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MASADA / THE  FOXES
JANET SHAFNER     63”X46”     OIL ON CANVAS/WOOD        2003

In the year 66 CE a Jewish revolt against the Roman occupation of Palestine began.  It  lasted for four years until the Roman general Titus conquered Jerusalem, sacked the city and destroyed the Temple.

Only one outpost held out  against  the Romans – the  fortress  of  Masada.

At the beginning of the revolt, a band of Jewish fighters made the difficult trek into  the Judean desert, defeated the Roman garrison at Masada and took possession of it.  After the fall of Jerusalem, they  were joined by a few surviving patriots and held the outpost until 73 CE, when Flavius Silva, the Roman Governor, marched on Masada with thousands of troops.

When the Romans began to breach the fortification of Masada, the defenders chose death at their own hand rather than surrender.  The  Roman legion reached the top of the outpost only to find the bodies of the defenders - 960 men, women and children.

The painting of Masada shows fallen boulders and walls, and the ritual baths as they looked after modern excavation. I have combined these fragments in an imagined  view towards  the edge of the mountain.

The lunette refers to a event related in the Talmud.  Rabbi Akiva, Rabban Gamliel, Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah and Rabbi Yehoshua came to  Jerusalem after the destruction of the Second Temple.  When  they saw wild foxes running through  the ruins of the Temple, three of them began to cry, but Rabbi Akiva laughed.

Rabbi Akiva explained:  “Now that I see the prophecy of Uriah – that  ‘Zion shall be plowed as a field, Jerusalem shall become ruins and the Temple Mount a shrine in the woods’ --  has been fulfilled, I know the prophecy of Zechariah – that ‘old men and old women will again dwell in the streets of Jerusalem’ – will also be fulfilled”. The Rabbis responded, “Akiva, you have comforted us”.

JONAH AND THE KIKAYON
62”X52”  OIL ON CANVAS    1988

The prophet Jonah, who lived in era of the first Temple, was commanded by God to go to Nineveh, capital of  Assyria, one of the most powerful cities of that time, but a place of great evil, and to prophesy its destruction, unless the people repented. Jonah,instead, fled from God and boarded a ship to Tarshish, trying to escape from his mission. Jonah knew that Assyria would eventually conquer Israel, and he wished for its destruction, not its salvation.

God sent  a tempest into the sea. When the sailors, discovered that Jonah was the cause of the raging storm, they reluctantly cast him overboard. God sent a large fish to swallow him and Jonah remained in the fish for three days and three nights praying. When he was released from the fish, God again commanded Jonah to proclaim the Divine message that in forty days the city would be destroyed unless they radically reformed their lives.

The Prophet’s dramatic warning was believed and the inhabitants, including the King of Nineveh, fasted and covered themselves with ashes and sackcloth. God accepted their repentance and Nineveh was saved.

Jonah was anguished because he  had hoped for the destruction of Nineveh,  Israel’s implacable enemy. He made himself a booth and sat in it to see what would happen.  God made a huge Kikayon grow to give Jonah shade and protect him from the sun. Jonah was overjoyed with the shade of the plant, but then God sent a worm to wither it. The destruction of the Kikayon so grieved Jonah that he wished to die.
God then said to Jonah,” You took pity on the Kikayon for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow; it lived one night and perished. And I - shall I not take pity upon Nineveh the great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, (i.e. children) and many animals as well?”

“MAY YOU LIVE FOREVER”: THE ASSUMPTION OF SERACH BAT ASHER

OIL ON CANVAS 50”X50” 2010

We first encounter Serach in Genesis as one of the seventy persons of Jacob’s household who came to Egypt, and significantly, the only female grandchild of Jacob whose name is recorded. Serach is also named as one of the Israelites who came out of Egypt 210 years later.

As a young gifted harpist, she was asked to gently sing a message to Jacob telling him that his son Joseph, whom he had mourned for over twenty years, was still alive. In response, he blessed her, saying, "May you live forever!". Thus, Serach was brought into heaven while still alive.

