Beginning the illustration and other decorative work on my Atternen Juez Talen manuscript, having completed the calligraphic work.
Here’s the title page with illustrations about 2/3 done:
Saadia and Batkol, the Atternen Ju and his wife
New beginnings...
I began working on The Atternen Juez Talen (The Eternal Jew’s Tale) back in 2009. Those days seem like something of another life now. That tale, that literary history, began in 30 CE in Judean Jerusalem, and proceeded to about 1510 CE in the Ottoman Empire’s capital, Istanbul, where it stands now. It is a compendium of tales of Jewish life, real and imagined, tales personal and lived told from a first-person p.o.v. It also includes letters, dreams, and books produced by the characters in the story; stories within stories and books within books.
In the last year I broke my tale out of its chronological trajectory. I began telling the episodes as a montage of interrelated events and ideas. I wrote a Passover montage composed of 8 Passovers in 8 different locations from 150 BCE in Hasmonean Judea to 1950 CE on an Israeli kibbutz. After that I worked on a Messiah Montage about the many and varied failed messiahs in history.
Less than a month ago I realized I had finished the Messiah Montage, or should I say, I was finished with it. And I realized I was done with The Atternen Juez Talen, too. I had begun to leave that story and that life behind already in 2020. But now, wonder of wonders, after months of transitional agony, I could feel a new energy emerging from my depths, a different story that wanted to be told.
Now the world may behold these first images of that newly emerging tale….
Remembrensenz an Deth Jurneez,
thats ware weel start.
Yu say, 'o wo,' 'o dreeree,' 'not me...'
But jes kunsidder.
We ar tole we kum tu this werl
emtee, fresh, a kleen slate.
But that iz an utter fals.
We kum swoddeld in jennettek vaelz,
vast librareez uv knowenz kumpield
uv expereyenz az arktipe us,
embedden, unkonshes intu us:
insteenkt an tallents,
emoeshenz an skilz,
vizhenz an etheks
that nacherlee unfoel
tu respon tu this werl.
Kunsidder:
How eezee an nacherrel
tu lern tu reed.
An yet not a seengel speseez els
kan reed. Not a seengel hyumen
beffor 5000 yeerz uggo
(but a momen in evvolueshennaree time)
evver haz a tex tu reed,
evver red a seengel werd.
An yet az a speseez weer obsest tu reed.
This skil, an mennee unnuther az wel --
sum we kno:
myuzek, arts, fillossuffee, maths;
an sum yet tu diskuvver,
wuz laen intu the thredz uv us,
reddee wen weer reddee fer it.
We kum heer reddee.
We kum heer perpaerd.
We kum heer with a perpessen goel.
An so it mus be
wen we leev this werl
we wil awlso go perpaerd,
tho we kno not how,
tho it seem we hav no knowenz at awl.
But weel go on that jernee wel perpaerd.
So let us kunsidder wut we kno,
wut we wil karee wen we leev this shel.
Wut ar gatherz tu serv ar needz
wen we leev behien ar sensez five,
wen ar werl iz not shaept by nerv?
Wut uv us iz oenlee mien?
Uv kors!
Ar essens iz immajjinnes...
Still more outtakes
Below you can view a few alternate versions of the images I have produced to illustrate my weekly Eternal Jew blog post at The Times of Israel (TOI). As of this week, I have posted 105 episodes. If you want to see these images in their literary context, here’s a link to my blog at TOI:
Illuminated manuscript of Atternen Ju
Some months ago I began a project to produce an illuminated manuscript of the poetry version of the Atternen Juez Talen. A prose, standard English version is being published in a weekly episodic format at the Times of Israel [https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/author/stephen-berer/], but the original poetry version remains largely inaccessible to the public. It seems the world is not yet ready for my visionary talen.
Therefore, I decided to produce an enduring and perhaps even elegant version as a stand-alone work of art. When completed, this illuminated manuscript will still only be about 1/3 to 1/4 of the whole poem, but I hope to illuminate the rest of the poem in further volumes. God Willing.
Below you can see page 103, which I penned today.
Calligraphic version, yet to be illuminated and illustrated
More favorite outtakes...
Here is another slideshow of images I produced for my weekly Eternal Jew blog at The Times of Israel (https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/author/stephen-berer/), images that don’t quite make the cut, but of which I’m particularly fond. I begin each set in this slideshow with the original image, almost always a black and white engraving or photo, and then show the end result of various transformations. Enjoy!
Some of my favorite outtakes
Each week to go along with my Eternal Jew postings at The Times of Israel (TOI), I produce an image related to the story. Generally, those images come from some very old books I own that are now in the public domain, including Picturesque Palestine and Picturesque Egypt, but I also scour Wikimedia Commons for useful images I can transform. Usually those images are black and white engravings, which I then “colorize” in various ways, merge with other images, and/or redraw using a collection of electronic tools.
