Art and Healing: Tobi Kahn

Tobi Kahn was inspired by a rich family history to create a site-specific installation for the former synagogue space in the historic building of Shaarei Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem, which was dedicated in 1902. Members of the artist's family from Frankfurt am Main (Germany) were among the longtime supporters of Shaarei Zedek Hospital. Kahn's beloved grandfather, Joshua J. Schapiro, was known as "Mr. Shaarei Zedek" for his decades of work organizing benefit concerts for the hospital at Carnegie Hall in New York City, where the family settled after fleeing Nazi persecution. Bringing together family and communal history, with the themes of prayer and repair that have been central to the artist's oeuvre, Kahn created a series of sixteen paintings for a wall of the gallery and a Torah curtain (parokhet) to hang opposite, in front of the Ark. These new works are amplified by paintings and ceremonial objects that address healing, allude to music, and resonate with the space's original purpose as a synagogue. Kahn has conceived of the 'Torah Curtain' as a musical piece, a mosaic of rectangular shapes akin to individual notes. The dominant blue palette recalls the biblical color tekhelet, the valuable dye used for textiles that hung in the ancient Temple in Jerusalem.