Her long life and prodigious memory, Midrash tells us, enabled her to remember the secret words passed down from her grandfather Jacob that would identify the true redeemer from Egypt. When Moses claimed he was the redeemer, and spoke those words, Serach confirmed him as the chosen one.

Again, she was the only one who remembered where Joseph was buried, and led the children of Israel to the Nile so they could fulfill their promise to carry Joseph's body with them back to the Promised Land .

In the painting, the seated figure is a self portrait.

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52”x40” Oil on Canvas/Wood 2006

The legend of the Golem embodies our universal yearning to be rescued from persecution and destruction through supernatural forces. The story of the Golem has inspired artists, writers, filmmakers and musicians; even the story of Frankenstein and the Superhero comics reflect this theme.

There are many stories about the creation of a Golem, but the most enduring is that of the Golem of Prague, said to have been created by Rabbi Judah Loew (the Maharal) in 1580, during a desperate time for the Jews of that area.

In 1559, all Hebrew books in Prague were seized and examined for anti-Christian references. Jews were persecuted, ordered to wear yellow badges and forced to listen to Christian sermons denigrating their faith. Copies of the Talmud were burned, and murderous pogroms, fueled by blood libels, were frequent.

Rabbi Loew was a great scholar and mystic, immersed in the study of the medieval Zohar, the central text of Kabbalah, and in the ancient Book of Creation, (Sefer Yetzirah). He, with two of his followers, fashioned the Golem with clay from the banks of the Moldau river bank, using certain Kabbalistic formulas passed to him in a dream. When Rabbi Loew placed a parchment with the Divine Name in the mouth of the clay figure, the Golem came to life.

The clay effigy of the Golem, according to legend, was hidden away in the attic of Rabbi Loew’s synagogue where visitors, many centuries later, claimed that the outline of the giant form could still be seen.

The Hebrew words, Emet (truth) and Met (death) are painted on the lower canvas. Rabbi Loeb inscribed “Emet” on the forehead of the Golem. When the Golem’s mission of protecting the Jews of Prague was completed, the Rabbi retreived the parchment with the Divine Name, and erased the first letter of the word “truth” which then became the word “death”. With that gesture, the Golem returned to lifeless clay.

48”x84” 3 panels Oil on Canvas 2006

The daughters of Zelophehad, son of Hepher, son of Gilead, son of Machir, son of Manasseh, of the families of Manasseh son of Joseph, drew near -
and these are the names of his daughters: Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah - and they stood before Moses....saying, "Our father died in the wilderness, .....but he died of his own sin; and he had no sons. Why should the name of our father be omitted from among his family because he had no son? Give us a possession among our father's brothers.” And Moses brought their case before God.

We read about the daughters of Zelophehad in the Book of Numbers.
As the children of Israel came to the end of their forty year journey, God commanded a final census of His people in preparation for the division of the land according to the tribes.

After the counting of the children of Israel, the daughters of Zelophehad approached Moses. Since their father had no sons, and sons were the traditional heirs, Zelophehad’s name would be obliterated and his descendants deprived of a share in the promised land unless his daughters could inherit.

Moses brought the case before God, and God told Moses: ... “the daughters of Zelophehad speak properly. You shall surely give them a possession of inheritance”.

The courage of these women who spoke out to the leaders of the nation against an unfair system resulted in a crucial shift in the law. The sages tell us that the women were also motivated by an intense love of the land of Israel. The division of the land was still in the future, but their desire to share in it signaled their faith in Israel’s eventual possession of its promised land.

In this painting of the Daughters of Zelophehad, the figures are imagined as sentinel figures, archaically draped, and set against a panorama of walls - ancient and modern, including the politically charged contemporary wall between Israel and her Arab neighbors. The incised writing in the red areas is the text of the narrative.