Jews and Statues

From the time Abraham smashed his father’s idols, Jews and statues have had a tricky relationship. The Bible, of course, prohibits depicting the likeness of G-d, but also forbids creating any kind of imagery, including birds, lions and other animals. Are these prohibitions subsets of the greater prohibition to not worship idols, or does the Bible find inherent evil in these practices?

And if statues are non grata, why have I – a religious Jew – been involved in putting them up in the holy city of Jerusalem?

My first encounter with my heathen-self came at the onset of third year studio when I included a statue of Theodore Herzl in my design. Jerusalem, I postulated, is the capital of Israel. Capital cities often have monuments of the founding fathers. I presented a morphology requiring a central point with a central square where people would sit, buskers would busk and pigeons would strut. No one bought it. I was told that Jews don’t build statues and - though I, again, am religious myself - the religious community would never stand for it.

Years later, I found myself involved in putting a bronze statue of King David at the top of Mount Zion, a hilltop just outside the Old City walls that hosts many churches, a Yeshiva and a unique building to which tourists flock. This building claims to have King David’s tomb on the basement level, the room where Jesus held his last supper on the second level, and on the roof there’s a mosque to round out the monotheistic triumvirate. A wealthy Russian Orthodox Oligarch paid for an impressive restoration of this building and the surrounding structures and gardens. He also donated a bronze statue of King David which nobody in City Hall wanted, least of all the then ultra-Orthodox mayor, but which nobody in City Hall knew how to refuse.

Residents took matters into their own hands, regularly violating the statue. But unlike the Taliban’s total destruction of Afghanistan’s Buddhas, the Jewish vandals were satisfied with breaking off the nose and rendering the image "non-human." Eventually I would be called in to explore the option of moving the statue into the private garden of the Armenian Patriarch, but for now, the statue remains.

Due to the current political turmoil of our era, many statues the world over are being torn down. The debate over the morality of this is beyond the scope of a small Israeli architecture blog. There's certainly an argument to be made that a young African-American girl ought not to see a Confederate statue on her walk to school, the same way we'd never tolerate a Jewish-American girl seeing a Third Reich monument on her daily commute.

Still, it hurts to see historical monuments destroyed rather than removed and preserved. Even the toppling of Lenin idols in the former Soviet Union, while undoubtedly the prerogative of those who suffered under his reign, struck me as unfortunate. They had to come down, no question, but a museum might have been a preferable final resting place instead of a landfill.

Scandal – like beauty – is in the eye of the beholder. Orthodox homes are covered with conceivably forbidden images of great and inspiring Rabbinic leaders. Synagogue tapestries are routinely adorned with forbidden images of lions and zodiac signs. Ultimately, these practices are justified by admitting that modern man doesn’t see these objects as totems, as idols, as possessing any power. But as we witness the frenzy to topple the monuments that pay tribute to the leaders of yesteryear whose actions we now recognize as heinous, perhaps it serves as proof that statues hold just as much power as the Bible proclaims.

Perhaps there's a valid reason why King David remains without his schnoz.