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Ramon Tasat - News & Reviews

Art can be kids' pathway to God

HELEN MINTZ BELITSKY
Special to Jewish News
As a 6-year-old in Budapest after World War II, Magda Rosenbaum addressed her artwork to God.

Hidden by a Christian family during the war, she had been reclaimed by her father at the age of 2. Her mother, however, was killed during the liberation.

"I knew she was with God," says Rosenbaum, "and I needed to communicate with her. But I didn't know the right words. So I would draw pictures about everyday life and hide them. They were my private world. I would look in the mirror and draw myself. When my father was angry, I drew an angry man. The drawings were expressive. I addressed them to God.

"'If you see my mother,' I would write to God, 'tell her that things are not going well in Budapest. Today a girl refused to sit next to me in school. She said she couldn't sit next to a Jew.'"

Rosenbaum, now an artist in Silver Spring, Md., understands better how art brought her closer to God and to her mother as a child suffering under a post-war Communist regime.

"Art unlocks our feelings," she says. "Art unlocks our innate nature to be happy. Art enables a child to accept herself fully."

The world of color is the world of the emotions, art teacher Rena Fruchter of Silver Spring tells us.

Art deals with profound emotions, she says, such as deep religious feelings.

When asked how he taught his children about God, David Epstein, a prominent lawyer in Washington, responded, "God is the central fact of Judaism. It's not my personal credo; it's what the tradition tells us. Judaism is only coherent if you experience God as central to that tradition."

But can children experience God that way? Rabbi Reuben Levine of Montgomery Village, Md., a Jewish art historian and a specialist in synagogue and ritual art, says that when parents begin to teach children about God, "they describe God as the power behind the creation of the world."

Children look around them and see what God created -a blue sky, trees, flowers, the people they love. They learn to duplicate these things that God created through colors and shapes.

"Children may not be able to relate to an intangible concept of God," said Pnina Salu, religious school principal of B'nai Tzedec religious school, "but they can appreciate the nature all around them. They think of that as what God created."

"They learn that God took pleasure in the creation" says Rabbi Levine. " 'And it was good,' God said each day."

Similarly, Levine says, "children can find pleasure in the creation of colors and shapes. That sense of fulfillment is the product of a creativity which is human, but which is also a gift from God."

In this way, says Fruchter, art can make a child feel creative and important, closer to God, who created the world. Art can also be the perfect way to introduce children to the concept of hiddur mitzvah, enhancing the performance of a commandment by beautifying the ritual object, adds Levine.

"When a child creates a beautiful kiddush (wine blessing) cup or a challah (braided egg bread) cover, he or she is coming before God with the best he/she has to offer."

"Everyone has a different door that opens the way to God for them," says Cantor Ramon Tasat of Agudas Achim Congregation in Alexandria, Va., who spends a great deal of time teaching children music. "I know children who begin to perceive God through the music they love. If the composition is religious, and they like it, they begin to like God.

"Everything belongs somewhere. When children sing a prayer, they may not understand the words,"adds Tasat, "but they know it belongs in the synagogue, and then it becomes more than a melody; it becomes something sanctified."

Children find pleasure in creating - whether it is a painting, a piece of music, pottery or a new dance step. The sense of happiness and personal fulfillment that comes from creation brings children closer to their spiritual selves.

Seven-year-old Rebecca Suldan of Baltimore, Md., expresses it this way: "I once tried to draw God, but God doesn't look like anything, so I ended up with a lot of lines. But sometimes certain feelings bring me closer to God. When I'm happy I feel closer to God. When I'm sad, I feel distant."

The ability to reach into our souls and communicate our deepest feelings to others brings us closer to our spiritual nature. The arts are a fundamental - often the sole - way of communicating for many people.

Michael Tilson Thomas, music director of the San Francisco Symphony and co-founder and music director of the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, Fla., writes in his book "Viva Voce": "Music to me is a universal expression of mankind. We continually explore the spirit of man through many different kinds of music."

Mayrav Mintz of Silver Spring, who began ballet at the age of 4, learned the art of friendship through her dance steps, and experienced God on her shoulder as she struggled with shyness.

"I felt I had friends in the dance class, but I didn't need to talk because we had steps. Dance broke down the barriers. ... I always believed in God as a friend who sat perched on my shoulder. God was something my size. I was nervous and shy, but things would be OK because God was around."

Helen Mintz Belitsky is a freelance writer based in the Washington, D.C., area. This column was originally written for the Jewish Family & Life! Web site, www.jewishfamily.com, and was distributed by Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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