>> From the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. 
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>> Mary-Jane Deeb: Well, good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the African and Middle East Division. I'm Mary-Jane Deeb Chief of the division, and I'm really very, very happy to see you all here for this special presentation with Israeli artist Avner Moriah who will talk to us about his new book "From Text to Image: Illumination as Visual Commentary". I hope it will not be only about the new book, that it'll be about more than that. As most of you already know, our division, and this is my little commercial for our division because we're webcast, and we want the world to know where this event is taking place. So, our division is made up of three sections. The Hebraic section, of course, the African section, and the Near East section. We're responsible for materials from 78 countries around the world, from the near east, central Asia, the Caucasus, as well as from the entire continent of Africa. And, of course, for Hebraic, we collect from around the world. We're very active in acquiring and developing our collections, greeting visitors coming from countries from our regions, and organizing programs, symposia, workshops. We're also have exhibits and special displays, and we had a big one, a big exhibit on the Hebrew book a few years ago which was, which brought in hundreds of thousands of people to see some of the treasures that we hold here. We are particularly happy to have Avner Moriah here with us today. Not only because we like to invite scholars to discuss their productions, their creations, their books and how they use the materials in the collections, in our collection, other collections, to write their works or to produce their books, but we are happy because Avner Moriah's works, his illustrations, focus on the Bible. And, the Hebraic section's holdings are especially strong in the areas of the Bibles, or the Bible and rabbinic liturgy and Hebrew language and literature. The section is also expanding its collection of modern artist books on the Bible, and so it is fitting to have Avner Moriah come and talk to us about his journey through the Bible, and how he became such an illustrious artist. We hold his beautifully illustrated book of Genesis and have just acquired his most recent.
>> Don't give it away.
>> Okay. I won't. I'm stopping here. I've been stopped, so I do not continue. Okay. So, we will surprise you. I think, put it this way. We will surprise you, okay, with a display of his books, of his illustrated books and also of some of our treasures, some of our older Bibles, some of the unique Bibles that we hold. So, that will be a surprise at the end of the program. And now, Dr. Ann Brener, the Hebrew specialist in the Hebraic section, will introduce our speaker for today. 
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[ Inaudible Conversation and Laughter ]
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>> Ann Brener: I'm sorry. That just kind of popped out. It is a surprise. [laughs] The Bible has been a constant focus of creativity through the ages, inviting scholars, poets, artists, and dreamers to fill in the gaps, flesh out the details, and delve into the meanings. Today's speaker is one of those artists, and today's display a tribute to his unique vision of a biblical text. Avner Moriah is one of the best known and widely collected artists in Israel today. He is what we call in Hebrew a [Hebrew language]. He's a national treasure. He is a Jerusalem artist who was born in Jerusalem. He lives and works in Jerusalem, but his works have reached every corner of the globe and they grace the finest of collections, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the Art Institute of Boston, and many, many more. Here in the Library of Congress, we also collect him, and indeed his illuminated book of Genesis as Dr. Deeb just said, it has long been one of our favorite showpieces here in the Hebraic section. We have a special surprise for you today. Now, I'll say it. As you know, there will be a display following today's talk, and you will be able to see some really gorgeous examples of Avner's work together with some rare editions of the biblical texts that have inspired him. But, what you don't know because we didn't know until yesterday ourselves, was that we're also going to be able to display, I think for the first time in America, his new book, his next book in his biblical journey, the book of Exodus. It is absolutely gorgeous, and it's on display for you afterwards. So, we're so delighted that worked out. It was due to the generosity of the Coven Family Endowment that we were able to make this really extravagantly beautiful purchase. And, I'm delighted to have the opportunity to thank them. I also want to thank the Ms. Golina Teverovski [assumed spelling] in Acquisitions Division who worked some kind of magic in getting this book straight from the binding and into the shelves of the Library of Congress in record time, just in time for today's display. So, thanks to Golina. Are you here, Golina? No? Well, she deserves our thanks. All great stories seem to begin with a quest, and today we are privileged to welcome Avner Moriah into our reading room and hear firsthand about his own journey through the Bible. So, please join me in welcoming Avner Moriah.
