J. Jewish News of Northern California Via JTA – A forest fire, running over a mountain. A turtle, deep inside the earth. A deep sea, rough on the surface and still beneath it.
These paintings, carved on blocks and printed by artist Ava Sayaka Rosen, are part of a deck of cards that are simultaneously an art piece, a spiritual tool and a call to connect with nature.
“I was looking for a way to educate people about ecology, but also making the connection between taking care of the earth and taking care of ourselves, and human relationships,” Rosen said. “I felt like Tarot was a good way to bridge all of those things.”
Rosen, 33, made a tarot deck as his 2021 companion Benefit Annual Jewish Artists Fellowship organized by JCC East Bay in East Bay, Berkeley, Calif. It is a project that combines her passion for nature and text-based art with her Jewish roots.
“My Jewish upbringing, combined with my parents’ love for nature, really instilled a deep sense of belonging and connectedness to nature,” said Rosen, who is biracial (her mother is Japanese and her father is Ashkenazi Jewish). ). “And that was really the inspiration for making this deck.”
Rosen, who lives in Oakland, grew up in San Francisco and has an MFA in creative writing and book arts from Mills College. His first art job was at Emanu-El as a teen assistant in the art room to help an art teacher. Now she is an artist and art teacher at the San Francisco synagogue—with her own Jewish high school-age assistants.
“That was my first job, and I really liked it,” she said. “And it’s just hilarious to me that I’m full circle. I’m back as an art teacher with teen assistants.”
While her art studies were in a school setting, her background in tarot was personal.
“I was initially drawn to the fantasy. I knew nothing about what the card meant, or what its history was,” she said. “As I began to learn more about it, I really I became involved in the practice of reading Tarot as a way of examining myself and our relationships.”
Tarot cards date back to 15th century Italy. They were adapted for mystical purposes as a predictive tool in 18th-century France, and social media new interest for practice. During a tarot reading, cards with evocative images are drawn from a deck and interpreted through a special lens. Some draw on Kabbalah in his readings; Other modern Jewish artists also Tarot mixed with Jewish mysticism,
Torah-inspired tarot cards from Eva Sayaka Rosen on display at LabLive, an event hosted by JCC East Bay, on November 7, 2021. (Jewish Community via East Bay/JTA)
As an artist, Rosen said it was a natural move to build your own deck. The deck, designed as a LABA companion, is not exclusively Jewish artwork, although it does include some Jewish texts to help deepen the understanding of each image. But the LABA fellowship allowed him to take an existing concept and develop it. It also gave him a deadline to meet.
“It’s a very ambitious project to create and carve out basic concepts, print them, write them — write the descriptions for them — so I knew I was going to need some accountability help, in a major way,” she said. said.
Of the 78 cards that make up the tarot deck, Rosen has eliminated 39, mostly during the LABA fellowship. She plans to look for a publisher after the deck is complete.
“This LABA fellowship really caught fire under my butt and gave me a deadline, and I just worked really, really hard to make about half a deck now,” she said.
Three cards from Ava Sayaka Rosen’s ‘Tarot::Tora’ tarot deck. (via Ava Sayaka Rosen/JTA)
Rosen began each design by drawing a card from its copy. rider-weight deck, the most famous tarot deck (first published in 1909, it is famous for its esoteric imagery and is what most people think of when they think of tarot cards). He let her be a guide to the inspiration and interpretation needed to create a version of himself.
She said that while thinking about the traditional interpretations of each card, she would find a related nature concept and create a description with “writing prompts for self-reflection questions.”
For the Moon card, which shows a glowing full moon, lightly clouded, questions include: What do you know? Where are you being pulled? The guide to compost card, which shows a bright mushroom growing from a log, is in A famous section from Genesis: “You are the dust, and you will be found again in the dust.”
“Working with other Jewish artists really opened up my ideas about what Jewish art is,” Rosen said.
Ava Sayaka Rosen is the artist behind the ‘Tarot::Tora’ tarot deck. (via Ava Sakaya Rosen/JTA)
He called the project “Tarot::Tora” after two images from the traditional Rider-Waite deck, which were illustrated by Pamela Coleman Smith, “The relationship between the Tarot and the Torah, to which the title refers, is mysterious, but is very much present within the traditional archetypes of the cards,” she said.
Rosen was able to personally see the power of “Tarot::Tora” a live LABA event At JCC East Bay on November 7. Her corner, where she used to do readings with her deck, was more popular than she expected.
“I didn’t think there would be a huge line,” Rosen said with a laugh.
Composer David Israel Katz was one of those who got a chance to read. He stated that he was drawn to the project for the way it combined “visual language of freedom and playfulness on the one hand, and aesthetic harmony and deep inquiry on the other”.
“As minimal as Reading was in its outward format, it was inexorably illuminating the interior,” he told Jay in an email. “The card I made spoke to me immediately, and Ava was able to accurately and concisely describe the various aspects contained in the image.”
Musician David Israel Katz (left) gets a tarot reading from Ava Sayaka Rosen at LabLive on November 7, 2021. (Jewish Community via East Bay/JTA)
Sarah Wolfman-Robichaud, director of public programs at JCC East Bay, said that JCC was eager to place Rosen on the fellowship not only because of her talents and connections to the arts and the Jewish world, but also because of her experience teaching children. . , JCC has plans to expand on LABA by bringing artists into preschool and afterschool programs, and Wolfman-Robichaud said that Rosen was an obvious choice for that as well.
For Rosen, LABA was a unique opportunity for him to participate in a group with others like him: Jewish artists who could simultaneously explore the concepts of Judaism, art, and Jewish art.
“The text study paired with the art creation was what really fascinated me, and felt unique,” she said. “It really allowed us to have a deeper conversation and really build community around these ideas.”
This story was originally published in J. Jewish News of Northern California and is republished with permission.