Illuminating The Psalms: 29, 92, and 96, in Many Moments

12 May, 2024

We are deeply honoured to welcome Debra Band, Visual Artist, Calligrapher, Illuminator, and Senior Scholar at the Oxford Interfaith Forum, to lead the Psalms in Interfaith Contexts Reading Group session.

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Here are the details of this fascinating event.

Topic: Illuminating The Psalms: 29, 92, and 96, in Many Moments

Abstract: For more than two and a half millennia the verses of the Psalms have welled up in the hearts and minds of Jews and Christians in countless situations, from reveries about the beauty and order of the world, celebration of the power of the divine, desperate prayer for rescue from danger, to confidence that God will always be at our side. Indeed, our immediate emotional and spiritual needs, the public or private settings of our song, even our fleeting moods, shade our conversations with the divine as we read and sing the Psalms in different moments in our lives. Hebrew manuscript artist and scholar, Debra Band, has approached the Psalms in several of her illuminated books, with indeed another presently in progress. In this slide discussion Band will present the very different interpretations of three psalms, numbers 29, 92 and 96, as each is interpreted in two of her books, I Will Wake the Dawn: Illuminated Psalms (with Arnold J. Band, JPS 2007), and Kabbalat Shabbat: the Grand Unification (with Raymond P. Scheindlin, Honeybee in the Garden, 2012). In the many vibrant illuminated paintings accomplished for each book, Band employed the full panoply of Hebrew manuscript arts to express the intricate visual symbolism she developed to express the subtleties and beauty of these beloved poems.

Speaker’s biography: Debra Band’s work in Hebrew illuminated manuscripts draws upon her love of both the manuscript arts and biblical studies. She holds a BA Honours in History from Concordia University in Montreal and an MS in Political Science from MIT, and turned full attention to Hebrew manuscript arts in 1987. Descended from an eminent rabbinic family, her extensive studies of Jewish texts and research into medieval European and middle Eastern painting and manuscripts inform her work. Her work, celebrated for its intellectual and spiritual depth as well as visual beauty, includes illuminated and papercut books and ketubot, other manuscript pieces and papercuts, in exhibits, private collections, community institutions and galleries across the English-speaking world.
Debra is the artist and author of The Song of Songs: the Honeybee in the Garden (Jewish Publication Society, 2005), I Will Wake the Dawn: Illuminated Psalms, (Jewish Publication Society, 2007), Arise! Arise! Deborah, Ruth and Hannah (Honeybee in the Garden, 2012), Kabbalat Shabbat: the Grand Unification, with Raymond P. Scheindlin (Honeybee in the Garden, 2016), All the World Praises You! an illuminated Aleph-Bet book (Honeybee in the Garden, 2018), and Qohelet: Searching for a Life Worth Living, with Menachem Fisch (Baylor University Press, 2023). Her collaboration with the renowned scholar of Jewish mysticism, Arthur Green, and astrophysicist Howard Smith on Secrets of Creation: Mysticism Meets Science and Art an illuminated book and commentary of a 16th century Kabbalistic work, will be published in summer 2025. Her present work focuses primarily on works of inter-religious dialogue; she is engaged in three new international collaborative book projects with leading Jewish, Christian and Muslim scholars. Her work regularly tours museums and galleries across the United States, and is featured in many Jewish and Christian scholarly works. She lectures frequently on her work across the United States, in locations as varied as synagogues, Christian seminaries, the Library of Congress and universities around the world. For more information, please see www.dbandart.com.