Interiority

​

"Kerev-Kravaïm"

"Karov" near in Hebrew and its cognate "Kerev" meaning interior or inner part. "Kerev" is a synonym of "Panim" (human inward faces). The holy tongue teaches us that trough the face there is revealed a being-for-the other that cannot be enough, a nearness to the other, so near that it is within. It turns out that the soul is not my essence, neither self nor ego, it is not me at all, and rather, the soul is the other in me. According to mystical tradition G-d creates the soul from the letters of the holy tongue, he puts those letters together to form an utterance, so that the soul of a person is the divine speech that speaks the person. The soul is therefore more an action than an object,  it is a speech act of the holy one.

​

Poem of Solomon Ibn Gabirol

"Thou hast imparted to it, the spirit of wisdom and called it the soul and flames of intellectual fire hast thou wrought its form and like a burning fire hast thou wafted it and sent it to the body to serve and guard it and it fire in the midst there of yet do not consume it, for it is from the fire of the soul that the body hath been created from nothingness to being, because the lord descended on him in fire". This drawing belongs to a larger body of work and completed the sculpture "Kerev-kravaïm".

​

The body-mezouza is compared to "Aaron a Kodesh" (Torah ark) where the empty space around the "Sefer Torah" is called "Kerev", this empty space of circulation like the lungs in the body called: "Kravaim" allows inspiration, expiration, respiration. This internal "Me-zouza'' movement: technically to echo: this implication the paper becomes like a vitrage giving us the possibility of a kinetical reading trough the light: celestial body. The language of existence is in this pulsing phenomenon of expansion retraction of hidden and revealed. This recalls the classification of different type of images made by Deleuze image-perception, image-action, image-relation, pulsion, reflection. Each Hebraic letters is connected to a limb if I spread my fingers on my face (like when praying "Chema" there is many ways of doing in it according to different traditions) my face connects me to my senses: my thumb the hearing, my little finger with taste, my mouth, my tongue. My index with the smell the middle finger on the eyes with touch, the annular with seeing. After the temple destruction animals offering to get closer to G-d were replaced by the liturgy where man voice gives life to the letter and its multifaceted interpretations: many ways of getting closer "Leitkarev."

                                                       Dr Adam Zachary Newton