Daniel Rothbart’s floating aluminum and glass forms are at once playful and lyrical, biomorphic and other-worldly; prehistoric and futuristic. They are set in a pond and two small pools in Staten Island’s Snug Harbor, a hidden pastoral gem that once served as a safe haven for sailors.

Overflowing with colorful flowers and plants and shrubbery, the scene is idyllic, short of the oppressive, steamy heat that has settled over the landscape. But then that’s part of it too. Rothbart’s Serpentine Sibyls: A Floating Sculptural Installation, animated by winds and currents, are site-specific and immersive. He is keenly in tune with its ecology.

“No, my work has not always addressed political issues, but water is a fraught medium,” he told me over the phone. “You can’t work with water without addressing its importance to life on this planet and climate change and stewardship. Water has always fascinated me.”

Growing up in the Pacific Northwest the ocean was a constant alluring presence. And as a Jew, the water’s historical, cultural and religious traditional significance is defining, he said.

“There’s the purification ritual of the mikveh, the parting of the Red Sea, the washing of hands and feet before entering the temple in Biblical times and the casting off of sins, Tashlich on Rosh Hashanah. Water diplomacy and technology has always been central in Israel. Making the desert bloom.”

Rothbart, a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been exhibited across the globe, is the author of Jewish Metaphysics as Generative Principle in American Art, which examines how Jewish mystical traditions, especially Kabbalah, informed abstract American art in the post-World War II years.

Erudite and heady, Rothbart said that his work can be viewed through the lens of tikkun olam, the Jewish imperative to help repair a fractured world, but it also borrows from Japanese culture, outer space imagery, Marcel Duchamp’s dadaism and Greek mythology.

The title of his exhibit references Sibyls, the Greek female prophets who were consulted in catastrophic times, not unlike our current era cursed by floods and wildfires and heat waves.

Rothbart started thinking about floating sculptures in 2007 for a piece he was conceiving for the Venice Biennial. A city surrounded by water cried out for it. Japanese glass fishing floats came to mind.

“The Japanese fishing floats would wash up on shore in Oregon where I grew up,” he recalled. “I loved the fragile recycled pieces of glass that came from the orient and that I could de-contextualize a common object and in so doing create something new.”

To anchor the sculptures, Rothbart and his assistant kayaked to the middle of the pond. There, once he established where he wanted each sculpture, he dropped each form, now attached to two to five-pound iron weights.

“The sculptures are sensitive to any existing life in the water,” he said. “The pond here has turtles and fish. I’ve found that the animals adjust to the new forms. I love the relationship between life in the pond and the foreign objects.”

Three artists, one flood

The Interchurch Center in upper Manhattan is currently hosting Noah, A Future of Hope, 3 Faiths/ 3 Artists/ 1 Story. A traveling exhibit, it employs the story of Noah and the flood to gently remind viewers to save, protect and celebrate the environment. The topic is explored respectively through a Christian, Muslim and Jewish vision. The artists — Yona Verwer, a Dutch-born Jew, Brian Whelan, a British-born Christian of Irish heritage and Hady Boraey, an Egyptian Muslim — each merge their religious identity with personal aesthetics and the need to advocate for the environment.

“Each artist was invited to create eight paintings that visually inspire our imaginations to heal our world by honoring our intricate connection to the earth as our sustainer, and by maintaining a sacred balance with all her life forms,” said curator Paul G. Chandler in his introductory remarks at the exhibit’s opening night reception. “In this way, the story of the ark, its animals, and the flood, take on contemporary relevance as we face today’s climate crisis.”

Seven is a significant number in each religion, so Chandler selected seven core lessons, each reflecting some part of the Noah story, for the artists to address. The eighth painting from each artist served as a kind of synopsis of the work that was to follow.

Water is a common image throughout the exhibit; indeed, water plays a major role, not only in Judaism, but in Christian and Islamic rituals as well, from Christian baptism to the washing of feet and hands before prayer in a Mosque.

When I asked Chandler if he could guess the religion of each artist on the basis of their paintings he said he could for the Jew and Christian, but wouldn’t have had a clue that Boraey emerges from an Islamic tradition.

“His paintings have an individual aesthetic and a more universal feeling. Still, you never see the face of Noah in his work. In Islamic tradition you can only view him from the back. To see his face is idolatry. Jews have the same tradition, but may not adhere to it as rigidly.”