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[ Applause ]
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>> Avner Moriah: Thank you for having me. It's a great honor to be here, and going to put my watch here so I make sure that we keep the time schedule right. 
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[ Inaudible Speaker ]
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I'm going to take you through a quick journey through my work, and then we will concentrate on the project that I'm working on right now. Actually, I've been working on it for the last 15 years is "Illuminating the Text". I didn't start as an illustrator, but I came about this project from painting the Israeli landscape and other things. So, I'm going to give you a quick run of how I go to where I go. So, what you see here is works of mine from '78. I was a student at Bazalel. I, I'm a graduate of Bazalel Academy of Art, and Yale University MFA program there. These are landscapes that I painted in the Judean hills. This is a series that I did on Israeli soldiers in the landscape. With [inaudible] of camouflage behind it that what got me to work on the subsequent was the idea of camouflage. This, I did a large series on the holocaust, and what inspired me there was the movie "Shoah". My dear, with this subject matter is usually we paint either the victims or the perpetrators, and I chose to paint both because by putting the perpetrators and the victims together in one, on one canvas extends the horror that actually took place. I, whenever I do a series of paintings, I tend to go and do serious research. I went to Germany to look at the works, the German expressionist work that was done before the war, and you can really sense that the war is coming. So, this is my stadium. This is the dining hall. This is a series that I did on the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. Again, I went to Spain and looked at the art that was done in Spain, and what was interesting that right around 1492, you see a tremendous amount of search in the churches that were all renovated. And so, when you come to think about it, it was either from money or gold that came from South America or money that came from the Muslims or the Jews where the church said to them, "Prove to us that you're good members of the community." 
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So, this is looting the synagogue. For years, I've been painting the Israeli landscape. This is the Mount Sinai. I actually went to paint next to Mount Sinai, and I have a small anecdote about it. It is but when I stood and painted there, in order to get to the point that I wanted to paint, you had to pass an Egyptian post, and there was an officer that was standing there. And, for five days, he let me go. After five days, he wanted baksheesh. But the Bedouins came to him and said, "He's a good painter. Let him paint." So, I didn't have to pay anything. So, that's just like a nice human interaction. These are all landscapes that I paint on site. These are large canvases. They're 42 inches by 80 inches. This is a sunset over the Sea of Galilee with a Khamsin winds. These are views of Jerusalem. I'll just go quickly through it so we can get to the point where I want to. 
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This is a painting of my wife. She passed away five years ago. She was the inspiration of my Bible project, the one that I'm working on now. What got me into dealing with the Jewish text was an opportunity that I got from JPS. I did two large murals for them. The first one that you see here is, I did a big project on the gathering at Mount Sinai, and when we looked for a place to do my mural at the JPS, they said, "Find any place that you want in the building." So, I chose the staircase that leads to the library, and I thought of places that we go up and down in the bible. And, I thought of Mount Sinai because at Mount Sinai, we got the written word and the, also. So, and there are other cases of going up and down the ladder, like Joseph in the pit or Jacob's ladder. The number ten occurred because we have the ten plagues and the ten commandments. I thought of the ten Rabbis that were executed by the Romans and the, and I thought also of ten [inaudible] that dealt with the gathering at Mount Sinai. So, the centerpiece is the different times that we went, that Moses goes up and down the mountain. I mean, there's more than one story about getting the Torah. And, the other panels around are the different points that I just mentioned. And, after I finished these murals, people came to me and said, "Oh, you should do a Haggadah. You should do a Haggadah, now, so I just finished the. So, this actually worked, coincided with the first round of my wife battling cancer, and I thought of the Passover Haggadah because we all go in and out of Egypt. And, this is one of the pages that Jerusalem is the center of the universe. Actually, here, it's interesting because the image that I used was a painting from Piero della Francesca, "Resurrection of Christ", and the resurrection also deals with Passover. This is, again, an image from the Passover Haggadah. When I, when I did these series, I worked, again, very methodically. I did the many, many drawings, many, many studies, and then I sit together with my calligrapher. I'm totally dyslexic, so I don't even come close to writing text because the letters have their own life. So, we design page after page with my images, and I do everything twice. I first do the preliminary studies, and then I sit with the calligrapher and we design page after page with text and image. These are images, after I finish this, I have