Through A Bible Lens: Biblical Insights for Smartphone Photography and Social Media

By Mel Alexenberg

Through a Bible Lens: Biblical Insights for Smartphone Photography and Social Media by Professor Mel Alexenberg teaches people of all faiths how biblical insights can transform smartphone photography and social media into creative ways for seeing spirituality in everyday life. It develops conceptual and practical tools for observing, documenting and sharing reflections of biblical messages in all that we do. It speaks to Jews and Christians who share an abiding love of the Bible by inspiring the creation of a lively dialogue between our emerging life stories and the enduring biblical narrative.The author is an artist, educator and writer exploring the interface between biblical consciousness, creative process, and postdigital culture. His artworks are in the collections of museums worldwide. He was professor at Columbia University and research fellow at MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies. In Israel, head of Emunah College School of the Arts and professor at Ariel and Bar-Ilan universities. He is author of The Future of Art in a Postdigital Age: From Hellenistic to Hebraic Consciousness.Through a Bible Lens speaks in the language of today's digital culture of smartphones and social media. It demonstrates to both young and old the most up-to-date thoughts on the interactions between The Bible and the impact of new technologies on contemporary life. Christians and Jews will enjoy sharing the book’s spiritual messages with their children and grandchildren.Professor Alexenberg draws on six Divine attributes in the biblical verse “Yours God are the Compassion, the Strength, the Beauty, the Success, the Splendor, and the Foundation of everything in heaven and earth” (Chronicles 1:29) to demonstrate how smartphone photographers become God’s partners in creation when photographing daily life through a Bible lens.He describes how the lives of biblical personalities exemplify these Divine attributes: Abraham and Ruth embody Compassion, Isaac and Sarah are models of Strength, Jacob and Rebecca represent Beauty, Success is demonstrated by Moses and Miriam, Splendor by Aaron and Deborah, and Foundation by Joseph and Tamar. There is a confluence emerging in the 21st century between biblical consciousness and a postdigital culture that addresses the humanization of digital technologies. Both share a structure of consciousness and its cultural expression that honors creative process and seeing with a different spirit, like Caleb who saw goodness in the Land of Israel while others could not (Numbers 14:24). We are fortunate to be living in age of digital technologies that gives us ways to experience invisible worlds becoming visible. These experiences give clues that help us appreciate the insightful imagination of ancient spiritual teachers who visualized invisible realms. Smartphones are gateways to the world that make invisible realms blanketing our planet become visible with a flick of a finger. Their imbedded cameras capture images, store them as invisible bits and bytes, and display them as colorful pictures. In all of human history, never has there been such a proliferation of images. A centuries-old Jewish method of Bible study called PaRDeS offers creative ways for looking beyond the surface of smartphone images by extending contemporary methods of photographic analysis to reveal spiritual significance. An exemplary blogart project, Bible Blog Your Life http://throughabiblelens.blogspot.com, turns theory into practice. The author and his wife Miriam created it to celebrate their 52nd year of marriage. For 52 weeks, they posted photographs reflecting their life together with a text of Tweets that relate to the weekly Bible portion. Selected blog posts from each of the first five books of the Bible demonstrate how to transform the ancient biblical narrative into a mirror for people today to see themselves. Fifty photographs from these posts are reproduced in color in the book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson
• Release date: Jan 8, 2019
• ISBN: 9781595556509

Mel Alexenberg

Mel Alexenberg is an artist, educator and writer exploring the interface between biblical consciousness, creative process, and postdigital culture.  His artworks are in the collections of museums worldwide. Former professor at Columbia University and research fellow at MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies. In Israel, head of Emunah College School of the Arts and professor at Ariel University. Author of The Future of Art in a Postdigital Age: From Hellenistic to Hebraic Consciousness. 

