NEW DOMESTIKA COURSE – HEBREW CALLIGRAPHY
Background
The teacher of the course is the first female Soferet (Hebrew scribe, feminine) for 250 years. In the introductory session of the course, she shares her background which is extremely interesting, and it’s so positive that Orthodox rabbis were prepared to take on her training and give her so much encouragement.
She is very personable and I think her teaching is going to be good. As a qualified scribe. she is authorised to write the Hebrew Bible, which is an extremely serious and responsible task. For thousands of years, the Jewish scribes have preserved the sacred Scriptures, and they have vigorous methods to check the accuracy of what they have written. If there are any errors, the whole scroll must be destroyed because it is no longer the inspired Word of God.
When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947, they found a complete scroll of the book of the Prophet Isaiah. I have seen this in the Shrine of the Book, the beautiful building in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem where the Dead Sea Scrolls are housed. The Hebrew of this scroll was meticulously checked, and apart from a handful of spelling differences, it was shown to be identical to the Hebrew script used today. That is a remarkable testament to the skill and dedication of the scribes through the centuries.
My interest in Hebrew
Shortly after my conversion 40 years ago, I attended an exhibition and a series of talks on the Hebraic roots of the Christian faith, which opened my eyes and changed my life. Since that time I have had a deep love for the Jewish people and recognise just how much we owe them – not just for the Bible which is an entirely Jewish book apart from the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles (also written hy Luke), but also for our Saviour Jesus Christ, the Jewish Messiah.
Over the years I have collected a small library of books relating to the subject, and in the early 1990s I attended evening classes in Biblical Hebrew for five years. My Hebrew is pretty rusty these days because I am not studying it as often as I did then, but I know what to look up, and where, if I need to learn something. These days we have wonderful online tools like the Blue Letter Bible which give the breakdown of every word in the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek of the entire Bible, with cross-references and many other useful tools for study.
During my life as a believer in Jesus, I have led several Bible study groups and have incorporated this knowledge in my teaching, which gives people a depth of insight which most churches do not even come close to. Of course, knowledge of Hebrew is not esssential for salvation but it adds a level of understanding which the translated surface text does not provide. It also helps to explain many things which are hard to understand in the Bible, for Western people with a Hellenistic (Greek) worldview.
The Hebrew alphabet
The aleph-bet, as it is called, consists of 22 consonants, five of which also have a final form, which is used when the letter comes at the end of a word. In the original there are no vowels but these were added later for ease of pronunciation, in the form of small marks in and around the letters. The rabbis ascribe great meaning to each letter and it is fascinating to discover the insights relating to this. The letters also each have a numerical value, so they use letters for numbers, and these numerical values also hold spiritual significance, as revealed in the study of gematria (Biblical numerology).
Our course
I was wondering how our teacher was going to tackle this subject, whether a knowledge of the language would be required to do the course, but this is not so. She teaches us the shapes of the letters and how to form them in a way that is aesthetically pleasing, as is the way with all calligraphy. Knowledge of the language is not necessary, but of course a lot of people who sign up for the course either have some knowledge of it or are interested for a variety of reasons. Many of the participants will be Jewish, and visiting the forum, I have discovered others who are gentile Christians like myself, who simply have an interest in the origins of their faith, and who love the language.
I have made a number of decorative Hebrew pieces over the years, mostly in the form of embroidery. The letters are quite decorative and lend themselves very well to artistic interpretation.
Our first practical task
After introducing ourselves on the forum (the usual practice with these Domestika courses), our first task was to write our name in calligraphy and post it on the forum. This didn’t need to be in Hebrew but could be in any language.
My name
The Hebrew version of my name is Shoshannah, shortened to Shoshi, which I have chosen for my online identity and my artist name – many of my friends also call me that. Shoshannah is the Hebrew word for “lily,” and there are several references to it in the Bible. For this task, I could have just written it in Hebrew, but I decided to make an art work of it, incorporating a lily, and also a verse from Scripture which features the word.