Some of Verwer’s work incorporates Hebraic texts and characters. In “Care for the Species,” a figure is blowing a shofar. Similarly, Chandler said, he’d know that Whelan’s paintings were made by a Christian. They are literal illustrations of key moments in the Noah story.

His depiction of Noah evokes a figure right out of vaudeville, grinning broadly, sporting a little hat and in more than one instance looking slightly confused.

“Christians turn catastrophe into a kind of children’s bedtime story,” Chandler said. “It’s very Christian to sanitize the story. Jews don’t do that.”

“My being Jewish — a religious Jew—has had a bearing on how I look at everything,” said Verwer who says that water and its preservation is deeply important to her not least because for more than 2,000 years Judaism has had many rules to safeguard water. As a Holland native, she, like Rothbart,  grew up near water and so it was always part of her universe.

Verwer’s work is also exhibited in an  accompanying solo show, Fluid Futures-Living Waters, which features eight paintings that explore ocean pollution through a comic sensibility. One piece, bal tashchit (prohibition against needless destruction) depicts an octopus, submerged in deep ocean waters, clutching a soda can in its mouth.

“I don’t feel a painting is finished if I haven’t laughed at least once,” Brian Whelan said. “But it also needs a message.”

His major challenge was Chandler’s insistence that the paintings embrace a note of optimism.

“I don’t see any hope in what’s happening to this planet,”  said Whelan. “My work mostly follows in the tradition of East Anglican medieval narrative paintings found in churches dating back to the 14th-to-16th centuries.”

For me his strongest piece is “Humans Outside the Ark Perished,” which appears in his linked, one-man show, 40 Days and 40 Nights. Here we see desperate hands reaching towards Noah for safety. A mouse sits alongside Noah, a poignant image. It’s safe and sound compared to the desperate humans.

Of the three painters, Boraey said his work was the least likely to be connected to any one particular religion. Unable to obtain a visa to the States he spoke to me on the phone from the Northern coast of Egypt.

He said his piece “The Great Collapse” spoke most vividly to both the Noah story and the ecological precipice we’re now facing as a result of climate change.

In the foreground, we view Noah from the back gazing out across a body of water at masses of people crushed together and almost immobilized as they hopelessly struggle to move forward. In the background hangs a giant and cratered blue moon sinking below the horizon and into the ground. It is at once foreboding and exquisite.

Having participated in exhibitions in the Middle East and Europe, Boraey said he was most influenced by the surrealist art movement in Cairo in the late 30s. The marriage between folkloric and political motifs is its hallmark.

The Noah tale for him is “both pessimistic and optimistic because hope is always there and they survived at the end of the story,” he said.  “Noah saved humanity. He reminds us that we have to be very careful with the earth.”

In harmony with nature

Back at Snug Harbor, the late afternoon heat dome has made the airless, sun-baked space even more relentless than it was earlier in the afternoon. Rothbart’s visitors are slowly straggling out of the park, some wiping away sweat with bits of tissue, others fanning themselves; still others pouring water from their bottles onto reddened necks and arms and legs indifferent to the water splashing on to their clothes.

“Talk about global warming and climate change,” he told me. “This weather only drives home the point of just how serious this is and how we have to learn to live in harmony with nature and our environment.”

Serpentine Sibyls will run through Sept. 28.

Noah: A Future of Hope will run at the Interfaith Center through Aug. 26 and then continues its global tour.

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(JTA) — A major fire at one of the largest kosher meat processing plants in the United States is poised to increase the price of kosher meat ahead of the High Holidays, in addition to devastating the plant’s local community.

Investigators in Postville, Iowa, said on Wednesday that the fire that devastated AgriStar Processing started accidentally in the facility’s laundry room. The fire, which began on Tuesday, destroyed at least 75% of the plant and has put more than 600 people out of work, Fire Chief Jeff Bohr told the local TV network KCRG.

The fire has also interrupted a linchpin of kosher meat production, according to OU Kosher, the oversight agency run by the Orthodox Union.

“The damaged facility means a significant portion of kosher beef and chicken slaughtered and sold in the US will not enter the kosher supply chain,” Rabbi Moshe Elefant, the organization’s CEO, said in a statement on Wednesday. “Kosher consumers will feel the impact of the tightening supply with reduction of availability.”

Elefant said OU Kosher was working to “find solutions for ramping up production at other plants” while warning that the crisis could fuel bad actors.

