Creation opens the religious undertaking. God creates man and charges him to continue that creation in casting dominion over the world created for him. Man creates words with which to praise and understand his creator and his world. These words take the form of prayers, study, discussions and dialogues. Whether from Betzalel ben Uri to King David or from Rabbi Yehuda Halevi to Shmuel Yosef Agnon, a creative tradition has informed our nation’s religious history. The Jew meets God as a co-creator.

In an age, in which Orthodox Judaism is cast as stoic and monochrome, we must proudly cultivate our religious vitality in mind and heart, the vibrant creative gesture that allows the religious person to partner with Hakadosh Baruch Hu. In an age in which values antithetical to our Halacha dominate secular creative culture, we must form venues for religious creativity that will ennoble and safeguard our values of modesty and human dignity. Mima`amakim attempts to create such a forum. But while channeling the creative act toward religious heights, Mima`amakim simultaneously seeks to probe modern man’s religious depths.

Judaism, however, knows that the kingship-victory morality is not always adequate. We said before that man meets God, not only in moments of joy and triumph, but also in times of disaster and distress, when God confronts him in the narrow straits of finitude – Mima`amakim ; Min HaMeitzar – from out of the depths. Then he encounters, not majestas Dei but humilitas Dei. God’s glory compressed into the straits of human finite destiny. Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Majesty and Humility, Tradition 1978 p. 35

Out of the depths, the cry emerges reluctantly. When that deep groan emerges, man is not a king, but a child without words. At times, the religious personality confronted by the challenges and contradictions in fusing a religious personality to a hard modern world can not eloquently create. The realities of religious life do not always meet our ideals. We reach deeply and confront what we are and what we have become. The voice from the depths knows all the pain, knows all the lies, and knows that God will hear the cry anyway.

While facilitating the majestic voice of creative exertion, Mima`amakim also cultivates a radically different but equally important voice, the cry from the narrow straits of finitude. This cry does not cower in the face of its own imperfection and failures, because God also acts with humility. God withdraws to welcome our cry.

The cry from narrow straits does not embody religious teaching; nor does it say what is right and wrong. Mima`amakim collects and presents stories, poems, and essays that describe Jewish life as lived. It does not attempt to prescribe religious tenets or practice. The complexity of the religious quest with its pitfalls and peeks will often emerge encompassing questions of faith and failures in practice. Mima`amakim neither condones nor condemns these acts but rather explores the religious quest with all its challenges and difficulties. Words of poetry and prose, of challenge faced -- often won but sometimes lost – will provide a lens through which the Orthodox Jewish community can examine its religious and social aspirations. While neither glorious nor exemplary, the Jew as he dwells in a depth moment exhibits a unique nobility because his Creator accompanies him even at such moments, imo anochi betzara. Complex and imperfect, these accounts must stir our conscience to appreciate Hakadosh Baruch Hu at al l moments, especially when He is most withdrawn, most hidden.

Let us create a vibrant Jewish world where creative energy channeled through imperfect yet devoted souls find open hearts. Let us welcome the songs from our depths.

What entwines and turns, inspires and transpires within these pages? The audience - you - will debate. Yet, a thorough incision-through the layers of the artists' perceptions, past syllogisms, concrete nouns, abstract conceptualizations, imagery, and symbolism-reveals a sincere singe of creativity. Unrefined yet unwarped, unevaluated yet a wholesome construct, CREATIVITY forms and the mind trembles until the artist acquiesces and formulates an expression. Creativity-without an external force.

Unadulterated Creativity stands close to the Self, so close that it reflects the Self. Just as a person in sincere prayer perceives his or her own prayer-state to be a real reflection of him or herself, so can the artist in the midst of creativity view that Creativity as the true image of the Self. And when asked what traits and perceptions accurately distinguish the artist, a reference can be made to those moments of CREATIVITY, not as potential evidence but as hardcore facts.

Upturn these pages, upturn the images and words, upturn them- for Creativity reaches to you from the Selves of many, from their Depths.

Sipai Klein
Oracle, AZ
Nissan 5761
April 2001

"Art is cosmos, and only cosmos - that is, the creative spirit that shapes chaos (which is our spiritual and physical world)… Our greatest writers (specifically Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky) build everything upon this chaos (such was their way of "appreciating" it), and as a result they came up with the exponential chaos, and therefore they were bad artists."²

Blok's criticism of the two literary giants is neither snobbism nor heresy. While admiring their work, Blok condemns the chaotic flow of their thought and the lack of form and shape of their novels. He is bothered by the moments of genius that float astray in the mire of mundane descriptions. Himself a devoted sonneteer, Blok was influenced by Théophile Gautier, leader of French Parnassians and a figure of crucial importance to French and Russian Symbolists. In his collection of verse Emaux et Camées, Gauitier promoted the Form as the ultimate aspiration for any writer:

The form, I say, is the feast for our eyes!
Be it filled with water or exquisite wine,
Carafe lures us in with its beauty. The refined
Aromas fade, while the vessel stays.

