Monday, January 28, 2013
Animating the Talmud
Rabbi Eliezer, in his purple robe and flowing gray beard, curls his fists in concentration as he miraculously reverses the direction of a river's flowing, cerulean water. A paper-cut Moses looks on in surprise as Rabbi Akiva teaches his many students, all colored in yellows and pastels. Rabban Gamliel, sporting a bow tie and monocle, shakes his jowls and wields his gavel as he publicly shames a thin and meek Rabbi Yehoshua.
The Talmud has never looked so good.
Last August, a group of young Jewish artists gathered at San Francisco's Contemporary Jewish Museum to write, record, and animate the short films from which these scenes are taken. Over the course of one intensive week, the participating animators and storytellers, many of whom were encountering the Talmud for the first time, brought to life six of the Babylonian Talmud's best-known tales. Organized by G-dcast, the Jewish nonprofit production company best known for its animations of the Bible, this new initiative, called Studio G-dcast, is out to change the way American Jews approach the Talmud.
Sarah Lefton, G-dcast's producer and executive director, sees the studio as an experiment in using the tools of animation and filmmaking to teach Jewish texts. "For today's media-drenched kids, there's value in trying out this kind of learning as well," said Lefton. Rendering on screen the Talmud's sparse and convoluted narratives necessitates close reading—filling in details and interpreting ambiguous passages. "When you're drawing, you have to get down and dirty with the material," Lefton added. "It forces you to figure the text out."
Though the studio is a natural outgrowth of G-dcast's work animating the Bible, its roots go back further. In 2005, Lefton and writer Matthue Roth, now G-dcast's editorial director, met in San Francisco. Excited by the then just beginning daf yomi Talmud study cycle, the two decided to produce a daily podcast of each page, to be called Daf Jam. When Lefton presented the idea to Zvi Septimus, a Talmud scholar now teaching at the University of Toronto, he was skeptical. "You haven't done enough learning even to think about this project," Lefton recalled him saying. "He said: 'Try out the idea using the Torah. Keep learning and come back in a few years.' That's exactly what we did."
Seven years later—just as the daf yomi study cycle concluded—and with a two-year grant from the Covenant Foundation in hand, Lefton and Studio G-dcast educators Roth, Septimus, Girls in Trouble musician Alicia Jo Rabins, and animator Jeanne Stern chose the six stories that would be the focus of the first, pilot studio. In addition to being among the Talmud's best-known narratives, all address the theme of "tradition versus innovation," one of the central concerns of rabbinic literature.
Twelve animators and storytellers, a religiously and artistically diverse group selected from some 60 applicants, arrived for a grueling week in San Francisco. After receiving a crash course lecture in Talmud the first day, the participants were divided into six pairs—a nod to the traditional hevruta method of partner learning—and assigned their texts. The remaining long days and nights were devoted to producing the films. "The deadline was super intense," said participant Judith Prays, an Atlanta-based artist and filmmaker. "The first day you get your partner and your text, and you basically have three days to write, record, and animate."
The difficulty of fitting the digressive and convoluted Talmudic stories into 4-minute films was also a source of tension. Some groups did not want to use the entire story given to them, instead preferring to focus on one particular episode, while others wanted to cap the stories with a definite ending or lesson. Sepitmus, however, was adamant that the films had to be, first and foremost, accurate reflections of the Talmud's narratives. "I explained to them that their job is not to say what the story means," he said. "Their job is to reproduce the rich ambiguities of the original."
"It was difficult to condense such a long story," said Sam Grinberg, a student at Manhattan's School of Visual Arts, whose film "Talmud Tales" uses a comedic, cartoon style to animate the story of the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. "We had to sacrifice some material that we thought would be funny, but in the end we had to make it funny and work at the same time. I'm glad I was pushed as much as I was."
The Talmud has never looked so good.
Last August, a group of young Jewish artists gathered at San Francisco's Contemporary Jewish Museum to write, record, and animate the short films from which these scenes are taken. Over the course of one intensive week, the participating animators and storytellers, many of whom were encountering the Talmud for the first time, brought to life six of the Babylonian Talmud's best-known tales. Organized by G-dcast, the Jewish nonprofit production company best known for its animations of the Bible, this new initiative, called Studio G-dcast, is out to change the way American Jews approach the Talmud.
Sarah Lefton, G-dcast's producer and executive director, sees the studio as an experiment in using the tools of animation and filmmaking to teach Jewish texts. "For today's media-drenched kids, there's value in trying out this kind of learning as well," said Lefton. Rendering on screen the Talmud's sparse and convoluted narratives necessitates close reading—filling in details and interpreting ambiguous passages. "When you're drawing, you have to get down and dirty with the material," Lefton added. "It forces you to figure the text out."
Though the studio is a natural outgrowth of G-dcast's work animating the Bible, its roots go back further. In 2005, Lefton and writer Matthue Roth, now G-dcast's editorial director, met in San Francisco. Excited by the then just beginning daf yomi Talmud study cycle, the two decided to produce a daily podcast of each page, to be called Daf Jam. When Lefton presented the idea to Zvi Septimus, a Talmud scholar now teaching at the University of Toronto, he was skeptical. "You haven't done enough learning even to think about this project," Lefton recalled him saying. "He said: 'Try out the idea using the Torah. Keep learning and come back in a few years.' That's exactly what we did."
Seven years later—just as the daf yomi study cycle concluded—and with a two-year grant from the Covenant Foundation in hand, Lefton and Studio G-dcast educators Roth, Septimus, Girls in Trouble musician Alicia Jo Rabins, and animator Jeanne Stern chose the six stories that would be the focus of the first, pilot studio. In addition to being among the Talmud's best-known narratives, all address the theme of "tradition versus innovation," one of the central concerns of rabbinic literature.
Twelve animators and storytellers, a religiously and artistically diverse group selected from some 60 applicants, arrived for a grueling week in San Francisco. After receiving a crash course lecture in Talmud the first day, the participants were divided into six pairs—a nod to the traditional hevruta method of partner learning—and assigned their texts. The remaining long days and nights were devoted to producing the films. "The deadline was super intense," said participant Judith Prays, an Atlanta-based artist and filmmaker. "The first day you get your partner and your text, and you basically have three days to write, record, and animate."
The difficulty of fitting the digressive and convoluted Talmudic stories into 4-minute films was also a source of tension. Some groups did not want to use the entire story given to them, instead preferring to focus on one particular episode, while others wanted to cap the stories with a definite ending or lesson. Sepitmus, however, was adamant that the films had to be, first and foremost, accurate reflections of the Talmud's narratives. "I explained to them that their job is not to say what the story means," he said. "Their job is to reproduce the rich ambiguities of the original."
"It was difficult to condense such a long story," said Sam Grinberg, a student at Manhattan's School of Visual Arts, whose film "Talmud Tales" uses a comedic, cartoon style to animate the story of the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. "We had to sacrifice some material that we thought would be funny, but in the end we had to make it funny and work at the same time. I'm glad I was pushed as much as I was."
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/122435/animating-the-talmud
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