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This Tuesday is the 17th of Tammuz in the Jewish calendar. Thus, the Hebrew verse from Psalm 137, "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem" occupies the central place in this piece. The context of this verse is that the Levites, who had played music touching the soul in the Temple in Jerusalem, were asked to play the melodies of the Temple for the Babylonian tyrant emperor, Nebuchadnezzar, who had burned the Temple to the ground and forced them into Exile in Babylon more than 2600 years ago. The Levites refused to play for the tyrant emperor, instead rendering their hands unfit to play and hanging their lyres on the willows on the the waters of Bablyon, a tree symbolic of barrenness, having neither a pleasant smell nor bearing fruit. Like the Levites then, we remember and long for the living connection to God that we once had, when His Divine Presence dwelt in joy in the Temple in Jerusalem. For this we must return to the moral principles of a connected life -- to one another and to God. Mixed media on glass.
