Barnett Newman Barnett Newman was born in 1905 to Abraham and Anna Newman, Jewish immigrants from Poland who came to New York City in 1900. Although not religious, Barnett’s father was a passionate Zionist and supporter of the National Hebrew School of the Bronx. As well as attending Hebrew schoo

Microcosm בְּרֵאשִׁית was the command 10 PRINT "Hello Universe" 20 GOTO 10 Unbelievable, breathless, demonic even, how a singular point could yield space, time, protons, neutrons, chemicals – a bunch of ones and zeros, flashing on and off like little bits of light. But there it was: an actual universum, infinite in volume, brimming with dark energy and matter. And earth! Circumference forty thousand kilometres; composition iron, oxygen, silicon, magnesium; a mean sidereal day