a friend in New York. She is a curator of a museum. She said, "Oh, you should do something more cheerful. How about doing some work about [Hebrew language]" Like, tales. So, so, I thought of the scroll of Esther because it's, she thought more like Hansel and Gretel than stories like that, but I chose. And so, again, I went and I studied the tale of Esther or the scroll of Esther. And, I created 76 images where I paint the visual story. I think one of the gifts that I've been given from whoever gives those gifts is my ability to, when I read a text, to come up with a set design. That's why I showed you my other works to see how I create like a set design from something that is abstract, but if you give me very few details, I can come with my own design so, and I work, again, here very methodically. I looked at Persian miniatures, Indian miniatures, and I always make a point about making that I live and work in the Middle East. So, although you could see that there's a three dimension, but I also use the two dimension design even in my holocaust paintings. When I did them, I, there are three ideas that I had. One is called "The Dance of Death". That's a Nordic theme that deals with mass killings. And, it was during the 100 year war between the Protestants and the Catholics. Also, there's a theme in Italian southern theme that is called "The Massacre of the Innocents". They actually painted the destruction of the temple. And then, I paint, I thought of Egyptian art because they deal with life after death. And, I combined all these images together to create my own interpretation of the text. It didn't make sense at the time to try and copy any of the visuals that you know the horrific photographs, but to come up with my own, so to speak, hell that described that period of our people. And, when you think about it, you know, we have horrors going on right now around the world, and yet, we keep on our life as, you know, wherever we live, we keep our life as it is.  So, these images are I took from Persian miniatures, and I also looked at the, like the guys at the bottom getting drunk, I thought of Bruegel and his guys getting drunk. The dancers, I picked from Indian miniatures. Bringing Esther to the palace, I thought of these carriages that were in France in the 1600s where they were carrying their princesses or in China to the palace. So, these are the drunks from Bruegel. These are the dancers. These are the horses. Can see the dancers again. The image I used, this is from an Indian miniatures. I used the images of Susa, the capital of Persia. And, these are Muslim miniatures that I looked at. 
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You'll see when I get to my scroll of Esther, this is Vermeer. Vermeer always has a twist in his painting that in the background, he says something about what else was going on the lives of the map, and deals with a sailor and this woman is waiting for her husband to come back. This is my scroll, my scroll of Esther that is actually in the collection of the Library here. And, when I did this scroll, I, it's interesting how the text developed through the works that I work here. I used a scribe to do the writing, and I surrounded it all around with text, with images. Here, I used a woman scribe, but you could see, like, in the window, in the panel to, I would say that would be your left, where you see King Ahasuerus wakes up at night. 
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And, the images around his room are what actually took place. So, this is Haman there sitting and listening to Bigthan and Teresh, and then [foreign language]. You have Haman leading Mordecai on the horse. And, also there's the gallows in the door between the two guards as a sign to what is going to happen next. This is from a different scroll that I did. Like, my, the scribes that write the text to send the messages out, I give them glasses. I mean, they didn't have glasses at the time, but. Here, this is like the scene where Haman falls on the, on Esther's bed. She was a very wise woman. She had no power, no property, but she understood men. And so, she made sure when it came to Haman, when Haman gets drunk, he gets into trouble. And, that's when Ahasuerus walks into the room and sees Haman falling on her bed, and off he goes. This is really an interesting painting. This is a painting that was done by Paulo Coelho, and it's a painting about a Jewish merchant during the period where of Passover that the stories with the blood, the actually. So, I took this image, and if you know in the scroll of Esther, too, it's the end of it becomes very, very violent. So, I used the image at the bottom to paint a scene of violence where they are breaking into the home. These are pages from the scroll that I just completed now. It's the longest scroll of Esther ever done. It's 54 feet long, and I'm going to take it to the Guinness Book of Records. And, these are some of the images that I did. I painted the two characters of Bigthan and Teresh being hung and gave them red outfits like ISIS. Here, this is when Ahasuerus wakes up in the middle of the night, so I put my two doggies, [inaudible], lying next to Ahasuerus's bed. I gave them gold beds. At home, they have plastic beds, but this way I made sure that they will become, they will stay with us forever. This is the image of Haman leading Mordecai through the town. These, now, we're getting to the subject that I was planning to talk about, and these are sources from my visual images. This is from Egyptian tombs, so you can see the different animals that are used, both in Genesis and in Exodus. This is from a Syrian wall relief that I used also for my visuals. 
