Qohelet: Searching for a Life Worth Living

First-Ever Illuminated Biblical Book of Ecclesiastes by Debra Band at the Heller Museum in New York
August 25, 2023 – December 11, 2024
Opening Reception: October 4, 2023 at 5-7 pm
Artist’s Talk and Performance: 6 pm

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Debra Band, Qohelet: Search for a Life Worth Living, Verses 3:1, 2-8, 2022

Qohelet: Searching for a Life Worth Living

First-Ever Illuminated Biblical Book of Ecclesiastes at the Heller Museum in New York

August 25, 2023 – December 11, 2024
Opening Reception: October 4, 2023 at 5-7 pm
Artist’s Talk and Performance: 6 pm

Where can wisdom be found in our world “under the sun,” when God’s intent is hidden from humankind? Artist Debra Band collaborated with philosopher Menachem Fisch to develop a groundbreaking philosophical and visual interpretation of Qohelet, better known as the biblical Book of Ecclesiastes.

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Debra Band, Qohelet: Search for a Life Worth Living, Verses 5:17-19, 2022

The 61 illuminations in this exhibition offer the first ever visual interpretation of this poetic account by an unnamed narrator of the “words of Qohelet, the son of David, king in Jerusalem,” ascribed to the elderly King Solomon, but whose Persian and Aramaic language may indicate a later authorship. Band’s renderings are based on Fisch’s insightful reading, which restores the literal meaning of vapor to Qohelet’s key Hebrew word hevel, traditionally translated metaphorically as vanity or futility. This translation reveals the tormented thinker’s path to serenity.

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Debra Band, Qohelet: Search for a Life Worth Living, Verses 8:15–17, 2022

Employing the richness of an illuminated manuscript with intricate calligraphy, micrography, and painting in ink, gouache, gold, and palladium on vellum, Band imagines Qohelet’s teachings by employing the grandest of ancient palaces, the Alhambra in Granada, Spain, as the central metaphor for the beauty and transience of human life and accomplishments.  She interprets the text by populating its halls and gardens with surprising and exquisite imagery, symbolism, and related poetry.

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Debra Band, Qohelet: Search for a Life Worth Living, Frontispiece, 2022

Band teases out Qohelet’s relationship to other biblical texts and Jewish lore and its reverberations across the centuries and cultures of western civilization, from ancient Israel to today’s America. From Pete Seeger’s song, Turn!, Turn!, Turn!, to Edith Wharton’s title for The House of Mirth and Shakespeare’s reference in Sonnet 59, “If there bee nothing new, but that which is, hath been before…,” many of his words remain familiar today. “Vanity, vanity all is vanity,” “for everything there is a season,” and “the sun also rises” are all phrases that originated with Qohelot, which endures as a source of wisdom and inspiration.

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Debra Band, Qohelet: Search for a Life Worth Living, Verses 7:15-29, 2022

The publication Qohelet: Searching for a Life Worth Living, presenting illuminations and commentary by Debra Band, philosophical commentary by Menachem Fisch, foreword by Ellen F. Davis, and preface by Moshe Halbertal, is available from Baylor University Press.

In the Media

 

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Heller Museum
Location: One West Fourth Street, New York, NY
Hours: Monday to Thursday, 9 am to 6:30 pm
Admission: Free

Guided tours by appointment; contact 212-824-2218; eberman@huc.edu
Information: contact Curator Nancy Mantell at nmantell@huc.com or 212-824-2218