Sunday, February 23, 2014

Jewish mosaics aren't just ancient

SCHOOL PROJECT:
Solomon Schechter kids revive art of mosaics

David Lazarus, Staff Reporter [The Canadian Jewish News], Friday, February 7, 2014

MONTREAL — Solomon Schechter Academy students are reviving the ancient Jewish art of mosaics, head of school Shimshon Hamerman says.

[...]

At Solomon Schechter, Judaic studies director Chani Cohen’s Jewish art classes in the school’s “SMART floor” recently created their own mosaic with 250 kids from grades 2, 4 and 6 participating. The 4-by-10-foot work now hangs on the ground floor of the school’s main campus.

The students’ most recent collaborative mosaic shows the two tablets of the Ten Commandments embedded in the trunk of a Tree of Life, with a boy and a girl holding hands on either side of the tablets under the shade of the tree. The Hebrew quotation states: “It is a tree of life to all who hold on to it,” “Eitz Chayim hi lamachazikim bah,” words we recite about the Torah after the scroll has been read. The boy and girl holding hands symbolize that “the ways of the Torah are pleasantness.”

[...]
A photo of the latter with some of its creators is at the link. I think Solomon Schechter would be pleased.

For much more on ancient mosaics found in Israel and nearby, see here and follow the many links back.