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INTRODUCTION

IN THE BEGINNING, GOD CREATED MEDIA SYSTEMS

Through a Bible Lens teaches people of all faiths how biblical insights can transform smartphone photography and social media into creative ways for seeing spirituality in everyday life. It develops conceptual and practical tools for observing, documenting, and sharing reflections of biblical messages in daily life. The book shows how to focus a smartphone lens on Divine light illuminating every nook and cranny of life.

An exemplary blogart project, Torah Tweets: A Postdigital Biblical Commentary as a Blogart Narrative (http://torahtweets.blogspot.com), demonstrates how to find renewed meaning in your life by creating a lively dialogue between your emerging life story and the enduring biblical story through smartphone photography, creative writing, and social media. It teaches creative ways to connect your life experiences to spiritual messages revealed in the Bible through the networked world of blogging, Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, Google+, Pinterest, and other Internet options for storytelling that combine images and text.

My writing emerges from the confluence of viewpoints as an observant Jew and professor of art and Jewish thought in Israeli universities with those of an artist exploring digital technologies and global systems through my research and teaching at Columbia University and MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Center for Advanced Visual Studies. In my work at universities in both Israel and the United States, I developed research methods for exploring the confluence emerging in the twenty-first century between biblical consciousness and postdigital culture. Both share a structure of consciousness and its cultural expression that honors creative process and a different spirit.

The great twentieth-century Jewish leader, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, known as the Lubavitcher Rebbe, taught that you must strive to draw spirituality down into the world and into every part of it, from the world of your work to your social life. Pastor John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel, expresses the same sentiment, When you get up in the morning, have something that’s on God’s agenda and do that!

I have discovered how strongly the thoughts explored in my books speak to Christians who share with Jews an abiding love of the Bible. Steve Green, chairman of the board of the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., writes on its Web site:

The Bible is the best-selling, most translated book of all time and is arguably history’s most significant piece of literature. It has had an unquestionable influence on science, education, democracy, arts and society. This book has also profoundly impacted lives across the ages.

My fresh insights into the Bible’s significance for life in our postdigital age of ubiquitous smartphones and social media have prompted Christian educators and authors to praise my books. Read their comments at the beginning of this book.

Many Christians see the veracity of the Bible in the realization of the biblical prophecies of the return of the Jewish people to their homeland after two thousand years of bitter exile. They acknowledge the miracle of my people seeing their prayers being answered and their dreams coming true in our day. For centuries, Jews throughout the world prayed every morning, afternoon, and evening: "Sound the great shofar for our freedom, create a miracle to gather us together from the four corners of the earth. Blessed are You, God, who gathers in the dispersed of His people Israel."

At an event saluting Christian Zionist volunteers in Israel, Speaker of the Knesset Yuli Edelstein spoke of the privilege Israel has in seeing the first step of the fulfillment of biblical prophecies. He stated that the first sign of the redemption starts with Christian supporters of Israel, good people from all over the world joining us in the desire to worship our mutual God and to work to assure that Jewish life in the Holy Land continues to thrive.

When God will return the exiles of Zion, we will have been as dreamers. Then our mouths shall be filled with laughter and our tongues with songs of joy. Then shall they say among the nations, ‘God has done great things for them!’

(ORIGINAL TRANSLATION, PSALMS 126:1–2)

The English translations of biblical passages throughout this book are my translations from Hebrew that speak to the postdigital age. Although I consult multiple English translations by Jews and Christians, the following section In the Beginning demonstrates how important it is to translate from the original language of the Bible to the language of smartphone culture. I have lectured in Hebrew in Israeli universities for more than two decades and speak Hebrew with my grandchildren who were born in the biblical cities of Jerusalem and Beersheva, and in Kfar Saba and Petah Tikva. The name of Petah Tikva, meaning Opening of Hope, was chosen by its founders in 1878 from the prophecy of Hosea.

And I will give her vineyards from there, and the Valley of Achor for an opening of hope; she shall sing there, as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt.

(ORIGINAL TRANSLATION, HOSEA 2:17)

IN THE BEGINING

This introduction draws on key biblical passages that illustrate the book’s major ideas. Let’s start with the first words of the Bible.