Nancy usually helps me pick a favorite from the 10 to 20 alternatives I produce, but often the competition is pretty close. Below is a slideshow of some of my favorite runners-up preceded by the original images.
Poe, kaleidoscoping
As I experimented with a famous 1848 photo of Edgar Allen Poe, now in the public domain, to come up with an image for the 61st episode of the Eternal Jew’s Tale (found at the Times of Israel, at https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-eternal-jews-tale-61-a-raven/) my “darkroom work” produced the following collection of images. For your edification…
Tiny House, completed
During Covid I began transforming a storage shed into a tiny house. The goal was to build a super-insulated small space using as much recycled and repurposed building material as possible. Unfortunately, the rigid insulation (Thermax), the sheathing (1/4” plywood), and the wrap (Tyvek) were not available as recyled material, but most everything else was, including the windows and door, the paneling, and the flooring.
Below I present a slideshow of the project as it proceeded. In the first steps I was joined by my son and his partner, who you will see in a couple of pix, but after they blew off the west wall and framed the small addition to the shed, the rest of the work was done by yours truly.
Composing a new haggadah
I have begun the research and writing to create a new, modern Pesach (Passover) haggadah, with a new order, new structure, new histories and midrashim, new questions, new questions to answer questions, new portraits of personality types, while still embedding much of the traditional haggadah. This one will be a looking back, a looking forward, a looking at the turbulence and clarities within. Here granular, there sweeping vistas. Now personal, now transitional, now transformational. Thus…
(translated back to old English from my poetic voice…)
Here. The Crystal Haggadah begins. Hear. The seder, its orders retold.
For something like three thousand years or more this tradition, this ritual has been observed yearly in Yisroyel. This, and Shabbat, continuously remembered and observed longer than any other ritual in any other religion or culture in the world.
Observed and honored, festively (or furtively where hate prevails, where laws are writ, where knives are drawn, afraid of us, afraid of our God)…
in Sinai’s shadow; in Judea’s fields; in hovels and mansions in Babylon; in Elephantine ‘way down the Nile, and far up the Euphrates in Pumbedit; in Athens, Rome, and Byzantium; in Medina, Baghdad, Tashkent, Kabul; in Cochin, Calcutta, and Kaifeng; in Kathmandu and Timbuktu; in Algiers, Tangiers, and Tripoli; in Aden, Addis Ababa, and Muscat; in Europe, every shtetl and stadt; in Australia, Sydney to the arid outback; and across the oceans to the New World, in the Caribbean, on every isle, and from Patagonia and Concepcion to Goose Bay and White Horse and Denali Park.
Pesach, the call to liberation; the path to revelation.
Carroll Gardens Shrines
My wife and I are visiting NYC, staying in the Carroll Gardens neighborhood in Brooklyn (F train to Carroll St).. I’d call this one of New York’s best “Little Italys” with some completely fabulous shops (Caputo’s Fine Foods is a Mich 3 market in my book, and Monteleone’s Bakery is right up there too, including perfect espresso).
When we arrived at Carroll St station for the first time and walked the 5 or so blocks to our 4 day apartment rental, we were bemused by the many religious shrines in the yards. I’d never seen anything like it. Sure, we’ve seen religious shrines in lots of yards, but here, every 2nd or 3rd house had a shrine. I loved it!! Today is our last day here. I decided I just had to make a photo record of some of the shrines, and here it is. Mind you, these photos were all taken along just 2 1/2 blocks, and on 1 1/2 of those blocks I only took photos on ONE side of the street, not both sides!!
As I was taking one of these photos (#4), the owner of the house came out, clearly pleased that I was photographing his Madonna. He apologized for the algae growing on it, but I told him it looked like it had been painted to bring out the shadows. Nature as artist. Our conversation lasted hardly more than a minute or two, but I think we both walked away elevated, feeling like we’d made a meaningful connection. Well, it was meaningful to me, at least.
Oh, I should mention that the last 5 slides aren’t really shrines, but like the shrines they ARE public-private statements that are an active part of the neighborhood’s personality. And there are a couple of slides in which the “shrine” is just a beautifully gardened yard.
What a great place to stay while visiting NYC. What a great place to live.
Here’s my Carroll Gardens Shrines slideshow:
Amnesty Jew hating International
Amnesty International’s latest Jew-bashing polemic has unconditionally verified what morally responsible people have been saying for years: Amnesty is a mouthpiece for anti-Jewish and anti-western hate mongers. This has been obvious to me for well over a decade, but perhaps this time their egregious distortions and lies (claiming that Israel is “apartheid”) will convince even some of the “liberal” news outlets to stop re-posting Amnesty’s bigotry and endorsing Amnesty’s Jew-hatred. By the way, you may wonder why I put ‘liberal’ in quotes above. It’s because organizations like the BBC, New York Times, and NPR are indeed often liberal in their views. However, when it comes to Israel they do a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde flip, letting their ugly anti-Jewish animus escape unfiltered and uncontrolled.
