Salvador Dali
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"Covenant: Eternal Circumcision" From The "Aliyah" Suite, *** Sold ***
Creighton-Davis
Gallery
1850 Hacienda Dr. No. 16 | |||
- Condition:In very good condition with some toning due to age, mimor barely visable foxing, minor stains upper corners from prior hinging (see photos), the full sheet.
- Sheet: 25 by 19 5/8 in. (63 x 49 cm.)
- Plate: 20 1/16 x 15 11/16 in. (52 x 46 cm.)
- References:
As recorded and illustrated in the standard text on the authentic graphics of the artist by Albert Field, pg. 154,68-1-X, also Michler and Lopsinger No. 1288.- Framing: offered unframed
- Note:Covenant is a fundamental concept in Jewish self-understanding. For those who are religious in any sense of the word, covenant represents the promise made by the Divine to the Jewish people. It is a promise of relationship: God will always be our God, and we will always be God's people.
Covenant includes two related ideas: (1) that God has given us a Way, the Torah, and we are committed by the relationship to be loyal to this Teaching; and (2) that God has given us a Place, the Holy Land and, in particular, the city of Jerusalem and the mount of the Temple, as a sign of God's Presence among us.
Nothing can cancel or supersede this Covenant. If we are not faithful to it, we will be punished, even by loss of sovereignty over the Land and the City; even by terrible loss of life. However, no matter what, God remains God, we remain God's people, and God's promises of Seed, Land, and being a Blessing to others (Genesis 12 and elsewhere) remain, always. The Covenant is eternal.
There are signs of the Covenant: God's goodness to us, God's reproof of us, and certain commandments that are so designated in the Bible itself, particularly the Shabbat and circumcision. These two mistvot are the acts that testify to the Covenant between God and the Jewish people in our daily lives. They are the concretizations, in time and in body, of the Covenant. Circumcision of a Jewish boy on the eighth day of his life is, therefore, a fundamental act. It takes precedence even over Yom Kippur and Shabbat. We have documented cases of women who gave birth to baby boys in the concentration camps and who, knowing the boys would be killed right away, insisted on circumcising the children before their execution.
Even secular Jews, even atheist Jews, have their sons circumcised. They may omit the blessings and the other rituals, but the ceremony is almost universal in the Jewish world.
Dali chose to include this motif in his suite "Aliyah, The Rebirth of Israel" perhaps because he understood that this was fundamental to the Zionist and the Jewish dream of rebirth. The scene includes the baby, the doctor, the audience which includes women, and perhaps a rabbi on the right. Significantly, the figure in the foreground is not a religious figure; it is soldier with an insignia on his cap and the wings of the Air Force on his breast a true sign of the old, indeed eternal, in the presence of the new and reborn. (source: http://www.js.emory.edu)
The Aliyah Suite of lithographic prints by Salvador Dali is a portfolio of 25 lithographs commissioned to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the independence of the state of Israel. Published in 1968 by Shorewood Press the original portfolio comes with a text by Columbia University history professor, Gerson D. Cohen, and an introduction by David Ben Gurion. - Sheet: 25 by 19 5/8 in. (63 x 49 cm.)