"In the beginning God created et the heaven and et the earth."

(ORIGINAL TRANSLATION, GENESIS 1:1)

The Hebrew word et in the original language of the Bible is the first creation before heaven and before earth. In translations, et drops out since it has no equivalent in English. It is a grammatical form indicating a direct object linking verb to noun. It links created to heaven and to earth. It is spelled aleph-tav, the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Spanning the full set of twenty-two Hebrew from aleph to tav, et represents a prototypic media system used to create a spiritual system called heaven and a material system called earth. The ancient Hebrew language is a prototype of media systems used to create spiritual systems, like the Bible itself. The Bible invites imaginative ways for exploring interrelationships between media systems, spiritual systems, and material systems.

The digital media system is a binary system of on-off, 1-0, light-darkness. Following the twenty-two-letter media system in the first words of the Bible, a binary system is created:

God separated between the light and darkness.

(ORIGINAL TRANSLATION, GENESIS 1:4)

Exploring the interplay between the digital, material, and spiritual systems forms a central theme throughout this book. Bits and bytes are basic elements of digital media systems. Atoms and molecules are basic elements of material systems. Supersized molecules like DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) contain the binary code of all life forms, written with two pairs of two letters: A-T, T-A and C-G, G-C. Hebrew letters are basic elements of the biblical media system. Kabbalah is the biblical media system where the twenty-two Hebrew letters become pathways between ten levels in the creative process that draw Divine light down into the world of time and space. It develops imaginative ways for exploring the vibrant interface between media systems, spiritual systems, and material systems, as revealed in the Bible. Kabbalah provides a symbolic language and a metaphorical way of thinking for exploring how Divine energies are drawn down into our everyday world.

SEEING SPIRITUALITY IN EVERYDAY LIFE

The inspiration for this book is the blogart project Torah Tweets: A Postdigital Biblical Commentary as a Blogart Narrative that my wife Miriam and I created to celebrate our fifty-second year of marriage. It develops an exemplary model of Bible blogging and photographing God that reveal spirituality in every facet of life. Our blogart project, both images and texts, can be accessed at http://bibleblogyourlife.blogspot.com.

During each of the fifty-two weeks of our fifty-second year, we posted digital photographs that reflect our life together, with a text of Twitter tweets that relates to the weekly portion of the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Our blogart project was widely disseminated through the blogosphere and twitterverse.

Shook Shopping is one of the fifty-two blog posts. It explores a passage from the Torah-portion Deuteronomy 21:10 – 25:19 called "Ki Teitzei/When you will go out" through photographs of my daughter Iyrit shopping in a pulsating marketplace in Israel, coupled with tweets derived from the Bible, contemporary thinkers, and popular literature that establish down-to-earth spirituality as the major theme of biblical consciousness. Throughout the book, you will find this theme inviting you to discover spirituality as it flows down into your life.

Down-to-Earth Spirituality

SHOOK SHOPPING

Ki Teitzei/When you will go out (Deuteronomy 21:10 – 25:19)

For the Lord thy God walks in the midst of your camp.

(ORIGINAL TRANSLATION, DEUTERONOMY 23:15)

Seeing God walking in the midst of our daily life is the overriding theme of the Torah Tweets blogart project.

Mel photographed our daughter Iyrit shopping for Shabbat in the lively Petah Tikva shook (marketplace).

Below, three of the twentieth century’s leading rabbis and a novelist comment on the centrality of down-to-earth spirituality in Judaism.

Talmudic scholar Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik in his book, Halakhic Man, teaches that Judaism does not direct its gaze upward but downward.

It fixes its gaze upon concreate reality, on every aspect of life, from the mall to the banquet hall.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe teaches that we must strive to draw spirituality down into every part of life, from our work to our social life.

A person’s work should not only serve as a distraction from his pursuit of God but must also become a full part of it.

In his novel City of God, E. L. Doctorow writes that religious revelation hides in our culture, appearing in the manner of our times.

