Parshat Tzav: Fire

Parshat Tzav is my daughter's bat mitzvah parsha and its a killer. Korbanot, korbanot, korbanot, sacrifices, sacrifices, sacrifices. Purity and impurity. Lots of talk of blood, fat, innards, skin, and flesh. Yuck.

But, there is one image that is repeated multiple times that I thought had some artistic potential:

אֵ֗שׁ תָּמִ֛יד תּוּקַ֥ד עַל־הַמִּזְבֵּ֖חַ לֹ֥א תִכְבֶּֽה

A continuous fire shall burn upon the altar; it shall not go out.

The eternal flame (like the burning bush) is usually understood to represent God's eternal presence. My original thought was to connect the "esh tamid" of the altar to the "ner tamid" that typically hangs in synagogues near the aron kodesh. I thought to show the kids a photo slideshow of traditional and modern ner tamid examples.

During my google-image phase, I came across a particularly striking blown-glass ner tamid created by Avinoam Zohar:

Zohar's art is reminiscent of the very famous artist Dale Chihuly whose work I fell in love with when it was displayed throughout the Tower of David in Jerusalem in 1999 (I was 23 and I swear I made every single date take me there!!! :)

I remembered seeing many school collaborative art projects based on Chilhuly's chandeliers and thought it would be great for my classes to hang a collaborative

ner tamid that they created. This is an example of a school-made Chihuly sculpture made from just MANY recycled plastic bottles, colored with permanent marker:

Its just awesome. But, I don't really know why I am sharing all of this since it is NOT what I ended up doing (maybe next year...)

Instead of channeling Chihuly, I decided to channel Jackson Pollock. Its not a huge leap since they are both essentially abstract artists and fire lends itself to abstract art (just google "fire abstract art" - awesome images!). I knew kids would love learning about Pollock since he is famous for making splashy, drippy, messy paintings. I came across this Pollock that reminded me of fire:

Pollock was known for using unconventional tools to fling his paint on the canvas - sticks, turkey basters, tubes, etc. So, I gave the kids straws (to blow the paint) and plastic droppers to use instead of paint brushes. Let's just say the classroom teachers were not thrilled with the obvious mess I was bringing in (at least it didn't smell like last week...) Of course, some of the kids took the mess "too far." Maybe I should have given more direction and stricter rules but it is very hard to distinguish between "creative freedom" and - as they say here - "stam balagan"! But, with a few minor changes, I still would do this project again...SHABBAT SHALOM!