(Author: Natalie Knight, Vol. 67, No. 1, Pesach 2012)
When I interviewed Herman Wald in his studio in 1970, three weeks before his sudden death at the age of 64, I was intrigued to find an artist who was conflicted about religion. He was frustrated by the second Commandment, “Thou shalt not make graven images.” This, after all, was his calling.1
Wald was forced to take the Ten
Commandments very seriously. He grew up in a religious home where his father was a Rabbi and his mother came from a distinguished line of Rabbonim. Knowledge of the Bible was something the young Herman imbibed in his mother’s milk and his sculptures include his interpretation of Cain, Jacob, Moses, Job and many others.
Wald recalled that when he was a teenager, his father refused to allow him to make threedimensional art forms. However, being a rebel, he secretly made a realistic portrait bust of Theodore Herzl, which he finally showed to his father: “While inspecting it I noticed a veil gradually lifting from his eyes – a screen that separated the religious prejudice from the instinctive understanding of the fine arts. He only shook his head in a noncommittal way, not knowing whether to be for or against my career”.
Rabbi Wald realized that he could not fight his son’s passionate calling and sent him to study at the National Academy in Budapest, and later to Europe and the UK.
I interviewed Rabbi Avi Amittai co-Rosh Kollel of the Beit Mordechai Campus Kollel at Yeshiva College, and asked him about the interpretation of the commandment “Thou shalt not make a graven image”. Does this include the words and “bow down to them”? Would it be acceptable to make a sculpture purely for aesthetic reasons?
Rabbi Amittai, said that the two parts were not one sentence but two. There was no getting around the fact that we are commanded not to make graven images – even if we don’t intend to bow down to them. Jewish law not only allows but encourages the skilled artist or craftsman to make beautiful objects for use (the first artist so commanded was Bezalel,2 Shemot 35:30:33).
There are fewer objections to two-dimensional art, and for thousands of years skilled Jewish artists have decorated and illustrated books and manuscripts.3 The purpose of the art is to glorify Hashem and to refine the character of the artist.
R’ Amittai referred to the fact that the prohibition against making graven images has come to mean that a sculptor cannot create a human figure, detailed and life-size, but that an abstract sculpture or part of the human form would be acceptable.
I asked him how to reconcile this stricture with the fact that there were two winged cherubs (Kruvim) in the Temple that had human features. To this, he replied, “Hashem commanded man in general not to make graven images and he commanded Bezalel to make the Kruvim for a particular purpose. They are two different commandments, each coming from Hashem”.
The Rabbi pointed out that we live in a time where people are asking questions and want to understand. They are not prepared to accept the Halacha blindly as they did in the past.
He agreed that there was a different mood in the 21st Century world. Art today is no longer as connected as it was to religion and idol-worship. However, he re-iterated that Hashem instructed us to stay away from graven images, remarking that the Torah wants to protect us from ever reverting back to those wild, dark elements within man.
In this connection, Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks comments, “The aesthetic dimension of Judaism has tended to be downplayed, at least until the modern era, for obvious reasons. The Israelites worshipped the invisible God who transcended the universe. Other than the human person, God has no image. Even when he revealed himself to the people at Sinai, ‘You heard the sound of words but saw no form; there was only a voice’ (Devarim, 4: 12)”.
I posed the predicament of Rabbi Jacob Meir Wald to Rabbi Amittai, who said, “The father was a very wise man. He saw that his son was talented and did not want to forbid him from creating art. Rather than have his son defy him, he taught him the halochas and how to work within the law.”
Herman Wald knew that he could make art that was abstract and did this whenever he was involved in a Jewish public commission. His commercial works, however, often included realistic figures such as the Diamond Diggers in Kimberley and the impalas in The Stampede, for the Oppenheimer Memorial Fountain in Johannesburg.
In 1959 Herman Wald presented thirty-four Biblical figures in Queens Hall, Johannesburg, regarding these works as his personal representations on religion and philosophy. When an admirer complimented him on his work but expressed his regret that his he could not buy a “graven image”, Wald responded, “Do you keep the other nine commandments so rigorously as well?”
Herman Wald was very conscious of his heritage and the mitzvah of honouring his parents. It had been a harsh struggle to go against the will of his father and become a professional sculptor. He found a way to justify his choice saying, “Though the religious environment into which I was born seemed to clash with my calling, later when I discovered that religion and art do not ultimately exclude each other, but go hand-inhand, my mind was at peace and I accepted the calling.”