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Here, when I painted Noah's ark, I looked at this image. It's a monsoon flood. Now, from an Indian manuscript. This is, now we're getting into my preliminary studies of the book of Genesis, and the image on the top is God asking Cain why did his face fall down, meaning why did he, why does he look upset. So, I dropped his face down. See on the top left corner. This is Enoch walking with God. This is my images, my preliminary studies for Genesis, the six days of creation. So, I did more than one version. Actually, this project that I did, I started it as a result of my wife's second round with cancer where the doctor. She went to a bone marrow transplant, and the doctors they played God. So, I figured if they can play God and God could play God, so I can play God, too. So, I created. That's how I got myself involved with illustrating the Bible. And, my thought was, you know, instead of feeling sorry for myself, to do something productive. This is the expulsion from the garden. And, that's what I thought you seeing here the ark how I used the same element of the water that I took from the Indian miniature. Here, I compared, this is also a preliminary study. I compared the two buildings that are in the book of Genesis. One is God's, by God's will is the ark, and against his will is the Tower of Babel. So, I painted it like an antenna, a communication center today. These are all the characters from Shem, Ham, and Japheth that and all the way to Abraham. So, I just made them up as we went along. This is the covenant between Abraham and God. This is the Akeda, the sacrifice of Isaac. This is Jacob's ladder. This is Joseph in the pit, and it's really interesting. When you look at the two motives of the two tales of Joseph in the pit and the Akeda. It's very interesting because the motives are exactly the same. In both places, there's a lie. Here we have an animal. Jacob asks the sons how did Joseph die, and they, then he asks them if an animal killed him, and they say yes, but they're lying to him. Here, Abraham lies to Isaac when Isaac asks him they don't have anything to sacrifice. "What are we going to sacrifice?" And, Abraham knows he's going to sacrifice him, but he says, "God will provide." So, that's the lie here. In both cases, we have another animal that gives its sacrificed. Here's the ram.
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And, here is the goat that they use for to cover the coat of many colors. Here, we have the Midianites that end up buying Joseph, and we have foreigners. And, here we have the youth that came along sitting behind. Here, they go up the mountain, and here Joseph is in the pit, and Jacob says to the sons that he will go to the underworld to look for him. So, it's really interesting. Both tales deal with breaking basic rules, basic godly rules that the firstborn gets the birthright, and in both cases, both parents give it to somebody else. And, the, and so it's real interesting that the two tales are, have the same motifs in them. Here, I did a page of animals in the book of Genesis. This is the pages from Genesis. I just wanted to show you how I, so I did all these preliminary studies, and then I sit with my calligrapher and we decide page after page. This is really an interesting page because here there's a short, mythological tale about the sons of God that come down and mate with earthly women, and God is worried that they're going to live forever. So, he limits their lives to 100 years. So, I give them a Canaanite burial. This is, you can see the development of the flood where here the ark is coming towards us where before it was like going across. Here I made the page again with characters, and the one in the bottom right is how they spread around the Mediterranean Basin. This is, again, the image of the ark and the tower of Babel. So, you see, I do do everything twice. I'm not lazy. This is the covenant between Abraham and God. This is the Akeda. This is when Rivka falls off the camel. I want to say about my images when I paint them. Because I painted for many, many years the Israeli landscape, I have a nice sensibility and use of colors, and to create, I bring them into the contemporary paintings that I paint. 
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And, you know, through the renaissance artists painted biblical scenes, but they painted the wrong landscape and the wrong clothes and their own setups. So, here, I brought the landscapes of Israel into the story. This is Jacob's ladder. Here, I used, when Laban goes after, when Jacob sees Laban, he says to him, how come your face is not like yesterday and the day before? So, I have his face, I gave him three heads. Today, yesterday, and the day before. 
