JUNE 22 • 2023 | 43

Holiness: Discovering holi-
ness in everyday interactions 
and using Shabbat and holidays 
to find holiness all around us. 
Care: Caring for our planet 
and its inhabitants.
Awe: Developing our sense 
that there is something larger 
than ourselves, which we might 
call God. Seeing freely who we 
are and who we are not. 
Freedom to: Working on our 
characteristics, to live up to our 
potential.
Teshuvah: Reflecting and 
changing and turning from our 
mistakes.
Study: Studying, learning 
and continuing to study, grow 
and renew our understanding. 
Freedom to connect: 
Connecting to others, connect-
ing our inner life to the outer 
world. 
For each of these core prin-
ciples, Strassfeld provides a 
panoply of illustrations, drawn 
from his wide familiarity with 

classical Jewish sources, from 
contemporary thinkers of all 
sorts and from his personal 
introspection. 

DOING GOOD
He shows how by focusing 
on meaning when practicing 
good deeds — both good 
deeds that make sense only 
in a Jewish context and good 
deeds that have universal 
appeal — we can transform 
ourselves and our communi-
ties: 
“By doing good, we are not 
guaranteed to win the lottery, 
but we are ‘guaranteed’ to live 
a life of harmony and peace 
rather than discord and anger. 
We create our own spiritual 
environment. It can be an 
environment so polluted with 
negativity that it is hard to 
breathe or an environment 
redolent with the scent of the 
Garden of Eden,” he writes.
He does not prescribe 

one specific right way to 
accomplish each of these goals. 
Rather, he invites readers to 
find their own paths, to try 
practices and meditations that 
have the potential to foster 
their own growth. 
Strassfeld grew up in a 
Modern Orthodox community, 
son of a communal rabbi. 
That community provided a 
structure for understanding 
a life of obedience to 
commandments. God created 
the world, redeemed our 
ancestors from slavery in Egypt, 
revealed the Torah to them, 
and continues to guarantee an 
ultimate reward for following 
Halachah, Jewish law. Strassfeld 
eventually found that structure 
unhelpful: It makes extravagant 
claims of fact and demands that 
we defend every problematic 
text or practice. 
Halachah, Strassfeld 
explains, does not meet the 
definition of law, in that it 

has no real enforcement. He 
acknowledges an advantage 
to treating halachah as law: 
“Otherwise, it is only up to me 
whether to observe the practice 
or not. Facing an important 
work deadline, it could be hard 
to resist the pressure of saying 
to myself I will skip.” 
But, except for the most 
traditional of us, contemporary 
Jews do not observe Judaism 
as law. Strassfeld sees that as 
returning to the literal meaning 
of “Halachah” using Jewish 
practice as a “path.” 
Other Jewish movements, in 
their encounter with modernity, 
developed alternative 
structures for explaining their 
commitment to Jewish practice. 
Nearly all, in Strassfeld’s 
analysis, pay too much 
attention to “fulfillment” of our 
obligations and not enough 
to the inner work. In Judaism 
Disrupted, Strassfeld invites us 
to engage in that inner work. 

continued from page 41

been shown at the Detroit 
Institute of Arts, Museum of 
Contemporary Art Detroit 
(MOCAD), Simone DeSousa 
Gallery in Detroit and 
the Public Pool Gallery in 
Hamtramck as well as by other 
art presenters in and out of 
Michigan. 
She also works as a freelance 
writer, art reviewer and college 
lecturer. 
“When I was in high school 
in California, I was interested 
in fashion and went to the 
University of California Santa 
Cruz for theater design and cos-
tuming,
” said Sharp, 42. “When 
I moved to New York in 2002, 
I was working in the costume 
shops. 
“I have always done work 
with fabric, but it’s become less 
and less wearable with a focus 
on my art career. I worked in 
advertising for a time because 
the pay was better, and I did a 

lot of writing while always mak-
ing art somehow. 
“When I got to Detroit, it 
opened up my world as an 
artist. There was so much more 
space here, and I could make 
a living. My first job when 
I moved here was at Slows 
Bar BQ. I was able to support 
myself and still have enough 
time to make art.”
Sharp was named a 2015 
Kresge Literary Arts Fellow for 
Arts Criticism and became a 
2018 recipient of the Rabkin 
Foundation Prize. 
“I write for art mostly 
in online publications, and 
Hyperallergic is the main one,
” 
Sharp said. “I do reviews of 
student work at the University 
of Michigan and the College for 
Creative Studies. I write catalog 
essays for shows.
“The way that I make art is 
labor-intensive, and I hope that 
it leads people to look at it for 

a long time. One of the things I 
think art helps with is attention 
span, which, I think, is a big 
problem in our culture right 
now.
”
Natalie Balazovich, Janice 
Charach Gallery director, 
explained that exhibit pieces 
range from the small to the 
large and reach from fabric and 
basket-weaving materials to 

steel and man-made synthetics. 
“We are thrilled to hold this 
extraordinary exploration of 
contemporary craft,
” Balazovich 
said. “Kim Harty brings a vision 
of what contemporary craft can 
be and a network of brilliant 
artists who share her under-
standing. It makes for a very 
exciting experience for gallery 
goers.
” 

continued from page 42

Sarah Rose Sharp, Farnsworth Flag, 2016. Wool, salvage quilt frag-
ment, Indonesian decorative ribbon, glass buttons, prayer flag scraps, 
printed cotton.