Gautier's hefty proclamation poses a fundamental question of writing: can art be constrained by any sort of a form - be it a literary device, logic, or belief system? When artist channels pure sincerity of emotion or the raging flow of thought, identity and learning experiences always come into focus. Are these forms a burden, precious embellishment, or vital tool?

An interesting insight into this dilemma stems from the works of Andre Breton. In Manifeste du Surrealisme³ , Breton defined Surrealism as:

"pure psychic automatism, by which an attempt is made to express, either verbally, in writing or in any other manner, the true functioning of thought. The dictation of thought, in the absence of all control by the reason, excluding any aesthetic or moral preoccupation."

The aim of Automatic Writing, Dada and Surrealism had become the complete release of the subconscious mind flow, freed from barriers erected by society, background, mood, etc. However, only six years later, in the Second Manifesto of Surrealism, Andre Breton realized that without any control automatic writing becomes consistently incoherent, boring, and repetitive. His reinstated goal has become the idea "to use the unconscious as inspiration and then control it and manipulate it using reason."

Seemingly, on the opposite extreme from the concept of automatic writing, appear teachings of Basho, seventeenth's century Japanese master of haiku. Haiku is known for its extreme strictness of form - it is a three-line poem with a 5-7-5 syllabic structure. And yet, Basho writes:

"Composition must occur at an instant, like a woodcutter felling a huge tree, or a swordsman leaping at his enemy."⁴

Surprisingly, we see a concept very similar to that of Breton's - a haiku ought to be created in a single breath, and most preferably stay so, unaltered. The original goal of writing a haiku is not to perform acrobatics within the 5-7-5 format, but to capture the momentary flash of an insight into understanding of the universe and to channel it through a particular format.

Obviously, the nature of our question is not exclusive to art alone. We are at the same battlefield, where unreasonable intuition locks horns with well-defined shapes of logic, feelings contradict knowledge, and the unruly freedom opposes limits of structure.

Here's what Rabbi Meir Ben Gabbai, author of Avodat Hakodesh⁵ concludes regarding this multi-faceted dichotomy:

Veim taamar she'yeish lo koach b'li gvul' vein lo koach b'gvul'
ata mehaser meshleymuso⁶

From the divine perspective, both chaos and limits are one. Therefore, what we are accustomed to perceiving as true freedom from limits can only be found within the constraints of limits. Limitlessness - the ultimate freedom we desire - can never really exist on its own: it's incomplete, because it's lacking the limits, while within limits, we can find the true freedom, because that's where we see that limitless and limits coexist - as one.

Similarly, a Mishna in the Pirkey Avot⁷ says in reference to writing of Ten Commandments upon the Tablets:

"Don't read engraved (harut), but freedom (herut)."

Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Levy, author of this Mishna, teaches that real freedom lies within the words of the formulated Law; understanding of that freedom is engraved into the shapes of the ancient letters.

In his interview with Mima'amakim, Rabbi Laibl Wolf⁸ extrapolates the teachings of the Ba'al Tanya⁹ who presents an ancient Kabbalistic theory stating that we extract the sparks of inspiration from the flow of Chochmah, originating in moach setumah - the hidden mind - the subconscious. Impregnated by this inspiration, we nourish it in Binah (understanding), as if in a vessel of logic, and thus gain Da'at, the knowing. The biblical word used for sexual intimacy is also daat, as it says veadam yada as hava ishto¹⁰. In the moments of ethereal intimacy, bits of the infinite enter the mold of our being, turning incompleteness of chaos into the holistic infinity within our limits, turning inspiration into the work of art.

This issue of Mima'amakim - a gallery of inspiration and creative ideas - is fashioned in the most peculiar artistic forms. It is also an exalted cry from the depths:

Mimaamakim k'raticha Hashem¹¹

but not a raw shapeless howl - our voices are tuned to the frequency of Jewish Tradition, Torah and Halachah.

Avant-garde mingles with sonnets, free verse dances next to haiku, stories follow myths, fantasies and recollections, speculation and experience, whispers and outcries -

as the flow from the depths of authors' consciousness is unveiled to the reader, and through the sea gates of Tradition, enter the shapes of Artistic Expressions of the Jewish Religious Experience.

Jake Marmer
15 Tammuz, 5762