“Unfortunately, when supply is limited, it creates opportunity for unscrupulous individuals who seek to make money by preying on the well-meaning Kosher observant public,” he wrote.

Jarad Bernstein, the executive director of the Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines, said the fire represented “a terrible situation” in an email to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

“The impact on the local community and the business will be large,” he said.

The fire is not the first time that a crisis at AgriStar has sent the community into a tailspin. In 2008, a federal immigration raid at the plant, then known as Agriprocessors, netted the arrest of hundreds of workers and led to the arrest and conviction of the company’s longtime CEO Sholom Rubashkin on 86 counts of bank fraud, mail fraud and money laundering. It also led most of Postville’s Jewish residents to leave the town, which had developed as an unusual stronghold of Orthodox life in eastern Iowa.

Saying that “many people” believed Rubashkin’s 27-year prison sentence had been excessive, President Donald Trump commuted Rubashkin’s sentence in 2017. Rubashkin’s conviction stands.

Canadian Jewish billionaire Hershy Friedman purchased Agriprocessors and reopened it as Agri-Star. He told JTA in 2016 that he had done so after being urged by Jewish leaders to ensure competition in the kosher meat processing industry.

“It wasn’t done for financial purposes; it was done to really cater to the Jewish community,” he said about the purchase. “During the time Rubashkin was closed, the price of beef roughly doubled. After we acquired it, it came right back down.”

Friedman also said he had shored up the company’s employment practices, which had run afoul of the law, and made improvements to the slaughter process that had made Agriprocessors a target of animal rights activists.

Agri-Star said in a statement on Wednesday that it appreciated the first responders who “worked tirelessly and selflessly to protect lives and contain the fire” and the employees who had shown “inspiring” care for each other. It also indicated that it did not yet know the future of the plant.

“We understand there are many questions about what comes next,” Agri-Star wrote on social media. “While we are still gathering information and evaluating our short-term plans, we are committed to sharing verified updates as soon as they become available. We appreciate your patience as we work through this process thoughtfully and responsibly.”

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

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(JTA) — A California law to prevent antisemitism in schools will be enforced after a federal judge dismissed a challenge from teachers and students who said it violated free speech.

U.S. District Judge Noël Wise on Tuesday ruled against a lawsuit opposing Assembly Bill 715, which went into effect in January. The new law introduces measures to curb the “widespread surge in antisemitic discrimination, harassment, and bullying” faced by “Jewish and Israeli American pupils across California.”

As part of the law, California is establishing an Office of Civil Rights with a new statewide antisemitism prevention coordinator for public schools, who has not yet been appointed. The law mandates teachers to provide “factually accurate” instruction rather than “advocacy, personal opinion, bias, or partisanship.” It requires local educational agencies to take action if they find that instruction or school-sponsored materials are discriminatory.

A group of teachers, students and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee filed a challenge in November. They said the law was unconstitutionally vague, chilled speech in the classroom about Palestinians and discriminated against Palestinian, Arab and Muslim students and perspectives.

Wise said it was too soon to consider these claims, given the uncertainties still surrounding the new Office of Civil Rights, its leadership and how it will define and respond to antisemitism. She also said that teachers and students did not provide sufficient evidence of infringements on free speech, and teachers could not claim speech rights on the job.

“Teacher Plaintiffs are not acting as private citizens and therefore do not have First Amendment rights while teaching,” Wise said in her ruling.

She also dismissed the claim that the law would discriminate against non-Jewish students. “The existence of an Antisemitism Coordinator does not change the Office’s overarching purpose to stop discrimination generally; it merely reflects the State’s decision to accord specific funds to a specific problem,” she said.

Malak Afaneh, a staff attorney at ADC, said the group was reviewing the court’s decision and considering its options.

“AB 715 has already caused educators to alter the way they teach out of fear that classroom discussions or activities could trigger complaints or investigations,” Afaneh said in a statement. “When teachers feel compelled to abandon cultural identity projects or avoid discussions about Palestine, it is students who are denied the opportunity to engage with diverse ideas and perspectives.”

The Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco celebrated Wise’s decision as “great news.”

“This ruling, and the fact that the case has been dismissed with prejudice, affirms that AB 715 is a strong, legitimate approach to protecting Jewish students — and all students — against harassment and discrimination,” the group said.

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

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