Three Books and a Path

The project “Three Books and a Path” deals with memory, documentation, and research. It summarizes years of studying the techniques of drawing, painting, and objects. The books are the start of the miniatures project, comprising 70 artist’s books in varying sizes, which I created over 2023–2024. I researched the world of books and book-binding using several techniques. I made some of the books and bought others, never thinking about where the project would take me. I became addicted.

The book, like all my artistic work, deals with my roots in the ultra-orthodox tradition and with my family that faithfully preserves my religious world. My ancestors are from a line of writers descending from the late Shlomo Ganzfried, author of the halakhic work Kitzur Shulhan Arukh (The Abbreviated Shulhan Arukh). The watershed is a metaphor for my place in the world, which runs along the seam between my heritage in the ultra-orthodox world and my reality in the creative world. The Jewish language and culture in which I was raised allow me to create motifs of sacredness and religious mysticism from a first-person perspective and also to bring my life into the free world and relate to the formalism of Western culture. As an artist, I find a mission in connecting and bridging the two worlds.

I correspond with the holy books from my late father’s home. My grandfather published rabbinical books of biblical interpretation in Budapest, which were lost in the Holocaust. When my parents immigrated to Israel, my father took it upon himself to republish all the books, in addition to his work in the rabbinate in Tel Aviv. This was his life’s work. In a certain sense, the miniature library project underscores the library’s very existence and the abundance of books it holds.