Jewish identity in examining the meaning of the body and its secrets

The artistic project ‪"‬Bodies‪"‬ has accompanied me for over twenty years as part of a process of personal understanding of the deep secrets entombed within the body‪,‬ within behavior connected to its very existence within the boundaries of my life as a Jew‪,‬ and the broader meaning‪,‬ that I‪,‬ symbolically‪,‬ can and need to deduct from that process‪.‬ Even before I could independently and freely make a decision to act as a creature of flesh and blood with instincts and intellect‪,‬ which could make his way through life‪,‬ my body was already tainted with a symbol ‪-‬ the symbol of belonging to the ‪"‬chosen people‪".‬ The connection between experience, Jewish identity and the body has always been related for me to pain‪,‬ suffering‪,‬ hardships of coping and mental adjustment‪,‬ and has also been physical ‪-‬ one against many‪,‬ few against those that surround them‪.‬ 
There is a contradiction between values of Jewish tradition based on revelations of God‪,‬ and between the values of democracy as a human creation‪.‬ According to the Jewish Haskala Movement, there is the realization that man has the mental ability to unravel his world without metaphysical interference. Real humanism is all that it takes to fix the world. According to Jewish writers and scholars, Jewish identity refers to ideas and values of freedom. According to the philosopher Martin Buber - the value of fellowship as an ideological meeting between "me and you" - as presented in Rabbi Kook's teachings, the idea of loving one's fellow man, is a necessary sign for creating Jewish leadership that will nurture the general population within the Jewish community. His words were echoed by Dr. Reuven Gerber, from the Yellin College and Livinsky Seminar, in his paper "Love's Hierarchy" when he said that this value is moral, its meaning interpreting the behavioral trend intended as an answer and as a cure for aggression and suffering. The current performance, which includes a series of photographs and a physical installation carried out in framework of my "Bodies" project, is a creative process that stretches the boundaries and exposes the essence of the body's behavior. Through it, I have found answers to some of the questions related to this. A burning experience of aggression, according to Gerber, may cause one to develop a dedication to it, or to the creation of a moral value that may fix the deformed situation. The biblical judge always preached for the exchange of suffering with the value of tolerance. Aggression and morality, poles that have a common root in man's spirit and body - an existential ambition to enhance one's personal power in light of the multitude of others.
In the current installation, a number of elements taken from daily life appear in a number of series, each with a different role. The first series includes material from nature: water, earth, air and fire. the second includes objects identified with personal symbols connected to Jewish myth and history - a metal cot, an old leather-bound book, black string, hangers, lit candles. The third series includes recognized and concrete objects, holy symbols, interpreted in a broad, physical sense. These include a hung Talit (prayer shawl), candle sticks and books reminiscent of holy scriptures. 
In my work, all objects meet with my body, with my presence in the space, with my representation, as a mature adult, nude and totally emerged in life and its desires. The artistic examination will expand the meaning of the term religion, in a deep and honest suggestive process, free of known and existing rules. On the other hand, it is clear that I am physically examining these things as a Jewish person, an Israeli citizen, living and working in Israel in the third millennium, son of Holocaust survivors, a man who served in the Israeli army, an artist living on the earth that bore his decendants and on which he lives his life. 
The initial research, defined in this article, deals with examining my reaction and that of my body by means of animal urges and my personal feelings towards the objects and symbols. The second method of work was created in order to examine the values of sharing and the emotional ability to rise above the aggressive urges through understanding and cooperation. This work is an allegory to the expanded theory dealing with the essence and behavior of man in relation to the way one perceives his identity. In this way, works with earth are usually combined, giving in order to receive, the struggle of survival when up against the threat of fellow man, the internal struggle between the aggressive urge, as stated, and the personal, idealistic willingness to share - a value that always exists in man and society. Here is the place to examine the materials that are related to the four elements, earth, water, fire and air. In the performance, the relation to each of these materials is presented in connection to the body and the process it goes through. The candle and fire symbolize the soul, memory, energy. The earth - futility and revival, creation and extermination. Water symbolizes the source of memory and flow of life and air - existence, soul and connection to creation. Ten "body" books that I created in a charged process with an American artist that worked with me in Israel and New York, will be related to these objects. This project, these books, are from a series that was part of a play of hers that was based on the book of Genesis, and was produced simultaneously in Israel and the United States via the internet. During the process, due to a serious illness, the artist Barbara Rosehaum passed away. The books, the body books, on which I worked on in Israel were sent to her to New York where she worked on them. They are the basis of the current dramatic research on the topic of Jewish identity. 
The possible result of the process, as it is expressed, deals with, as stated above, examining the representation of freedom against struggle and force. The idea is to use artistic creation and its product to create conversation, whose underlying base is narcissism, the self examination which can enhance the existing absurd, that will emphasize the polarity between the accepted holiness and the daily physical, sensual and spiritual, between the physical and useful and the unknown and threatening. Examination of morality related to the use of the body in a personal way and the self interpretation of it's symbols, can demonstrate the personal, Sysiphian dialog of man and his body with his religion, ancestry and nationality. From Yehezkel Nafshi's article on the internet, I learn that "man, from his youth, aims to examine the vanished, his religious dimension". The mythical vanished situation we, as humans, call religion. Does such a place exist? According to him, man's life is one big enigma that spreads across his existence until it comes to rest in dust. What is existence in existing materialism? We work to exist, according to Nafshi, we worship the vanished. The soul has no rules, all rituals were created by man, man with physical limitation, he himself created the religious rules that he is ordered to obey. Each man is free to find his own way and to define topics of love, prayer, pain and the ways to deal with them. And this is the nature of Jewish identity, the freedom, humanism, which is connected to the four elements of the world. This is the Jewish love and tolerance whose root is the need to provide, teach, create reconciliation in the world. It is the whole from which the parts of life are made.