Drorit Gur Arie/Raya Bruckenthal
Raya Bruckenthal
Selected by Drorit Gur Arie
Tseno Ureno
The book Tseno Ureno was published in the late 16th century in Janów Lubelski, Poland. Written in Yiddish, it was directed to Jewish women who could thus understand more about their heritage since most women were not taught Hebrew – the “Holy Tongue” – and were consequently unable to connect to the written Tradition; thus, Tseno Ureno became women’s only gateway to access Jewish texts. Despite tremendous opposition among many rabbinical leaders, the book became extremely popular and was one of the most widely distributed books throughout Jewish communities until World War II.
The artwork by Raya Bruckenthal arose from her encounter with a single page from the edition of Tseno Ureno printed in Lublin in 1903 featuring an illustration (a woodcut or engraving) accompanying the text depicting a nude Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden
Bruckenthal treats the entire page as an image which she translates into three dimensions. However, this act, like any other act of translation, paradoxically involves losing that which it seeks to preserve.
The amassing of the lines, patches, and dots becomes an avalanche of breakdown, collapse, and decline: the sinking of the Jewish Atlantis.
There are six stills on the following pages, then the video.