The Visual Image:

Midrash -Interpreting the Visual Image

Peshat – Its all in perspective -The picture taken at a Santa Fe, New Mexico Pride event shows a middle aged gay couple with a cross-dressing transvestite. 

Remez – The contrasting perspective was captured using a telephoto lens for the close-up. The metaphor of the lens  pulling back bringing in more of the world into view would include places and people who do not share an openness to LGBT individuals and activities. This would include biblical prohibitions and admonitions such as  Leviticus “If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death. Their bloodguiltiness is upon them.”

Drash – The philosopher Emil Fackenheim proposed an additional commandment : “Thou shalt not hand Hitler posthumous victories.”

This perspective applies in two aspects: Hitler’s Nazi Germany went after the homosexual community with pink stars and eliminations. Secondly, the Jewish community having marginalized LGBT individuals, now providing acceptance.

Sod – The perspective of the viewer.

Visual Judaism – Life through a PARDES Lens

What is does it mean to view through a Lens?

What does it mean by through the lens?

The “through the lens” idiom came from philosophers who viewed life in a way that a lens can distort vision. The idea is that there are many dimensions and shades of life and everyone has their own reality.

 A lense is an instrument through which light passes either to be captured in images, or to be projected onto a surface. The notion of viewing some phenomena through a lens suggests that what we wish to view through a lens is impacted by the lens we use. With in photography and affected by scientific settings, a lens can be configured for very close-up projects, configured as a telephoto lens to bring the long image closer, or as other types of specialty lenses. This phenomenon of using a lens to change our perception, we speak of lenses altering our perspectives.

From the photographic lenses we expand our consciousness to focus on other lenses or perspectives such as political, patriotic, to feminist, economic and such. Mel Alexenberg suggests a link between perpectives and lenses in his “Through a Bible Lens: Biblical Insights for Photography and Social Media”. More on his pioneering work in the pages that follow.

This photograph allows us to discuss lenses and perspectives in this book as almost interchangeable. I captured the image at a gay pride event in Santa Fe, New Mexico using a telephoto lens because I was struck by the differences in perspective I sensed in the three people in the picture. The “of a certain age” couple sitting together under the rainbow umbrella would appear to have a long standing relationship that survived the changes in status from hidden to blessed not only by friends and family, but also the state. Theirs is not the flamboyant openness of the cross-dresser with flaming red hair.  

What then is a PaRaDiSe Lens? And how might we apply such a perspective! PaRaDiSe is a combination of the words paradise and pardes. Both can be traced back to the ancient persian “Paradesha”. Pardes in the Hebrew Scriptures appears three times reflecting back to the persian orchards or sensual pleasure gardens of the persian nobility, and paradise was used in the septuagint or greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures referencing the Garden of Eden, and has in addition taken on the more future oriented later days idyllic imagery.

Because of the nature and science of lenses, that they can be single perspective lenses, adjustable lenses, and even multiple lenses, there is great flexibility in our use of PaRaDiSe lenses. Perhaps it would be appropriate to distinguish between Paradise lenses and Pardes lenses. 

This image from a PaRDeS lens:

Midrash -Interpreting the Visual Image

Peshat – Its all in perspective -The picture taken at a Santa Fe, New Mexico Pride event shows a middle aged gay couple with a cross-dressing transvestite. 

Remez – The contrasting perspective was captured using a telephoto lens for the close-up. The metaphor of the lens  pulling back bringing in more of the world into view would include places and people who do not share an openness to LGBT individuals and activities. This would include biblical prohibitions and admonitions such as  Leviticus “If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death. Their bloodguiltiness is upon them.”

Drash – The philosopher Emil Fackenheim proposed an additional commandment : “Thou shalt not hand Hitler posthumous victories.”

This perspective applies in two aspects: Hitler’s Nazi Germany went after the homosexual community with pink stars and eliminations. Secondly, the Jewish community marginalizing  LGBT individuals.

Sod – As yet to be known.