It will be at ground level, on the street; it’ll be coming down the avenue in the traffic, hard to tell apart from anything else.

Chief Rabbi Kook points out that Moses taught that the role of the Jewish people about to enter the Land of Israel was to fuse heaven and earth.

He sees individual actions combine into a symphony of Jews living together as a sovereign nation in their own land.

Spectrum of Divine Light

PHOTOGRAPH THE SPECTRUM OF DIVINE LIGHT

Just as a prism breaks up white light into the colors of the spectrum, the Bible breaks up the spectrum of Divine light into attributes that color your thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Yours God are the compassion, the strength, the beauty, the success, the splendor, and the [foundation] of everything in heaven and on earth.

(ORIGINAL TRANSLATION, CHRONICLES 1:29)

Complementing the Torah Tweets blogart project is the Photograph God project that I required in the courses I taught as professor of art and Jewish thought at Ariel University and Emunah College in Jerusalem. My students photographed actions in their lives that illustrate each of the six Divine attributes and wrote about their experiences. See all six photographs at the blog post Leviticus 9: Photograph God at http://bibleblogyourlife.blogspot.com.

Keren saw compassion as an elderly man responding to feral cats hungry for love and food. He pets each one and portions out food for them. Esti’s father breeds parrots. She sees success as a parrot chick freeing itself from its egg continuing the cycle of life. Yael plays with the Hebrew word for splendor—hod—as the glorious feeling of young lovers kissing. She photographed their shadow as the hed (echo) of the event. Foundation is five generations. Miriam and I celebrated our great-grandson Eliad’s first birthday and the 100th birthday of Miriam’s mother, Anna Benjamin. I photographed Miriam with our daughter Iyrit, our granddaughter Inbal with her son Eliad, and Eliad’s great-great-grandmother Anna. Five generations in one photograph is an expression of the Divine attribute of foundation.

This book teaches you how to use your creative imagination to photograph these six Divine attributes as they are revealed in everything that you do. Focus your lens on acts of compassion, strength, beauty, success, and splendor that you encounter in your daily life. Shift your focus to see ordinary events as being extraordinary, incredible, and amazing. Take nothing for granted.

Later chapters of this book elucidate the range of meanings within each of these six Divine attributes by seeing them expressed in the lives of biblical personalities: Compassion (Abraham and Ruth), Strength (Isaac and Sarah), Beauty (Jacob and Rebecca), Success (Moses and Miriam), Splendor (Aaron and Deborah), and Foundation (Joseph and Tamar). Imagine walking with your smartphone millennia ago, photographing key events in the lives of these people. Then take your smartphone and photograph actions that you observe in the lives of family, friends, and others you encounter. See how these actions parallel events in the lives of these biblical personalities.

LIFE IN THE LAND OF ISRAEL

The exemplary Torah Tweets blogart project (http://bibleblogyourlife.blogspot.com) invites the reader to follow the everyday life of my wife, myself, and our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. It documents our life in Israel, in the land of where the biblical narrative unfolds, in the land that the biblical prophecies of the ingathering of the Jewish people is being realized today. Miriam and I sense the privilege of living the visions of the prophets in all that we see and do.

Old men and women will once again sit in the streets of Jerusalem…and the streets of the city will be filled with boys and girls playing

(ORIGINAL TRANSLATION, ZECHARIAH 8:5)

As part of the aboriginal people of the Land of Israel described in the Bible, we walk in the same pathways our ancestors walked three millennia ago. In our everyday life, we speak Hebrew, the original language of the Bible, live by the Hebrew calendar, and celebrate the same biblical holidays. My ten-year-old grandsons and granddaughters read the Bible in the language in which it was originally written with the ease and comprehension of reading an Israeli daily newspaper. Everywhere in the Holy Land that we aim our smartphone lens, we find ourselves photographing the biblical world of the patriarchs, judges, kings, and prophets.

