Visit to the Contemporary Jewish Museum

Yesterday morning, 17 of our JQuest fifth graders, together with parents and siblings, met on the plaza in front of the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco on a sunny morning.

The first thing that strikes me whenever I visit the Museum are the large signs hanging just to the side of the main entrance, advertising current and upcoming exhibits. Notice that admission is free to everyone on the first Tuesday of every month! I should also mention that on Sunday, June 10th this year, the entrance fee to the Museum will be waived in honor of the Museum's 10th birthday! 

Each Bar and Bat Mitzvah at Temple Isaiah is given the gift of a year's free membership, so we try to visit with our fifth graders each spring to introduce our students and their families to the Museum. This year our assigned docents were Tamara and Ruth (who is pictured above). Our group was large enough this year to be divided in half - Tamara took one group inside while Ruth and the second group began the tour outside.

As soon as we entered the Museum, Ruth brought our attention to the many globes hanging overhead, representing the fact that Jews have lived all over the world for at least two millenia. She also shared that there are Hebrew letters incorporated into the walls at various sites in the Museum - in the hallway she pointed out the letters "Pey" "Resh" Daled" and "Samech" which form the acronym "PARDES." The Hebrew word "pardes" itself is borrowed from old Persian and means "orchard." We get our English word "paradise" from pardes.

As we rounded the corner from the entrance hallway, we came upon a curious machine. What a wonderful introduction to the Rube Goldberg exhibit we had come to view.

Later on, after we had viewed the exhibit and were on our way to another exhibit upstairs, Ruth gave the students time to try out the machine themselves. They were absolutely fascinated by how it worked!

The first part of the exhibit explored drawings that R.G. had made describing machines he invented to perform the simplest of chores. 

Highlighted in a display case in this part of the exhibit was a book he'd written, as well as several hobby kits, games and puzzles relating to the machines he designed. Some of you may be familiar with the game "MouseTrap" which is also based on his ideas.

Above is a drawing of one of his more complicated machine designs. What I found interesting was learning from Ruth that R.G. never built any of the machines he designed - he only drew them for others to build. And build them they did. They were even featured in several movies (they showed segments of a Marx Brothers and a Charlie Chaplin film in which R.G.'s machines were featured, on a TV set in the exhibit room). 

R.G. was a cartoonist, and one of his series of cartoons was called, "Foolish Questions." For each foolish question, he had a sarcastic response, as above.  

At this point, Ruth handed out a series of cartoon panels to each student. One panel illustrated one of R.G.'s foolish questions, and the other panel had only the illustration. The students had to think up and write down the sarcastic response. 

They all found "comfortable" places to write their responses. I read a few of their responses, but was sworn not to divulge them to anyone.

R.G.'s father had been a sheriff of San Francisco. When Rube told him he wanted to train to be an artist, his father put his foot down and refused to allow him to do so. Instead, Rube attended U.C. Berkeley's engineering school, so it's not surprising that he would meld his artistic inclination with his engineering skills. Above, is a photo of the cover of a magazine from 1967 illustrated by R.G. The feature article's headline reads, "After Color TV? The future of home entertainment." It's eerie how prescient R.G. was when we think of all the entertainment devices used in our homes today.

As R.G. got older, it became difficult for him to draw multi-paneled cartoons. So he began to draw one-paneled political cartoons instead. The one above is from 1947.

And I'm sure all the adults could empathize with the message above.

After we went through the exhibit and after the students had time to play with the R.G. machine outside the exhibit hall, Ruth led us upstairs. First stop there was to show us the inside of the blue Cube we had seen from outside the Museum.

As soon as I walk into the Cube, I immediately feel "off-balance." No wall is completely straight. Even more overpowering to me are the 18 skylights situated on the "ceiling." 18 is the symbolic number in Judaism for "life" (the Hebrew letters "chet" and "yud" spell the word "Chai" which means life; the numerical equivalent of the two letters is 18).

Currently, there is an exhibit by an Israeli musician and composer named Kutiman in the Cube.

Around the corner from the Cube gallery, we were met by the oversized photograph above. Ruth introduced the second exhibit she wanted to share with us in front of this photo. The exhibit is called "Contraption: Rediscovering California Jewish Artists," and is composed of  the works of 16 artists, living and dead, whose work refers to the machine either literally or metaphorically.

Standing in front of the first piece in the exhibit, Ruth asked us to focus on one question as we viewed the artwork: How does each piece reveal the artist's relationship to machines in our lives - does the artist love the machine, hate it, or is there a love-hate relationship?

Here's a Bella Feldman painting - look at all that red color (danger?). 

There were some large "machines" in the exhibit as well. Below is contraption which looks like a horn connected to a large drum. Our students were told to make a loud noise through the end of the horn, then see what happened on the large drum:

And here is a fascinating installation made by Ned Kohn:

The students had an interesting experience with a door that made an eerie sound when you opened it, and only later became aware of the fact that when the door was opened, it caused a panel on the wall next to it, to flip around:

At one point, we passed by the "ultimate machine" - the human body.

The installation that took up the most room in this exhibit was one designed by Bernie Lubell. I call it "the knitting machine." This was an interactive piece, requiring 3 or 4 students to sit on a bench which was pressed down by their weight, thus beginning a series of movements, and 2 students to cycle to keep the machine working. Students took turns operating the machine, totally fascinated by it. You'll note in the video clip below that the end result is a beautifully knit tube of black yarn. The machine has been "knitting" the tube since the exhibit opened a few weeks ago, and will continue to do so until the exhibit closes on July 8th.

Once we had finished viewing the "Contraption" exhibit, Ruth led us downstairs to the art room, where we met the first group led by Tamara. Each group was assigned to a different set of tables, each set composed of separate tables. Once we were all gathered at our respective tables, each docent explained to their group what we would be working on. Here's Ruth explaining the project to our group:

And here's Tamara explaining it to her group:

For about 3/4 of an hour, the students and their parents and siblings became totally involved in designing Rube Goldberg-style machines out of everyday objects that they found on the tables as well as on tables at the back of the room. Below are sights and sounds of young minds and hands in the creative process, enjoying every minute.

Of course, there were frustrations along the way, but the students all persisted. As the saying goes, "If at first you don't succeed..."

"...try, try again!"

And parents also got involved!

Just before noon, it was time for the students in each group to learn if their individual projects which they had now connected on each table setting to the other projects, would go through all the steps they had devised for a "grand finale."

Here are Tamara's group's first steps:

And here is Ruth's group's "grand finale."

 BRAVO TO ALL OUR JQUEST RUBE GOLDBERGS!

AND A VERY BIG THANK YOU TO OUR TWO DOCENTS, TAMARA AND RUTH WHO BROUGHT THE EXHIBITS TO LIFE FOR US. YASHER KOACH!