Abstract — Laurence Myers Reese

Dream of Queer Judaism

These images were created using a dream AI. The dream AI uses a neural network, drawing from data across the internet. I input search terms like “queer jew” and “transgender Judaism.” What results is a series of images (selected and manipulated by me) that map commonalities and fractures among images of queer Judaism. On their own, they are not art. Grouped together, curated, selected, and manipulated by hand, however, they become visual identifiers of abstract ideas.

Gazing at the AI generated images like clouds, one can see skin, body hair, interrupted by a pentagram-star-of-david-hybrid. Images of what look like abstracted text and mock Hebrew letters poke out from rainbows and seas of pinks.

If we are to use these data points as indication as to what is important to transgender or queer jews, we see an emphasis on the “corpus” - both the body and the body of texts. These AI-generated images serve as a companion to the work I am doing in engaging in building a transgender Talmud.

Teshuvah

Oil on Canvas

57” x 71”

2020

A beginning: nothing.

then, creation: to be.

The IF spoke: “Teshuvah” Return.

name echoes into nothingness

language became light,

voice into dark void.

SPOKE, land. Letters made waters to cover the earth

Scooped up dust, with fingers made of noise.

If breathed a vocal breath into earth, making earth beings.

Feminine and masculine, all genders, they created them.

A Plurality created creatives

Language built language builders

A people of god wrestlers

Intent on respecting that

Even a great creator rested from creation

How do we retell the stories of our birth that include us from the beginning?

Artist Yael Kanarek rewrote the entire Torah with all genders swapped. Torah Tah, her torah, not the typical Torato, his torah. This was inspired by her noticing that our annual plea to God in the High Holy days says “Adonai Elohim,” which is plural for lords of gods, gods of gods, or even loosely translated heavenly host. What does it mean to write the narrative from the beginning from a new perspective? In which daughters are more valued than sons? In which men care for children found in the river?

Drawing on kabbalistic imagery, I see my work as an act of magic in creation. Lines and triangles cross over and over again, creating fractals of Magein David (Star or Shield of David). As they cross, colors create optical illusions of space. The hands, Hamsa, contain eyes, Nazar. They search through space and time, looking, reaching towards the viewer, beyond the picture plane.

From the beginning, there was word. But before the physical universe was spoken into existence, says the Talmud, the concept of Teshuvah, or return was created by HaShem, or, The Name. What do we return to? In high holy day prayers we pray to return to our good nature.

We can’t return to something we weren’t ever included in. What creation stories can we reach for? My hands are moving forward through the universe, the unknown. This we think we know:

Energy cannot be created or destroyed. Our energy was here from the beginning.