The six works visualize the six orders of the Talmud: Zera'im (agriculture and blessing); Mo'ed (Shabbat and feasts); Nashim (women and family); Nezikin (civil and criminal law); Kodashin (temple and sacrificial beings) and Tohorot (purity regulations). The pictures correspond to the structure of a Talmud page: The main text in the middle (squares) and the comments at the edge (triangles). The squares and the larger triangles represent the 365 commandments that prohibit an action, while the small triangles correspond to the 248 commandments that suggest an action. The total number of geometric forms is 613 and represents all the commandments of Judaism.
The ten commandments are represented graphically: The seven prohibitions are symbolized by the word "not" in Hebrew (Lo), while the other three words stand for the three commandments: Anochi (I am the eternal, your God), Zachor (memory) and Kavod (honour).
The central Hebrew letter shin is split on the ground and isolates the inner letter vav, the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, which represents the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust. The text on the right begins the prayer for the deceased, the Kaddish. The triangular forms continue the prayer.
Genesis is the first book of the Torah (Old Testament). This work established Rabinowicz's approach and gave visual form to the words of Genesis 1:1-5. The rectangular triangles represent the letters. Each turn of the angle represents the beginning of a new word.
Exodus is the second book of the Torah (Old Testament). This picture is similar to the previous one, Genesis. The word Torah is found by counting 50 positions after each letter and starting at the first taf.
Rabinowicz presents the words from a chapter of the Sefer Yetzirah (Book of Creation) in visual form: "Two stones build two houses; three stones build six houses; four stones build twenty-four houses; five stones build one hundred and twenty houses" (Sefer Yetzirah, 4:12). The factorial of five in mathematics is expressed in squares and triangles, resulting in 120 possible combinations [(5!) = 5x4x3x2x1].
Isaac Luria (1534-1572) was a Rabbi as well as the founder of an own and audacious Kabbalistic view, and lived in Ottoman Palestine. The first work symbolizes the three teachings of the Lurian Kabbalah: Zimzum (withdrawing of the divine essence); Shebirat ha'kelim (breaking the vessels); and Tikkun (restoring the original whole). The second and third work represent the absorption of Luria's teaching by Shabbetai Tzvi, who later left the faith, and Baal Shem Tov, who further developed the concept.
The work is based on the Talmudic legend that there are 36 hidden righteous people in each generation. The 288 black and grey triangles alternate with white triangles indicating the hidden righteous. The two letters below correspond to the number 36 (lamed = 30 and vav = 6).
Abraham Abulafia (1240-1291) was an advocate of the ecstatic Kabbalah and used the permutation of Hebrew letters as a meditative tool. The three layers of interlocking triangles contain 24 word possibilities of four letters each and are titled: Mivta (pronunciation); Michtav (writing down); Machshav (thinking, meditating).
The square amulet is a typical Kabbalistic pattern representing the first 48 letters and the 12 opening words of the first two verses of the Torah (Genesis 1:1-2). In each triangle there are three Hebrew letters, which must be read counterclockwise one after the other (see explanation chart).
The squares in the form of two columns surround the tumbling letters of the opening verse of the prayer Shema Yisrael: "Hear Israel! God, our Lord, is one God." Two large letters are highlighted, which together form the Hebrew word Ed (witness). It stands for the position of Fishel Rabinowicz as a witness of the Holocaust. Without of the collapse
In this personal work, the frame with the falling letters represents the chaos of the Holocaust. The letter Aleph in the upper right corner symbolizes Rabinowicz, who has separated himself temporally and physically from it. Whereas a part of the letter remains within the frame, since the survivor is forever marked by what he has experienced.
Pardes is a metaphor of the Babylonian Talmud that describes the experience of four Rabbis engaged in mystical contemplation (Hagiga 14b). The word Pardes is also an acronym for the four types of commentaries: Peshat (literary meaning), Remez (allegorical meaning), Derasha (moral meaning) and Sod (mystical meaning). The picture symbolizes the four teachers in search of the answer to a question that can be interpreted in four ways: 44 results in 256 possible interpretations.
The Jewish calendar contains both the lunar and the solar calendar. The triangles that revolve around the central circle emphasize the 19-year cycle in which the two calendars overlap. The Jewish holidays and months are based on the moon.
This meditative panel orders the Hebrew alphabet in all possible combinations of two, a total of 231. The picture is based on a tradition from the Sefer Yetzirah (Book of Creation), saying that all beings in the cosmos, the world, the time and in the body of man owe their existence to the combination of the 22 letters and their 231 possibilities (gates).
"Love and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other. Faithfulness springs forth from the earth, and righteousness looks down from heaven."
The letter Aleph is the focus of the work, against the background of 288 squares. The verse in the diagonal of Aleph means: "You will be the first of all letters and I will have no unity without you". This refers to a Kabbalistic legend: At the time of world creation, the 22 letters competed before God for their place as creators of the world. The Lord chose the letter Beth, expressed in the words Bereshit (at the beginning) and Bara (create) as the first words of the Torah. Then the Lord turned to the Aleph and said: "Even if I use the letter Beth for the creation of the world, the Aleph will always be the foundation of all calculations and the unity of all being." Accordingly, the third word is Elohim, which means God (Aleph can be pronounced "e" in Hebrew). The Gematria (the numerical equivalent) of Aleph is one, the primary number of all calculations, and represents the unity of God.
The composition consists of 365 diagonally arranged fields in order to assemble the odd number of days of the year into an exact square. The first square in the upper left corner represents the 1st of January, the empty space symbolizes the 11th of September.
Six squares are in motion and represent the creation of the world, the seventh square is at rest and symbolizes the seventh day. In it is written the verse spoken in the Torah after each day of creation: "And there was evening, and there was morning".
The Aleph appears 23 times in the opening verses of Genesis (1:1-4), corresponding to the 23 chromosome pairs of the human DNA.
The image visualizes the four types of comments of the Torah: Peshat (literary meaning), Remez (allegorical meaning), Derasha (moral meaning) and Sod (mystical meaning). The four interpretations, called Pardes in Hebrew, gave Rabinowicz the idea of the basic concept of his art, in which the square stands for a word and the triangle for an interpretation.
The image visualizes the four types of comments of the Torah: Peshat (literary meaning), Remez (allegorical meaning), Derasha (moral meaning) and Sod (mystical meaning). The four interpretations, called Pardes in Hebrew, gave Rabinowicz the idea of the basic concept of his art, in which the square stands for a word and the triangle for an interpretation.
The picture depicts the Kabbalistic invocation Ana b'Koach in the form of a menorah. On the right you can see the Yiddish translation written by the then Israeli President, Zalman Shazar, in the night before the 6-day war.