Then יהוה said to Moses, “Make a seraph figure and mount it on a standard. And anyone who was bitten who then looks at it shall recover.”
Moses made a copper serpent and mounted it on a standard; and when bitten by a serpent, anyone who looked at the copper serpent would recover.
(Bemidbar 21:8-9)
In response to a major health crisis I ask: why was it the Book of Iyov that contained the key to my recovery? What could be the relationship between this representation of suffering and my living, breathing, struggling body? And what qualities must this representation of suffering—unlike all other representations—have, in order for this thing we call ‘healing’ to take place?
I found the beginnings of an answer to these questions in Parsha Chukat, which teaches us that a made object can serve as a point of focus to intensify our attention on what lies beyond it. The object itself may not have any intrinsic power to affect us; rather the power to shift our attention, even to heal us, comes from its capacity to direct us towards G-d.
Parsha Chukat teaches that for healing to be conveyed, a representational object must act—through force of attraction—as a kind of lightning conductor for G-d. In this way an art or textual object can serve as a vehicle through which we move closer in proximity to G-d. It is this proximity with G-d that is necessary for the deeper restoration of the body.
In Parsha Chukat, G-d acts through Moshe, inspiring him to become an artist/sculptor in order to heal the snake-bitten Israelites. G-d compels Moshe to create a rod with a sculpted snake at its top, insisting that when the afflicted Israelites look up towards the snake they will be healed. It isn’t a property of the object itself which has this power, but rather the fact that this object has become—through force of attraction— something like a tuning fork for the attention, intensifying thereby the viewer’s proximity to G-d, through whom this healing happens.
In this way, the snake-rod sculpture (Nehushtan נְחֻשְׁתָּן) can be seen as a superlative example of what Peter Berger calls a “signal of transcendence”, awakening us to the unseen reality.
The object invites us to look up with our eyes and compels a concentration of attention that urges us to move beyond looking. In ‘Painting Chukat', I’m interested in exploring the significance of verticality in this context. I chose to work on an awkward-shaped canvas, which is tall and thin, encouraging the viewer to send her vision upwards.
The Book of Iyov spoke to me through my health crisis via a deep identification with the struggling Iyov and with the transformations he undergoes. Exploring this kind of deeper identification underlies my practice: how can my work affect an identification in the viewer, directing them through an intensification in attention towards Am Israel and G-d?
By paying close, physical attention to the material process as it unfolds—often working in thick layers of paint, which are put on and scrubbed away, overlayed and cut into—I want to pulverise, resuscitate, breathe life into symbols; build vitality into them (Ot Chaim אות חיים).
Iyov’s body was pounded and tormented like mine; he lost everything, both the physical and immaterial: his capacity to reason, sense, identify and exist in a body. Iyov was reduced to pure attention, nothing but an abject, despairing ‘I’ fixated on its own suffering. Despite all his losses, Iyov’s attention cleaved to G-d: he never lost his grip on life, never turned away in resentment, even whilst he longed for death. At the end of his story, G-d celebrates and uplifts him for his unblinking commitment to the reality of what he was experiencing. Throughout his suffering his emunah (faith) never wavers—he never turns his back on G-d as the supreme context for his life, even while he rails against what he perceives as G-d’s intransigence and cruelty.
But his story teaches that emunah alone is not sufficient for transformation and recovery. Emunah must develop into bitachon (trust) in order for restoration to take place. When Iyov allows his attention to move beyond the noise of his own affliction, he can hear G-d’s whisper, he can see it. He listens and G-d speaks: as G-d appears to him, emunah transforms into bitachon.
Hear now, and I will speak;
I will ask, and You will inform me.
I had heard You with my ears,
But now I see You with my eyes;
(Iyov 42:4-5)
The Book of Iyov is an astonishing representation of the healing power of bitachon, a concept also represented in Moshe’s snake-wrapped-rod, which had the power to orientate and ground during a time of crisis.
The symbol of the rod infers the principle of integrity and stability that our embodied form affords us. Our bodies are rods; our feet firmly planted on the ground, vertically extending towards the heavens. The symbol of the snake, however, can be understood as a rod tending towards the state of water—locked in the process of becoming water. The snake is in this way a rod that is no longer grounded or appropriately attached, like a body detached from its grounding integrity; turned inwards, merely examining itself. Water is a symbol of the spiritual realm, the unconscious and the imagination, but when this principle loses touch with the integrating rod, the consequence is dispersion, scattering, dilution and restless change. How can we look up if we lose our centre, how can we tell which way is up and which down?
The snake is animated by and for itself, neither grounded in the earth below or heavens above. The snake without connection to the integrating rod, is like the mind detached from the orienting and integrating body, leaving it rudderless and adrift. In this way it follows that the image of the snake coiled around the rod in perfect symbiosis speaks of that state of Grace—of physical-spiritual health—through which we move comfortably and indivisibly in our experience as bodyminds, without falling into pathological dualism. It is G-d who teaches us how to build this balance, which is precisely a balance achieved through deep acceptance of who and where we are: present, embodied and turning (tuning) our attention upwards to G-d.
Iyov never lost sight of who and where he is, and it is precisely this force of attention that allows him to be saved. All it takes is a change in perspective, for faith to elevate into trust.
At our core and beyond all thoughts there is a rod that grounds us and gives us strength. It is given by G-d and is perhaps only perceptible in a crisis, when all else is swept away and we no longer have any choice but to notice it. Our mental activity can be swept and blown by the currents. This is its great strength, so strong it can sweep us away forever. If we don’t trust in G-d to curl it around our rod, through this intensification of attention, it could sweep us all the way to Sheol. In my illness and recovery, I have known such journeys.
This painting is an analogue for the sculpted image G-d instructs Moshe to build in Parsha Chukat. It is created as a signal of transcendence: a tuning fork for the viewer’s attention. Inviting the viewer to move in closer proximity to G-d. Just as the Book of Iyov, and the snake-rod are only vessels to move our attention, the painting acts as a guide to move the viewer towards what lies beyond. All my work is a song of return to Hashem: the interrogation of materials, the transformation of materials into symbols, the transmission of symbols into attention, the elevation of attention into divine presentness, an effort destined to fall short but for which we can only keep trying.
