Illuminating Pesach

The Moriah Haggadah offers an inspiring contemporary
interpretation of the Passover story.

"In every generation all individuals should regard themselves as if they personally had gone out
from Egypt"• This illustration from "The Moriah Haggadah" depicts the recurrent tale of the
Jewish people entering and leaving one metaphoric Egypt after another. In the center, a family sits
around a seder table — in the background a mirror image of themselves as they were slaves in
Egypt.

SUZANNE CHESSLER

Special to the Jewish News

former Oak Parker found a
new way of viewing Passover
rough the eyes of an Israeli
artist at the same time she found a
distraction while undergoing difficult
treatments to fight cancer.
Both the outlook and distraction
are thanks to her husband, landscape
and historical painter Avner Moriah.
Andi Sandler Moriah, 53, who
lived in Michigan for two years, met
her husband in Israel and quickly
.
bec-ame impressed with his talents as a
painter. More recently, she became
impressed with his work style as he
stayed by her side at Hadassah
Hospital and involved her with his
book project released this year, The
Moriah Haggadah (The Jewish
Publication Society; $150).
The book, currently in a limited
edition, will be out in a soft cover
version next year. It is filled with
watercolor images that mix ancient
and modern icons, often arranged in
a circular format. The artist collabo-
rated with Rabbi Shlomo Fox, who
wrote the commentary, and Izzy
Pludwinski, who did the Hebrew cal-
ligraphy.
"I think I've presented another way
of looking at the seder," says Avner
Moriah, 52, known for individual oil
paintings that generally relate to
Israel. "I began with black and white
sketches of the Jews in their fight
against bondage while my wife was in
bondage to chemotherapy; and I
ended with bright colors as the story

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2005

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of the Jews became one of escape into
freedom, and she was freed into well-
ness.
"I repeated the roundel format
because it relates to the repetition of
the story each year, the repetition of
the holiday each year, the repetition
of the season each year and the repeti-
tion of the cycle of life."

A Career In Art

The Haggadah project had its start

The dust jacket of "The Moriah
Haggadah," pictured on the front
cover of this week's "Jewish News," is
a roundel with the word "Pesach" in
the center and three concentric cir-
cles. The outer ring depicts 14 parts
of a typical modern workday, the
middle ring illustrates 14 parts of
the Exodus from Egypt and the
inner band represents the 14 parts of
the seder. Wedges slice through the
three rings connecting one element of
the workday with one from the
Exodus and one from the seder. At
each juncture, the question arises:
"Am I five or am I not?"

after Moriah completed
murals now hanging in pub-
lic buildings in New York.
One mural, entitled

Gathering on Mt. Sinai,

prompted people to make the
suggestion for the Passover
reader, and he scouted the
two men who worked with
him. The rabbi is head of
rabbinical studies at Hebrew
Union College in Jerusalem.
Pludwinski is calligrapher of

The Jerusalem Haggadah.
All translations of biblical
texts are from the 1917 and
1985 Jewish Publication
Society translations of the
Tanakah, modified to make
the texts gender sensitive.
"It was a very fruitful expe-
rience," says Moriah, who
studied the story of Passover
and went to museums to
look at artifacts from the
Avner Moriah at work in Jerusalem
time of the Passover story and
Egyptian art from the same
period. "We had to come up
in American schooling.
with ideas to explain the text."
Avner Moriah earned his master's
One idea, which had to do with the degree in fine arts at the Yale
four cups of wine traditional for the
University Graduate School of Art
seder, associates each cup with a dif-
and Architecture in New Haven,
ferent name for God and joins that
Conn., after earning a bachelor's
with the blessing over the wine and
degree from the Bezalel Academy of
illustrations of the art of making
Art and Architecture in Jerusalem.
wine.
"I looked for a program that
The book will be present as the
stressed figurative art," Moriah
couple celebrates Passover with
explains. "I was the first Israeli
daughter Michal, 15, and other fami-
enrolled in the university's fine arts
ly members. The couple's sons — Nir, master's studies. I developed my
23, and Tal, 22 — are students in
career in the United States over 10
Texas, following their father's interest
years by showing my work in differ-