The Biblical and humorous shtetl figures Wald made were more than depiction of colourful characters. He emphasized that form in itself was not sufficient justification for creating a sculpture. The work had to either create an emotional impact on the viewer or have a symbolic connotation.4
Wald may have seen the work of German artist, Kathe Kollwitz, who conveyed intense emotional grief in her sculptures. Her son was killed in World War 1 and she created Mother and Child 1936.
Wald’s response to the deaths in his family and the horrifying accounts of those being transferred to Auschwitz (including his mother and siblings) resulted in a major work entitled Kria, rending of garments expressing Jewish mourning from biblical days until the present time. This work was originally placed at Sandringham Gardens in 1950 and is currently on exhibition in Cape Town. It will be permanently installed at the Holocaust Museum in Westcliff, Johannesburg, once the construction of the Museum is complete.
At times Wald was compliant, trying to observe Jewish law, but at others he lashed out at the restrictions saying that he had a bone to pick with Moses: “Hashem forbad carving and then Moses himself carved out the Ten Commandments in stone. Moses understood the power of carving. If he had not he would have created a document not a monument”, he said.
Wald was able to work in two dimensions and his drawings capture in fine economical lines the essence of his ideas. Had he developed this area of his talent, he would have been successful in satisfying rabbinical law and also in creating works which took him to places where his sculpture could not follow in the conservative art environment of South Africa. It is instructive to compare the sculpture of Jacob wrestling with the Angel with the original drawing. Note the way in which Wald conceived and executed his idea in both two and three dimensional form.
In an article I wrote on Wald in Buurman (1970), I described an underlying sense of frustration that he felt: “He was very earnest and tightly involved with his work. He spoke about his successes but there was an undercurrent of regret and he felt that he had not achieved what he wanted to for himself. He referred to the maquettes which were really planned as monuments which he hoped would one day come to fruition.”5 HERMAN WALD – The Stampede – Impala Fountain by Herman Wald – Commissioned by Harry Oppenheimer in memory of his father Sir Ernest in 1960 (Bronze – 7.5m wide)Photo by Jac de Villier I wonder if the maquette of Man and his Soul, created in 1965, was in the studio that day. It would be ironic or maybe poetic justice to think that I was instrumental in realizing the beauty and power of the work. Forty years later, in my capacity as Art curator on the West Campus of the University of the Witwatersrand, I submitted the maquette to Prof Kathy Munro, the then acting Dean of the Faculty of Commerce Law and Management. I proposed the work for installation on the Wits West Campus and the idea was accepted. Herman Wald would have been delighted to see how the small maquette was expanded, using modern technology and cast as a work almost three meters in height and diameter.6 The semi-abstract work floats in a circular motion defying gravity, eschewing detail and, despite the title, leaves the form open to individual interpretation. I also proposed the sculpture the Unknown Miner for installation in the Chamber of Mines building.7 I saw the mould lying face down in a make-shift studio. Wald’s son, Louis, offered to donate the two sculptures to the University (asking only that they pay for the casting). In November 2011,Unknown Miner was installed at the entrance of the Chamber of Mines Building on the West Campus and unveiled in March, 2012 as an important event in the 90th anniversary celebrations of the University. With the Unknown Miner and Man and his Soul, Wald incorporates what he absorbed from his studies in Budapest, Europe and London. He includes the detailed realism and vigorous surface modelling of Rodin and Jacob Epstein in Unknown Miner and the smooth, fluid attenuated forms of Brancusi and Totilla Albert in Man and his Soul. The two works are examples of his conflict with the Halacha – the need to create and the need to survive financially. Wald found himself part of a momentum that had begun in the late 19th Century where Jewish artists wanted to create sculpture. This began with the Russian artist, Mark Antokolsky (18431902), followed by Jacques Lipchitz, Jacob Epstein, and in South Africa, Moses Kottler, Lippy Lipshitz, Ernest Ullmann and Solly Disner. Of the works commissioned from Wald by the Jewish community, the best known is the Monument to the Six Million Martyrs at the West Park Cemetery, Johannesburg. The current retrospective exhibition, hosted by the Jewish Museum in Cape Town, takes its title from the work The Wings of the Shechinah which Wald made for the Berea Synagogue. This was a very significant commission for the artist. Wald wrote, “When I was approached to design the main Wall of the Berea Synagogue, I felt that I was faced with a number of problems. It is no simple matter to reconstruct a conception derived from Biblical days, when the Covenant was carried in the desert.” In Jewish mysticism the Shechinah represents the highest level of spiritual growth and is the mystical awareness of the Eternal One. Wald distilled the image from the description of the cherubim rendered by Bezalel: “I have attempted to reinterpret the conception that