I will bring your descendants from the east, and gather you from the west. I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’ And to the south, ‘Do not keep them back!’ Bring My sons from afar, and My daughters from the ends of the earth.

(ORIGINAL TRANSLATION, ISAIAH 43:5–6)

The great biblical miracle of liberating one nation of thousands from enslavement in the one country of Egypt after two centuries of exile pales in comparison with the Zionist miracle in our time of ingathering millions of Jews from a hundred countries after two thousand years and bringing them home to Israel.

I was born in New York, of parents born in Boston and New Jersey. Miriam was born in Suriname, where the Amazon jungle reaches the Atlantic Ocean. Her parents were born in Amsterdam. We came on aliyah to Israel with our three children, Iyrit, Ari, and Ron, who were born in New York. Our fourth child, Moshe, was born in Beersheva. Iyrit’s husband Dr. Yehiel Lasry was born in Morocco and came to Israel with his family when he was six years old. He is mayor of Ashdod, Israel’s fifth largest city and its major port, former surgeon-general of the Israeli navy, and a member of Knesset. Ari’s wife Julie was born in Boston, a descendant of the Jewish sheriff of Tucson in the Wild West. Ron’s wife Miri was born in Jerusalem. Her father, a Holocaust survivor, is a rabbi born in Hungary. Moshe’s wife Dr. Carmit Eliassi Alexenberg is a chemistry professor born in Israel, of parents born in Iran.

As I am writing this, Iyrit and her husband, the mayor of Ashdod, were on the tarmac at Ben-Gurion Airport, welcoming the arrival of the first of 16 El Al Dreamliners from the Boeing factory in Washington State. Painted on the plane was Ashdod, in honor of the city’s founding sixty years ago. Watching the plane touch down brought tears to Iyrit’s eyes as she witnessed the miracle of the Jewish people returning home "on wings of eagles" (Exodus 19:4). My son-in-law told me that the citizens of his city were born in 99 countries.

Who are these who fly like a cloud, and like doves to their roosts…to bring your sons from afar?

(ORIGINAL TRANSLATION, ISAIAH 60:8–9)

SPIRITUALITY AT THE FOUR WINGS OF AMERICA

"He came upon the place and spent the night there because the sun had set; and he took from the stones of the place which he arranged around his head and lay down in that place. Jacob awoke from his sleep and he said, ‘God is truly in this place, and I did not know it. How awesome is this place!’"

(ORIGINAL TRANSLATION, GENESIS 28:11, 16–17)

What was so awesome about the rocky no-man’s-land where Jacob stopped to rest on his journey from Beersheva to Haran? He awoke with the awe-inspiring insight that whatever place he found himself, he would find God. The word place appears five times in the biblical passage above. Indeed, in the Bible’s original Hebrew language, The Place is Hamakom, one of the names of God. In a commentary on Genesis penned nearly two millennia ago, rabbis ask, "Why do we call God by the name Hamakom? Because God is the place of the world." It teaches that Hamakom, the Omnipresent, is everyplace. Jacob had discovered that God is present wherever he stopped on his life’s journey.

Through a Bible lens, you can see every place in which you find yourself, anywhere in the world, as The Place, Hamakom. Aim your smartphone on any place and discover that you are taking a selfie with God. See how anyplace at any time of your life can bring up biblical passages that illuminate your experience. Although it is easier for my wife and me to relate passages from the Bible to our lives living in the Holy Land, we have found that the Bible colors our experiences wherever we are.

When I was invited by the City of Miami to create artworks to celebrate Miami’s centennial, I sensed that I was at one of the four corners of the Continental United States. It brought to mind biblical passages that relate to four corners:

Speak to the Israelites and say to them that they shall make fringes on the corner wings (kanfai) of their garments for all generations. And they shall include in the fringes of each corner wing (kanaf) a thread of sky-blue wool.

(ORIGINAL TRANSLATION, NUMBERS 15:37)

Before the Israelites received the Ten Commandments, God told Moses