Belu-Simion Fainaru’s “Jewish Time” project is designed to give a visual expression to Jewish concepts, with emphasis on the time dimension.
It will include works by the artist from various periods as well as works that he has created especially for this ongoing project. Fainaru will present his works concurrently with the cycle of the Hebrew year – Passover (Pesach), the Feast of Weeks (Shavuot), the New Year (Rosh Hashanah(, and so on, aiming to deepen the roots of Israeli being with historical memory, with “the Jewish bookshelf”, with “Jewish time”. Fainaru’s works connect Jewish time, which is rooted in an ancient historical past, with contemporary time – in a quest for Jewish identity and a creation of an authentic culture.
A particular quality of Judaism is its capacity to elevate the days, the units of ongoing time, and to make them special, “to transform them”, as Leo Baeck says, “into man’s conscious moral and religious action. To transform the course of the days into man’s task, so that from now on they will be shaped to his will and his spirit, which will give the days a meaning and a continuity and a way, will give them a sound and an expression and a rhythm” (The Jewish Year, 1930).

Belu-Simion Fainaru’s displays will be accompanied by remarks by Prof. Rachel Elior.