Bezalel used. I had to take into account that the law forbids the use of living figures in sculpture, so I could use the non- figurative part of the Cherubim theme – namely, wings – to embrace the ark in which the Law is carried.” HERMAN WALD – ‘Monument to Six Million’ by Herman Wald (West Park Cemetery JHB), Photoby Jac de Villiers Floating above the wings, enhanced by “chains of continuity” which also symbolize the link between man and God, are the tablets of the Ten Commandments rendered in copper, “to give the impression that the message they carry is floating across the whole world”. The Hebrew term Shechinah refers to the Divine Presence. It is derived from the Hebrew word shochen – to dwell, the Shechinah seeks to dwell with us on this physical earth. Judaism teaches us what we must do so that Hashem will draw near to us in ‘this’ world and explains that the essential dwelling of the Shechinah is in the lower world of this earth.8 The Shechinah represents those attributes of Hashem that are ‘feminine’; thus, when we speak of the ‘motherly’ closeness of Hashem (who seeks to nurture and protect us), we are speaking of the Shechinah. One of the metaphors, which Judaism uses to describe this closeness, is that of a mother bird, (an eagle) who takes her young under her wings. When we come close to Hashem, we have come “under the wings of the Shechinah.” Sanctum, the carved wooden choir-screen made for the Springs shul, is one of the highlights of the exhibition at the Jewish Museum. The work contains different facets of Jewish history and symbols, including hands in prayer, a menorah and the Lion of Judah, all encompassed by a tallis In modern times, the thinker who spoke most eloquently about aesthetics was Rav Yitchak HaKohein Kook. In his Commentary to the Siddur, he wrote, “Literature, painting and sculpture give material expression to all the spiritual concepts implanted in the depths of the human soul, and as long as even one single line hidden in the depth of the soul has not been given outward expression, it is the task of art [avodat ha-umanut] to bring it out” (Olat Re-ayah, II, 3). Evidently these remarks were considered controversial. In later editions of the Commentary the phrase, “Literature, painting and sculpture” was removed and in its place was written, “Literature, its design and tapestry.” The name Bezalel was adopted by the artist Boris Schatz for the School of Arts and Crafts he founded in Israel in 1906, and Rav Kook wrote a touching letter in support of its creation. He saw the renaissance of art in the Holy Land as a symbol of the regeneration of the Jewish people in its own land, landscape and birthplace. Judaism in the Diaspora, removed from a natural connection with its own historic environment, was inevitably cerebral and spiritually, alienated’. Only in Israel would an authentic Jewish aesthetic emerge, strengthened by and in turn strengthening Jewish spirituality.9 Rav Joseph B. Soloveichik says that from his perspective, “human creativity and initiative in science and technology are … desirable, because they reflect the dignity conferred upon creatures bearing the divine image.” This stance is usually rejected by the so-called “yeshiva world”, which assigns religious significance to creativity only insofar as it is directly and immediately related to the field of Torah. Rav Chaim of Volozhin makes the point that while human beings are mandated to imitate the creativity of the Creator, this emulation is possible only in the exercise of spiritual creativity.10 This is in keeping with the Kabbalistic doctrines which affirm that only Torah study and observance of the Commandments create new spiritual worlds in the higher regions. Rav Soloveichik objects to this denigration of secular activities. He feels that scientific and technological creativity also constitutes an intrinsically valuable mode of imitating the Divine Creator.11 Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks says, “When art lets us see the wonder of creation as God’s work and the human person as God’s image, it becomes a powerful part of the religious life, with one proviso. The Greeks believed in the holiness of beauty. Jews believe in hadrat kodesh, the beauty of holiness: not art for art’s sake but art as a disclosure of the ultimate artistry of the Creator. That is how omanut enhances emunah, how art adds wonder to faith.” Herman Wald is an artist whose roots formed him, whose environment restricted him and whose familial obligations directed him. Nevertheless, he was able to transcend his constraints through his passion and skill. He produced an amazing variety of works which are tactile, expressive and appealing. He lived a life imbued with Jewish values and the sacrifices that he made for his family are appreciated and have borne fruit. The donation of the works to Wits by his sons, Michael and Louis and the mounting of the major exhibition Wings of the Shechinah were all done to honour their father. In the end, Wald succeeded in creating major, meaningful works within the parameters of Halacha. Through these unique and unparalleled monuments, he is remembered today for his ability to encapsulate the “beauty of holiness”. Natalie Knight is an attorney, art critic and freelance feature writer, who further works as an art consultant, curator of exhibitions and lecturer. She is the author of two books on the Ndebele and has written and produced two plays, Barmy Days and There’s No Sugar Left.
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