Examining Spinoza meant studying the חרם (herem) that falls across his name like a shadow. Translated as ‘destroy’ and understood as excommunication, the language of the writ is a curse penned with the darkest intentions for spiritual annihilation and breach from the community, a written decree for ideas which hadn’t yet been put to paper. It would be a few hundred years before democracy became enshrined as a Jewish value, and before the beginnings of the Jewish state. All Spinoza had in common with the Jews of Europe were the shared roots of religious doctrine and the brutal effects of antisemitism. I imagine what he would have thought of the Jewish nation in its current declaration of self-hood, where governance is whispered into the ears of statesmen and crafted into law by the philosophical descendants of those who exiled him. I imagine the letter he might send ahead of a visit, a calling card to the future community of elders who decide who is and who is not a Jew, a message from Spinoza as if to say to the in-gathering of the exiles, “Here I am; I have already been cast out.”

About/Bio:

The persistence of narrative, holes in the story, and the natural world inspire me to explore the intersecting spaces between image and text. Using oil sticks, encaustic pigments, photographs, cloth, paper, salt, and other materials, I work abstractly to amplify narrative tension. By covering and revealing, gouging, scraping, and incising to explore the idea of loss, memory, the effects of time on culture, and the lost spaces surrounding language, I seek to inform interpretations of events both historical and ahistorical by giving voice to the silence.

In addition to making art and writing, I am a teacher of the blind and visually impaired and founding member of the Jewish Artists Collective of Chicago. I have exhibited work at the Spertus Institute of Jewish Learning, The Evanston Art Center, The Art Center of Highland Park, The Bridgeport Arts Center, and Morpho Gallery. A two-time Illinois Arts Council Award recipient, I have published poetry, fiction, and essays in Intellectual Refuge, Best of the Best American Poetry 2013, Lilith, Zocalo Public Square, Brain, Child, Jewish Fiction, and in other publications.