"Portrait of Moshe Soffer(Salz)" by Sam Salz. Sepia ink on paper. He was my father's father and my grandfather. He was a Torah scribe and an astronomer who died in the Holocaust(1941). He was shot by the Nazis and his two daughters, my aunts, died after being taken to the Debica ghetto and then murdered at either the Belzec or Auschwitz concentration camps. My father donated a park in Jerusalem in his memory. It is called the "Moshe Salz Garden" and is located near the Israeli government buildings and the Knesset. There is a link on this blog ("Birthplace of Sam Salz") to the Yizkor book on Radomysl. The site describes life in the town before the Nazi invasion and what happened to the victims in the camps and after the war.

“Pool"(for John Zorn), 2004, oil/baltic birch,28"-21"

part of the series Talmudic abstractions. For composer and sax player John Zorn, the creator of modern Jewish music from the ancient to the future. 

"Judgment Day", 2004, oil/baltic birch.

"Milky Way", 2004, oil/baltic birch,18"-17".

Talmudic Abstractions(Marc Salz)

Over the past few years, my shaped paintings on wood have taken on the format of the Talmud with its main central text accompanied by various side arguments made by scholars and rabbis. These paintings are not concerned with the Talmud's meaning but they do seek to relate to the way it presents debates on single aspects of Jewish law. They are abstract paintings where the written words have been transformed into contradictory colors and images. The central text has been replaced by a central wood panel with different smaller side panels. Some of those panels act in harmony with the central one while others are dissonant in their colors and shapes. I am interested in the visual interactions of these parts to the center. Many of my paintings contain images of the basic elements such as earth,water,fire, stars and embryonic forms. During the evolution of abstract painting in the twentieth century, the early abstract painters such as Piet Mondrian and Kazimir Malevich used either Christian (the cross,the icon) or Eastern (the circle, the mandala) spiritual symbols as starting points for their visual investigations. I believe that today, with all the world's contradictory views and opinions, the Talmud's presentation of differing points of view on a subject is not just an abstract symbol but a real example for contemporary life. The Talmud's format does not offer passage into a single ideal but instead presents us with the joys of argumentation and how we can still be mindful of the central way where there is hope for agreement.