08)ECTS OF THE SPIRIT

Ritual and the Art

of Tobi Kahri

Tobi Kahn started out making ritual art for his family then branched out to do work for public use.

The Art Of Ritual

Internationally famed artist Tobi Kahn's Jewish
ceremonial objects —from private devotional items
to public, communal spaces are collected in book form.

SANDEE BRAWARSKY
Special to the Jewish News

T

obi Kahn creates art that's meant to be used, over and over again. His ceremonial objects
are simple tools and also vehicles of transcendence.
More than 75 ceremonial objects by Kahn, a widely exhibited artist known for his
paintings and sculpture, are collected in book form for the first time in Objects of the Spirit:
Ritual and the Art of Tobi Kahn edited by Emily Bilski (Avoda Institute/Hudson Hills Press; $50).
A coffee-table volume in format, the book features fine writing along with beautiful images.
The book is extensively illustrated with color photographs of Kahn's work, sometimes
juxtaposed with the work of other artists who influenced him.
Included are essays from a variety of points of view,
written by scholar and curator Emily Bilski; cultural
anthropologist Leora Auslander; museum director
Tom Freudenheim; Terry E. Dempsey, S.J.,
a Jesuit priest and professor of art history and
theology at Saint Louis University, where he
is founding director of the Museum of
Contemporary Religious Art; novelist and
essayist Jonathan Rosen; and artist and critic
Ruth Weisberg, who is dean of the School of Fine Arts
at the University of Southern California.
Novelist and poet Nessa Rapoport (who is married
to Kahn) contributes mediations.
Although Kahn hasn't written any parts of the book,
his voice is very much present, whether reflected
through his work, through Bilski's observations based
on many shared conversations, or quotes from printed
interviews with him, cited by several of the contributors.

THE ART OF RITUAL on page

104

Tobi Kahn:
Rosh Hashanah
Apple-and-Honey Set

9/10
2004

89