Material Culture and Me
Last night I was at a small event held in the warehouse space housing the stock of Textile Artifacts, managed by Jordan Freeman and his sister. The business continues the company established by their father. He sold antique fabrics and garments, rented them for films, and manufactured his own fabrics based on items in his collection. Mr. Freeman, responding to my enthusiasm, allowed me to look over the fabrics in his backroom, shelved in rows of cubbies around the cutting room table at the center. It was a stunning array of fabrics of different types and materials.
One of the things that I enjoy about living downtown is the proximity that it provides me to the fashion district. Rabbi Golden and I go there to look at rugs and fabrics that we use at Der Nister. The fabrics are used for tablecloths and for the walls of the sukkot that we build each year. That said, I enjoy looking through the fabrics out of curiosity alone. There is one shop that specializes in African and afro-centric fabrics. Some shops specialize in fabrics that suit a confluence of Persian, Hispanic and Indian tastes. There are others that sell heavier fabrics suitable for curtains and upholstery. The level of quality and the fineness of weaves vary. Some shops are more expensive than others, but there are some selling remnants for a dollar a yard. As interesting as any of them are, the Textile Artifacts collection is of a different nature.
Along Los Angeles St. south of Eight Street are a variety of shops that appear to specialize in the types of men’s clothing that appeals to those shopping for party clothes. The stitching is decorative and can be quite elaborate and the prices are more reasonable than the sorts of middle-class oriented shops like Men’s Warehouse. I’m tempted by those suits and, in time, I expect I’ll do some shopping there.
A friend told Mr. Freeman that I was interested in “stuff.” Rabbi Golden added that when I try to dignify my interests I call that stuff “Material Culture.” Nowadays, the fashion is to focus on ip, intellectual property. The world in which things are made from the raw materials of the world, animal, mineral and vegetable is looked down on in our society as well as the work that is done to maintain the built environments that we have grown accustomed to. It is dignified only if the practitioner can take on the mantle of “artist.” This intellectualization allows that person to work in material culture while being valorized for their thoughts over their technique. While some artists are willing to go to the extreme of creating art theory as their art, most artists actively engage in the creation of material culture and create work that displays the skills that they have honed to work in the mediums that they prefer.
I think it would not come as a surprise to those who know me, or have at least read a few of the columns that I have written here, that “art” is one of recurring concerns. However, my underlying concern is not specifically fine art. Rather it is to see in the world the signs of expression, of the expression of the life force in the objects around me, a voice unrestrained by the decorum of social interaction. The stones speak as do the fabrics and the produce as it is displayed in the market. Perhaps I read the world in an overly Freudian way, but there it is. High art and the low arts are all of interest to me, what is recognized as art and what is condemned as artless.
As I have already mentioned, the work and the worker are judged. This is particularly true in congregational life. Many years ago I was speaking with a person who had been the president of my synagogue, a very successful lawyer. On Shabbat she asked me how my week had been and I told her that I was pretty worn out from the physical labor that I had been doing (construction and moving) and her response was, “why would anyone do that kind of work?” When I was growing up, I knew very respected members of the congregation (a different one from the one that I was attached to as an adult) who were plumbers and electricians. One ran a dry cleaners. There were factory workers and salesman as well as real estate agents and judges. I don’t think that everyone at every synagogue or Jewish organization has to be working with their minds rather than with their hands (an artificial distinction that represents a judgement that I am familiar with even though it is not my own).
To be a healthy Jewish community we need to have the active participation of people representing the full range of who we are. If we cannot recognize who we are, as a group, we cannot hope to succeed as a group. But, beyond that, as Jews we shouldn’t be sucked into the fallacies of those who preach the gospel of bodily transcendence. Being Jewish is to live an embodied life. There is a midrash in which the angels argue to God that God should not give the Torah to Moses. Moses argues with the angels. He asks them if they can choose to eat only the permitted animals, if they can plant crops, if they can circumcise their sons? They reluctantly answer that they cannot. Moses replies, “If you cannot observe these laws of the Torah how can the Torah really be for you and not for humanity?”
I was really thrilled by the creations that I saw at Textile Artifacts by the quality of the work. I don’t want to have it thought that I am uncritical. My critical nature leads many people to believe that I don’t know how to take pleasure in things, but that is a misreading of my approach. What I hope to do in my critique is to identify where the pleasure is in life, the taproot of goodness in the world as it surfaces and brings forth stem, branch, leaf and fruit. There are certainly those of a similar mind to mine who see nothing of the Divine in any of this, but I am more than a little dubious about this libertarian reading of the world. It is a Jewish thought that humanity is a unique combination of animal and angelic natures. We could read this as the source of the division of labor between the work of the hand and the work of the mind, but animals and angels, like us, are God’s creations. To love the world, we should love all of creation and know it as best we can.
And now I have to do the dishes.
