Tree of Life

The main room of the Dura-Europos synagogue is covered in paintings. But given most prominence is an image called The Tree of Life. This is the almost worn-to-its iron red reredos – the image above the Torah’s ark. You can make out dark leaves here and there and animals here and there – a lion, a bird. A monkey? Are those ghostly images of people, too?

Per Goodenough (Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period), who offers some possible reconstructions, black and white, below, there is a lot going on in the original panel. The lions like on a Torah cover at the lower right. Or is that a family scene or another group of people? Maybe the Temple’s showbread on a table? And then there are other heads and figures and a decorative horizontal belt that bisects the panel.

What’s it all about? I am taking it at its name, Tree of Life. The acacia tree was thought to be a tree of life, in that it was evergreen: ever-live. This is the acacia tree from which all the mishkan‘s (Tent of Meeting) implements, decoration and furniture were made. Placing this tree above the Torah ark at Dura-Europos may have been equivalent to today’s synagogues’ ner tamid (eternal light) – a sign that death is not the end.

In my painting, I took the tree filled with people, animals and things as a symbol for existence. A wild horse, doves and a naked, vulnerable man. Who belongs in the tree? Who is at home? Who is asking what’s it all about? The tree stands alone, unprotected in a field under an iron-red sky. A dark sky … Mary at the Well …  an infinity of stars. Right, is an earlier (c. 2010) attempt in oil at an infinite sky, trying to render both the masculine positive stars and the feminine space between the stars.

In my Tree of Life I also try to stand in sympathy with the Dura-Europos rock walls – I think it’s especially visible still in the lower branches, tree’s trunk, parts of the sky. I want to feel the 1800 years. I want to feel the excavation – the renewed life.