2023 Rosh Hashanah Evening: Brushstrokes

In the art world, John Andrew Perello is better known by the nom de plume that he sprays on his graffiti pieces: JonOne.

Born in New York, he developed a passion for art, and started engaging in graffiti. He would paint, or “tag”, his signature and logo on the streets of Harlem, and soon became involved in Studio 54, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Jean Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol.

Today, his works are exhibited all around the world. In February, an exhibition called Street Noise opened at the Lotte World Mall in Seoul, Korea, and it featured more than a hundred works of art from about a dozen graffiti artists, including JonOne.

Included was a piece of his work called Untitled. It looked like something akin to a Jackson Pollock painting, filled with frenetic splashes of paint and color that seem arbitrary and random. At the bottom of the painting, JonOne placed brushes and paint cans.

A couple came to the exhibit and stood in front of Untitled. They saw the paint brushes strewn about, picked some up, and added a few strokes of their own. They thought that they were contributing to a communal art project, so you can imagine their surprise when they were arrested for defacing the installation.

Upon first learning about this incident, JonOne was furious. But after some time passed, he reflected, With just three brush strokes on my canvas, they have managed to cause a planetary buzz?!? There is strength in that.

Currently, he is deciding whether to restore the piece to its previous condition, or to allow these new brushstrokes to be a part of the art installation.

This incident happened this year, but it is strikingly similar to a story about another work of art … the art of creation.

The heaven and the earth were finished, and all their array. On the seventh day God finished the work that God had been doing, and God ceased on the seventh day from all the work that God had done. And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because on it God ceased from all the work of creation that God had done.

These are the words of the first paragraph of the Shabbat kiddush, the prayer that we recite just before drinking wine. Tonight’s holy day of Shabbat is tied to creation because God rested on the seventh day after finishing the work of creation. We might even say that God tagged the universe with God’s own signature. But did God in fact finish the work of creation?

We sing the Kiddush prayer on every Shabbat, tonight included. And created in the image of God, we too create. Friendships, ideas, love, children, hope. God created the world and then created us to inhabit that world. But it’s more than that. God created us to continue the act of creation. Each of us is here to add our own brushstrokes to the world.

I like to think that Charles Dickens got the idea for A Christmas Carol from a Talmudic tale involving. I call it, The ghosts of patriarchs past.

In this time-traveling story, Moses observes God authoring the Torah, and he sees God putting tiny little flourishes on some of the Hebrew letters. Moses asks, What is preventing you from giving the Torah without these additions? God responds, There is a man who will be born many generations from now, his name is Akiva. He will derive from each and every one of these many interpretations and instances of Jewish law. It is for his sake that these crowns are added. Moses then says, Can you show him to me? And here comes the Dickensian flourish … God whisks Moses into the future. He finds himself sitting in a yeshiva, observing Akiva teaching his class.

He listens attentively, but he doesn’t quite follow Akiva’s interpretations. Even Akiva’s regular students were confused: When Akiva arrived at the conclusion of the discussion, his students asked, ‘My teacher, from where do you derive this understanding?’ Akiva’s answer? It was said to Moses at Sinai.

God affixed the markings in the Torah so that someone in the future would interpret something new. Even though God wrote the Torah, it was not enough, and it is not enough. It needed Akiva and his interpretations. It needs us and our interpretations … our brushstrokes.

In the book Jews and Words, the authors write the following:

Never mind that the Torah is whole and eternal. Never mind that the most formidable minds in Jewish history are watching you from the symbolic back bench. Every boy at his Bar Mitzvah, every bridegroom under his matrimonial canopy, is expected to say a chidush, something new.

I tell B’nei Mitzvah students something similar when they start thinking about their speech. Anyone can write about a particular Torah portion. But only you can tell us what you think about that Torah portion.

Rosh Hashanah should remind us not just to celebrate and praise God’s creation, but to participate in God’s creation.

Because tonight is Shabbat, there will be a brief Oneg following our service. We will sing HaMotzi just before eating a bite of delicious homemade challah. This is the English translation of HaMotzi: Blessed are you, Lord our God, ruler of the universe who brings forth bread from the earth.

But here’s the thing, God doesn’t bring forth bread from the Earth. Or better, it is not God alone that brings forth bread from the Earth. Bread requires human intervention to transform the wheat, water, and salt into the bread. By saying that God brings forth bread from the earth, we remind ourselves that our actions are a continuation of God’s actions!

All this is to say that what you do matters. I’m not speaking in universal terms here. This is about you and me as individuals. You are part and parcel of the fabric of creation. You have the ability, and dare I say responsibility, to add a chiddush of your own.

Picasso famously said that art is never finished.

JonOne thought that his work was completed, but then it became something new and unexpected.

George Lucas tinkered with the original Star Wars movies and changed several significant plot points. What was once a definitive trilogy has changed over time.

And in 1959, Ruth Handler created a plastic female doll … Barbie. And in 2023, the director Greta Gerwig used it as the framework for a wonderful chiddush.

And God created us to continue the creation of creation.

Art follows the precepts of L’dor Vador, from generation to generation. Like Akiva, we build upon what has come before and make something new. And then another comes and adds their brushstroke. Sometimes we are Moses, slightly surprised and perhaps even confused at what has changed. And, sometimes we are Akiva, making changes from metaphorical crowns on top of the letters.

This is the gift that God gave us when God created us and gave us the holy privilege and responsibility of tending to the Earth, continuing to create alongside of God.

The blast of the shofar is a call to participate in the beautiful, amazing, surprising, and holy act of creation. The painter’s tools are there, but they aren’t spread out on the ground. They are here, spread out in this sanctuary. They are you. What brushstrokes will you add?