"The Jewish Chronicle" No 7144 (United Kingdom) by Mordechai Beck
THE SCRIPT KINGS
Mordechai Beck on two leading men of letters: the maker of the world’s largest mezuzah and (below) Israel’s premier calligrapher
Photo: Monster mezuzah: Israeli scribe Avraham Borshevsky with his super-sized scroll and (inset ) Guinness Book of Records certificate
It’s not everyday that you meet someone who has an entry in the Guinness Book of Records. Yet the famous record book tells only a small fragment of Avraham Borshevsky’s story.
The plain announcement that he is the scribe of the world’s largest ever mezuzah does small justice to his career. It doesn’t reveal the shock he gave his parents when he announced that he was giving up his studies in Leningrad’s prestigious school of art in order to enter yeshivah. Or mention the string of projects he has carried out as a sofer STaM (scribe for Sifrei Torah, tefillin and mezuzot) and artist since moving to Israel.
At 35, Avraham Borshevsky has established himself as one of the few religious scribes to integrate both his art and his scribal work. “In fact,” he recalls, in his small studio in central Jerusalem, “I studied to be a scribe only after I came to Jerusalem in 1990. Prior to that, I had studied art and architecture in my native Russia, and had abandoned it for yeshivah. When I came with my family to Israel, I really had to start from the beginning.”
Born in the Ukraine, he grew up in Leningrad (St. Petersburg), the son of secular Jewish parents who traced their ancestry to Chasidic roots. In the 1980s, while a student in the city’s art school, he met Chabadniks (Lubavitchers) who were conducting shiurim in secret.
“This was the way I reconnected to my roots,” he now says, “ultimately leading to my undergoing brit milah [circumcision]. My parents were horrified at the thought of my going to yeshivah instead of continuing my studies and guaranteeing I had a profession. But I realised even then that I did not want merely to be an artist. Art had to mean something beyond a particular skill. It had to be infused with a higher meaning.”
This higher meaning found its expression in Torah studies which Avraham pursued in Israel in a special programme in Jerusalem, Yeshivat Shvut Ami, for Russian olim who were ba’alei teshuvah (returnees to religion). Only after completing his Torah studies, did he venture back to a profession. Here he confronted one of the dilemmas that confront all ba’alei teshuvah. “I did not want to forgot my training and ambition as an artist, but I also wanted to be true to the Torah. I thus sought to fuse the two strands of my life.”
He began to work on a series of illustrated texts from the Bible, notably the five megillot, the first of which was the Scroll of Esther. “That’s the scroll novice scribes begin with,” he says with a grin. “It’s less problematic if you make a mistake.”
His first Megillat Esther is a fusion of a beautifully classical Hebrew script and highly colourful illustrations in egg tempera and gold leaf, whose flowing curves aptly complement the Hebraic lettering. A clear influence of the Russian school of book illustration is discernible.
“Even so, I was searching for something more than just an artistic success,” he says. “I wanted something that would bring the awareness of God to a wider audience, not just to Russian Jews, or even to all Jews, but to the world at large.”
Thus came about the idea of the mega-mezuzah. “After all,” he explains, “the whole idea of the mezuzah is that it is a public expression of our faith. I checked with all the appropriate authorities about the kashrut of such a large mezuzah, and all the responses were positive.”
The mezuzah, created in 2004 and 1.10 metres high and weighing three kilograms, sits in Avraham’s office-studio, encased in wood, gold and glass. Occasionally he exhibits it, and delights in the young children who are photographed next to it. Similarly, he was overjoyed when he appeared on Israeli children’s television. “If through my art I can reach a quarter of a million youngsters, then I feel I have made them aware of God’s commandments in a way that they will surely remember.”
By common consent, Israel’s leading calligrapher is 52-year-old Izzy Pludwinski. Avraham Borshevsky counts him among his most impressive teachers: “Oh, he’s absolutely the best!” he says in awe.
Having studied in Yeshiva University’s High School in Brooklyn, Pludwinski only became a sofer after moving to Israel. “I then realised that to become an all-round calligrapher, I had to study with a master. I found this in the Roehampton Institute in London whose calligraphy and bookbinding department was founded by the legendary Ann Camp. While there [in 1987-88], I set up a course for calligraphers at the Spiro Institute and later exhibited at Yakar.”
At Roehampton, he also met Donald Jackson, the Queen’s official calligrapher, who later turned to Pludwinski for help in locating parchment for his St John’s Bible project. Pludwinski accompanied him to Mea Shearim to examine possible skins. “In Mea Shearim,” he says, “I tried to explain to the Charedi scribes what this pucker Englishman was doing there. I told them that he was Queen Elizabeth’s calligrapher. ‘In that case,’ said one of the shop owners, ‘we’ll give him two chairs to sit on!’”
Jackson invited Pludwinski to be his Hebrew scribe on the project to add to the authenticity of the hand-made, illustrated Bible. Examples of their powerful work are currently on view at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Pludwinski in the meantime has developed both his Hebrew and English calligraphy, pushing both in the direction of abstraction, inspired by Islamic and Oriental calligraphers (he recently returned from a course in Zen calligraphy in Japan). One of his own works, “The Song of Songs,” featuring his novel Hebrew font (and prints by this writer), was sold to the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
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