Art Gallery Threatened Over Talmud Artwork

YNET
By Kobi Nahshoni

Else places ancient Talmud pages into glass tubes and glue them onto canvas

ISRAEL---Israel's Chief Rabbinate has threatened to stop an art gallery in Tel Aviv from exhibiting works using original Talmud pages "sacrilegiously." Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger said he hoped someone would purchase the artwork for thousands of shekels – so that they would be removed from the gallery. Radio Kol Hai revealed that the gallery, located on Dizengoff Street, displays dozens of such works designed from ancient Talmud pages inserted into glass tubes and glued onto canvas pictures. They works are called "Gmara" and the cheapest one is being sold for NIS 6,000 (about $1,610). The artist, a French woman who refers to herself as "Else," told Kol Hai reporter Dvora Ginsburg that the pages were taken from an ancient Talmud she bought from an art dealer in France. "I'm a traditional Jew, and two years ago, when I was drawing the Jewish people's exodus from Egypt, I got the inspiration to add the Talmud pages which I saw as a Jewish symbol," she explained. "I later combined the pages in my other works."[link]