OriginaWatercolor pencil and Oil Pastel on vellum paper

14" x 11"

2024

This piece illustrates the dynamic between what is known as the “Abrahamic Religions,” in regard to their respective books.  In Islam, Christians and Jews are referred to as “People of The Book,” or in Arabic, Ahl al-Kitāb, worshippers of the one G-d, granting them a higher status than non-believers.  Historically Jews and Christians were considered dhimmis, or a protected second class citizen.

Thousands of years old, the Tanakh or Hebrew Bible, is known in Christianity as, “The Old Testament,” a description of how historically Christianity has seen the Jewish canon, one that is superseded by the “New Testament.”  The Christian Bible is comprised of both “Old,” and “New” Testaments, with the Hebrew Bible taking up over three-fourths of the entire book.  Islam, arriving in the later part of the sixth century common era, encompasses the prophets and stories of both Judaism and Christianity, having superseded both of them as the new and updated version of the revealed “truth.”   

However, for the Jewish people, the Hebrew Bible is not just a book of scripture for a religion, and not only their relationship with the Creator, but their particular and even folkloric origin stories, festivals, including those that are land-based, language, values and traditions of their ancestors, both spiritually and genetically.  It links the Jewish people, or Am Yisrael, in a very long and ancient chain, connecting us to our past, our roots, and a roadmap for our future, especially in the Diaspora, where we try to maintain our identities as minorities outside of the Land of Israel.

Throughout history to today, the stories and people from the Hebrew Bible are reinterpreted and at times used against the Jews, as proof of their failure to “correctly” understand their own texts, rendering their covenant with the G-d of Israel obsolete to make room for the revealed truth of the new religion.