I won’t recreate the wheel here with my own analysis of Amnesty’s latest abusive attack on Israel. Of the many reports that have already thoroughly dismantled and discredited the apartheid claims, here’s the place I think you should start if you’re not clear how much of a train-wreck the Amnesty report really is:
https://mailchi.mp/americanrabbi/weekly-talking-points-brief-september-27-13581230?e=25c819a369
Perhaps Amnesty should rename themselves Amnazi International. At least they would then be coming clean about their problem with Jews and Israel.
The Eternal Jew podcasts, #7
Continuing from the story begun in podcast #6, the ancient sheikh completes his tale of local deities and their battles against Adonai.
You can find the textual version of this particular episode at the Times of Israel website:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-eternal-jews-tale-07-in-search-of-the-garden-2/
Or go to:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/tales-of-the-eternal-jew/
where you can find all the published episodes (currently {18} of them). They are displayed in reverse order, so you’ll have to scroll down to the bottom to read them sequentially.
The ancient story-telling sheikh
The Eternal Jew podcasts, #6
The date is about 190CE. The place is east of Damascus. In this episode the Eternal Jew, searching for the Garden of Aden, meets an ancient sheikh.
You can find the textual version of this particular episode at the Times of Israel website:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-eternal-jews-tale-06-in-search-of-the-garden/
Or go to:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/tales-of-the-eternal-jew/
where you can find all the published episodes (currently 17 of them). They are displayed in reverse order, so you’ll have to scroll down to the bottom to read them sequentially.
Camping outside of Palmyra, hearing strange tales.
The Eternal Jew podcasts, #5
In this episode, the Eternal Jew meets Saul of Tarsus in a local synagogue, and they discuss a letter Saul has written to a community in Rome.
You can find the textual version of these episodes at the Times of Israel website, https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/tales-of-the-eternal-jew/ . They are displayed in reverse order, so you’ll have to scroll down to the bottom to read them sequentially.
The diplomat’s little shop
The Eternal Jew podcasts, #4
In this episode the Eternal Jew sets out on the Damascus Road, with some wry comments about Rome and another famous fellow who walked this road. He may agree with Bar Yohai’s negative opinion of Roman bath houses, buuuut…
You can find the textual version of these episodes at the Times of Israel website, https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/tales-of-the-eternal-jew/ . They are displayed in reverse order, so you’ll have to scroll down to the bottom to read them sequentially.
Walkin’ that damn ass-kiss road
The Eternal Jew podcasts, #3
In this episode the Eternal Jew escapes from Jerusalem, which is under siege by Rome, and begins a slow trek north and east.
You can find the textual version of these episodes at the Times of Israel website, https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/tales-of-the-eternal-jew/ . They are displayed in reverse order, so you’ll have to scroll down to the bottom to read them sequentially.
Leaping from a parapet
The Eternal Jew podcasts, #2
Let the tales begin!
This, the first episode , finds the Eternal Jew in Jerusalem around 30 CE. He recalls those troubled times and his friendship with a local revolutionary.
You can find the textual version of these episodes at the Times of Israel website, https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/tales-of-the-eternal-jew/ . They are displayed in reverse order, so you’ll have to scroll down to the bottom to read them sequentially.
Azurite Sky of Jerusalem
The Eternal Jew podcasts, #1
Here beginneth a series of readings from the epic poem The Atternen Juez Talen, aka The Eternal Jew’s Tale. This podcast series will follow the character of the Eternal Jew as portrayed in my epic as he endures, thrives, and transforms the places he lives in.
This first podcast introduces the series. Enjoy! Don’t be shy. Write to me with your thoughts. Oh, by the way, you can find the textual version of these episodes at the Times of Israel website, https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/tales-of-the-eternal-jew/ . They are displayed in reverse order, so you’ll have to scroll down to the bottom to read them sequentially.
Eternal Jew's Tale at Times of Israel
For as long as the editorial waters at the Times of Israel are clear and inviting, I’ll be posting in serial format my prose version of The Eternal Jew’s Tale, known in the higher worlds as Thuh Atternen Juez Talen.
Here’s the link to the Times of Israel blog page where you’ll be able to find my blog (you may have to scroll down a ways). If you go on Mondays, click “Latest” on the menu ribbon near the top of the page, and my post should be near the top:
Video: Producing the Jonah Amulet
For the last 7 months I’ve been working on producing an amulet for my grandson, Jonah. It involved creating the design, laying the gold, painting the image, and calligraphing an inscription. The primary materials were calfskin parchment, gold leaf, acrylic paint, and ink. The whole project took 95 hours. Here’s a 3 minute video compiled from the photos I took as my work progressed. As you will see, progress was not always straightforward and satisfactory, but I’m very pleased with the results.