This Scripture is from the Song of Songs – Shir haShirim in Hebrew, Â also known as the Song of Solomon, chapter 6 verse 3. The transliteration from the Hebrew reads, “Ani l’Dodi v’Dodi li: haRo’eh b’Shoshannim.” The translation is “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine: He feeds his flock among the lilies,” or literally, “He shepherds among the lilies.” The word dodi, “my beloved,” is interesting; without the suffix (“my”), the word is dod, “beloved,” with the letter vav in the centre representing the vowel, so it is written “dvd” or “David.” The Song of Solomon is one of the most beautiful love poems in literature and Christians believe that it is a picture of the relationship between Christ and His Bride, the Church. Jesus the Messiah is known as “the Son of David,” having descended directly from Israel’s most famous king, whom God described as “a man after His own heart.” David was also a shepherd and wrote the famous Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd…” – Adonai Ro’i, which links this Psalm to the Song, written by his famous son Solomon, who built the Temple and was the wisest man on earth.
So many connections, and levels of meaning and beauty when you start to dig deep into the language!
The final project of the course will be to write out Psalm 23, but she says we can choose any Scripture we like. I’m still thinking about this. I have so many favourites!
After all that preamble…
My name in calligraphy
I began the project by looking up online how to draw an oval, which was to be the shape of my design. There were lots of different methods, some of which were far too complicated, but I found one which is based on circles, and like much of Islamic art, the shape can be drawn with just a compass and a ruler.
This is the grid.
These are the instructions I wrote down from the Internet. (Apologies for my scrawl – I CAN write a lot better than this!!)
The design
Since the letter “shin” appears twice in my name, and one of them is the central letter, I decided to depict this letter as a lily, with the other letters flanking it. The border would consist of the verse in Hebrew, and I would also incorporate the Bible reference.
Here is my design being traced over the oval grid, together with my initial small sketch.
The competed design, ready to be transferred to the watercolour paper.
The paper I chose was one of the beetroot juice dyed papers I made recently. I had attempted to get some fabric lace to transfer but this was not a success. The paper has some darker marks on it, and I like this as it adds texture and interest, and gives it a somewhat vintage look.
I do not like the metric system of paper sizing we have in the UK (and in Europe). I can see that it is convenient to have a system that retains the same aspect ratio as you double or halve the sheet, but to my eye the proportions are not aesthetically pleasing. I think the US “letter” size paper is much more pleasing, being slightly shorter and slightly wider in portrait mode. It’s a subtle difference, but I think it makes all the difference! My particular piece of paper for this project is A4, landscape format, and to improve the proportions, I have trimmed off half an inch from each side.
The parallels with my recent Islamic art course on Domestika
In this project, I have used some aspects from the last course – the brush and ink outlining technique, and also a small biomorphic design at the top of the drawing, and a bit of woven border. I am very pleased to have learned these techniques, and that I can use them in different art forms as well.
Working on the watercolour paper
Here is the design transferred to the watercolour paper. I have gone over it with a fine permanent grey fineliner and erased the graphite. It is now ready for painting.
The finished project
The design is worked in various media – the gold is Golden Iridescent Bronze Fine fluid acrylic (my favourite gold paint), and I did the outlining with Winsor and Newton black Indian ink. The white and colour are a combination of white gouache and three different shades of pink from the Kuretake Art Nouveau watercolour set. The shading on the lily was a mixture of white gouache and a small amount of Payne’s Grey watercolour from my regular watercolour set. I also used couple of black archival ink pens.
Here’s a detail of the border.
I am very pleased with how this turned out, especially with the shape of the lily adapting so well to form the letter “shin.” This was an extremely enjoyable and satisfying piece to work on, and a celebration of my name and its association with Holy Scripture.
I love the words of Jesus when He spoke about lilies, as an illustration of how we should not worry about material things, but trust God to provide for our needs:
“Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” (Luke 12:27).
Another link with the Song of Solomon verse! (The word for “lily” in the Greek New Testament is krinon – not so pretty as Shoshannah!) I just love this association with my name, and how close it brings me to my Saviour, who has never failed to provide for my needs!
