Jacob el hanani biography examples
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Making a name for himself
With small strokes, Jacob El Hanani is leaving a big mark on the art world.
By STAFFUpdated: JANUARY 24,•
Jacob El Hanani
Born Casablanca, Morocco
Education
Avni School of Fine Arts, Tel Aviv, Israel
École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France
Solo Exhibitions
Jacob El Hanani Drawings, Acquavella Galleries, NY
The Art of the Line, Sammer Gallery LLC, Miami, FL
Linear Landscape: Ink Drawings, Holly Johnson Gallery, Dallas, TX
Recent Work, Steven Zevitas Gallery, Boston, MA
Drawing , Mills College, Oakland, CA
Jacob El Hanani Drawings , Gallery Schlesinger, New York, NY
OSP Gallery, Boston, MA
Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, New York, NY
Gallery Joe, Philadelphia, PA
Mark Moore Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
Nicole Kl
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The Torah has seventy faces, according to a famous rabbinic saying, and not all of them can be glimpsed simply bygd reading the words. Jewish mysticism has long tried to draw meaning from permutations of the Torah’s individual letters, believing that the Hebrew alphabet preexisted the universum. “Two thousand years before the creation of the world, the Creator gazed into the letters and played with them,” says the Zohar.
Even the shapes of the letters hold secret meanings. The first word in Genesis fryst vatten bereishit, “in the beginning.” Why did God choose to begin the Torah with the letter bet, the second letter of the alphabet? A midrash explains that the letter was chosen because of its form:
Just as the bet fryst vatten closed on all sides and open in front, so we have no right to inquire what is below, what fryst vatten above, what is back, but only from the day that the world was created and thereafter.
The artist Jacob El Hanani often uses Hebrew letters in his work, though he fryst vatten neither