Origami Boxes and Ki Tisa Torah Portion 3/5/10

Our group began today with a discussion of the Torah (Old Testament) portion we read this Shabbat(Sabbath-Jewish day of rest. The story deals with the Jews building a Golden Calf while Moses is up on Mount Sinai receiving the ten commandments. Moses consequently smashes the stone tablets to pieces upon finding the newly freed slaves engaged what appeared to be idol worship from Egypt. The following Torah portions deal specifically with building the mishkan(tabernacle to hold the new set of twn commandments) with very specific dimensions and directions. Symbolically, the building of the Golden Calf might have been more about using old lines of thinking for the Jews to express themselves, not neccessarily idol worship. The tabernacle was a more appropriate avenue to express their new identity, but both were done with limited materials and using their hands.
We connected this very complicated theme to the idea of thinking about what we have done with our own two hands. Each participant was given two square s sheets of 12x12 inch paper and decorative paper on which to trace their hands. The tracing was done by volunteers, but some participants chose to trace their own hands. The hand tracings were then cut out and glued to the center of the 12x12 sheets. Then participants were instructed how to fold the papers into a box top and bottom through a series of folds in the paper. The result was a box which looked like it was being held by the participants hands.
This art excercise was very stimulating to participants and everyone was very happy with their final product. Very few people in the gourp were familiar with Origami so we spent a few minutes discussing this fomr of Japanese art. We concluded our session sharing things each participant had done with their hands that they were proud of, and examples included: gardening, baking, raising kids, and knitting.