New Jersey Jewish News
Life and Times Feature
Local artist and teacher combines art and Torah in her life and work
Miriam, Moses’ sister, holding a tambourine aloft, led the Israelites in song and dance at the Red Sea. As Pesach approached, artist and teacher Cathi Robinson marshaled her own talents to lead members of the Rosh Hodesh women’s group at Congregation Agudath Israel in Caldwell in decorating tambourines with dancing images of the biblical prophetess. Guided and encouraged by Robinson, each workshop participant, with paint, brushes, and much enthusiasm, made two tambourines. One was to be used as a table centerpieces at the Rosh Hodesh group’s annual women’s seder and then sold for tzedaka, the other to enliven their own dancing at the seder.
That notion of hiddur mitzva — aesthetically enhancing the performance of mitzvot — permeates Robinson’s life and work.
“Art is in everything you do — how you serve food, decorate your home,” Robinson told NJ Jewish News, and the Miriam’s timbrel project, like everything she does, was designed to drive that lesson home.
Robinson speaks with animation, hands tracing ideas in the air as if to illustrate her words. In her own art and in the classes Robinson teaches at Agudath Israel, a few themes repeat themselves in different contexts. When Rabbi Alan Silverstein, the congregation’s religious leader, spoke from the bima of his wish to commission artwork to invoke Israel and its message of rebirth for the synagogue’s sanctuary, he tapped into one of her deeply held beliefs. “Every synagogue needs to have something artistically done to recognize our link to Israel,” she said.
To illustrate that link and fulfill the rabbi’s wish, Robinson created two large multimedia wall hangings that now occupy places of honor in the sanctuary. The Seven Species illustrates “the richness of the land of Israel — grapes, olives, and figs — along with a grapevine and a tallit. Both keep us wrapped and tied” to unity and faith, said Robinson. On the opposite wall hangs Eretz Yisrael; it depicts an almond tree — the first tree to blossom in Israel in the spring — “and it carries the words of ‘Hatikva,’ hope. Everything we do is symbolic,” she said. “In terms of the Judaica that I do, I look at the hope that Judaism stands for.”
Hope has had special significance in her own life. Her husband was killed by a drunk driver when her daughters were seven and nine at the same time that she was being treated for breast cancer. “I battled it twice — that’s part of who I am, but hope is what sustains us. That’s the essence of Judaism,” she said with conviction, a determination reflected in her own paintings dealing with cancer and women.
Despite her natural optimism, “I’m saddened,” she said, “when I hear people speaking negatively about Israel.” Responding to those voices, she is working on a series of 36 paintings “to show what Israel and Judaism do to nurture images of peace. We really need to work on Israel’s image in the world.”
At Agudath Israel, the West Orange resident teaches students from preschoolers to senior citizens, using the same approach regardless of age — a combination of art history, self-expression, and Jewish values — “an artist a week,” she said. In one session, she had young children examine Lynne Feldman’s She Blew the Shofar, a painting full of movement and action, and guided them in incorporating those elements in their own work. Before Sukkot, her classes studied Cezanne’s famous still-lifes — bowls of fruit on colorful tables — as inspiration for their own paintings celebrating the harvest festival. Not for the first time in the interview, she repeated her guiding principle: “I believe every person has art within them.”
Judith Tabs, director of Agudath Israel’s nursery school, has known Robinson personally and professionally for many years. “She’s an excellent teacher,” she said. “She researches everything thoroughly. Everyone she teaches, she changes their life.”
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