These digital images are part of an effort to communicate
a vision which culminated in Jerusalem two years ago. I have spent my time
since then trying to express the spiritual truths I have seen in the land
where men have been undergoing vision quests for thousands of years. My
name, Dylan, originates from Whales where it means son of the waves. It
was in Israel where I discovered the spiritual significance of this name.
It was there, through loving the ocean, where I transcended from my physical
roots to a spiritual identity I symbolize with my photograph of a mother
and baby dolphin. Only by peeling away from the illusion of my physical
roots- epitomized by my mother- was I able to become one with the dolphins
of my soul.
The man in between the double mirrors is
homeless and considered insane, yet I am sure he is the most enlightened
man I've ever met. As I photographed him on the beach in Tel Aviv that night,
he performed hand movements, lost in his own world, seemingly oblivious
to the fact he was being photographed. To me, his gesture, fingers pointing
upwards towards the moon, reveals the focus of the visionary. He is positioned
between the parallel mirrors of sunsets over the Mediterranean Sea, an image
which expresses transcendence through the ocean- through nature.
I call this man a New Jew, a phrase used first by early twentieth century
Israeli writers to refer to the new breed of young Jews in Palestine, who
rejected the two thousand year old Jewish mentality of their parents and
ancestors in Europe. The people of the book had become the people of the
land. The descendants of shtettle Rabbis and intellectuals of European cities
were now farmers and soldiers. Love of the Talmud, the bulk of the written
Torah, was replaced with love of nature.
The next image is of two ultra-religious Jews staring at an Israeli soldier
ahead. This image is framed by mirrored images of the Second Temple, the
Jewish shrine burnt down by the Romans in 70 A.D., marking the beginning
of the Jewish Exile. The return of the Jews to Israel in the last hundred
years brought an end to this two thousand year exile from the Jewish homeland.
While many before me have spoken of the emergence of the New Jew as a sociological
revolution, I see it as a spiritual one. A spiritual transition in Judaism
unprecedented since the destruction of the Temple. Until 70 A.D., the religion
revolved around Temple worship and Priests. In the exile, however, Judaism
was redefined by the Pharisees, a rebel movement which evolved into Rabbinic
Judaism. It was they who realized that in order to preserve the identity
of the people in exile, temple worship would have to be replaced by synagogues
and study of religious law. Two thousand years were spent intellectualizing
how to swim while living in the dry land of the exile.
The New Jew represents the third phase of Judaism. Transcendence is now
found through sacrifice for the community (all Israelis go to the army at
18), love of nature, and embracing the present instead of the past. The
Holocaust, a turning point of destruction even more tragic than the temple
burning in 70 A.D., and far more remembered, brought a virtual end to European
Jewry. Today the Old Jew resides predominantly in the U.S., where the European
Jewish mentality continues. Columbia, an ironic location for these images,
is certainly an institution where the Old Jew is still strong. But with
the assimilation and intermarriage of American Jews it becomes increasingly
clear that just as Temple Judaism faded into history, so too will the Old
Jew.
Ultimately, I believe, man's perception of God is a problem greater than
any religion. Old and New "Jews" can also be found hiding in Christianity,
Islam, and every other religion. But when all the rhetoric and dead dogma
is put aside, man's vision of the infinite - God / love / truth - exists independent
of organized religion, and is in fact rooted in the inherent double mirrors
of our individual minds. Because of this humanity, even an ordinary view
of the ocean from a quite beach can take on infinite significance.
Undoubtedly my message is still somewhat lost in the translation. . . so
my effort to communicate continues.
Dylan, Son of Waves
Columbia Photography Exhibit, 1995