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Here, I made a page of all the dreams in the book of Genesis. When we get to Joseph going down to Egypt, I tried to paint it more like Egyptian hieroglyphs, and in the bottom right corner, it says that before Jacob, Joseph went to see pharaoh, he cleaned himself. So, I gave him a shower. This is the last page of Genesis, and there's a development of God because in the first book of, in the first tale of Genesis, God is not forgiving. Adam and Eve sinned, and he kicks them out of the garden. In the last tale of Genesis, Joseph and the brothers return from the land of Canaan, and they're worried he's going to kill them. And, he turns to them and said, "I was sent by God to save us all and endure what I had to endure for the sake of keeping us all alive." This is the page. I also did it in English. In English, it's about 1/3 more in length because of the amount of words. I also did some oil painting, the result of my project. These are all canvases. Cain and Abel. 
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This is the book of Exodus. So, this page, I thought of Moses when he goes and he sees the burning bush, and my idea is that when we study with a professor in the university, they're not that smart. But, they usually they have one or two ideas that they try to get into our heads, and they keep on repeating it over and over again. But, we don't hear it until we're ready to hear it. So, that's my idea of the burning bush, that Moses passed that burning bush many, many times for years when he was with Jethro, but only when he was ready to hear God, he saw him. And, that's when the burning bush was on fire. This is the gathering at Mount Sinai. Here, I took this image by a [foreign language] the heart of pharaoh hardened. But, in Hebrew [foreign language] means also that it was heavy. So, I took an image from the Book of the Dead where the heart, if your heart was heavier than a feather, you didn't go to the underworld. Here, I can, I took ideas. When God stops the Egyptians from chasing the Israelites he uses first fire. And so, fire is not a motif in the Egyptian culture. It's a motif in the Assyrian culture, in the east cultures. So, I thought, and my idea about all these tales that wherever we are in the Middle East, in and around the Mediterranean Basin, we all use the same tales. So, here, I have the Egyptians dying in the, drowning in the sea. But, I also use the tale about Marduk and Tiamat. Tiamat is going to kill all the lesser gods and her son, and the lesser gods come to Marduk and ask him to save them. And, there's no way to save them because nobody can kill her, but she has seven heads. So, he drowns one of her heads in the lake. She opens her mouth. He puts a dagger in her mouth and kills her. When we get out of the story of the crossing the sea, we thank God, and we're ready to build a temple. We haven't been to Jerusalem yet or to Mount Sinai or any other place, but we're ready to build him a temple. And, these guys, also, after they're so pleased that they were saved, they build the city of Babel and bring humans to worship [inaudible] there. So, it's not the same story, but there's similarities, so I compare the two tales. This is that we were carried on eagle's wings. Here, the skinny cats, cats. The skinny cows eat the fat cows but also Moses's crocodile eats the crocodiles of the Egyptians. Here, I compared the ten plagues to ten Egyptian gods because every time Moses comes to pharaoh, he says, "I want to go and sacrifice to my God," and he doesn't allow them. So, if you can't feed, if you won't let me feed my God, I won't let you feed your gods. Here, I compared the angel of death to the angel that saved Isaac. So, these are some of the pages from Exodus that you're going to see. 
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These are pages from Leviticus. 
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These are called the menu. These are all the animals we can't eat, the non-kosher animals. So, here, with leprosy, I used images from Bruegel's lepers. These are, I'm going to show you one or two pages from the book of Leviticus that I'm working on right now. I painted it with black and gold. 
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That's it. 
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[ Applause ]
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I did pass my allowance, but not by much. But, I'm an Israeli, so. 
>> Ann Brener: I know we all enjoyed that wonderful talk by Avner Moriah. And, I'm sure a lot of you have questions, but we were thinking that perhaps we just invite you back into the conference room for the display. And, Avner will be talking about his paintings there with the books right before you. So, you'll be able to ask him any question that you like there. So, please, let's give him another hand, and please let's come into the conference room. 
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[ Applause ]
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Thank you very much. 
>> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.