The Rabbi in Berlin

The Rabbi in Berlin, 2006, created during the brutal war between Gaza and Israel, is a 12-minute imagining of what might happen if Israel lost and its land were given to the Arabs. Recorded in Berlin by Bil Thompson, based on a script and edited by Shalom Gorewitz, the video features legendary artworld luminary Willoughby Sharp. Narrated by a ghost, the story describes the dead protagonist’s artist/father, who has arrived in Germany, the place of his birth, because of this Third Exile. Below, Past Present, 2009, is a four-minute, 3-D animation of fragmented Hebrew letters floating over a simulated mountain. Gorewitz (www.gorewitz.net) is a pioneering video artist whose work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid; Zentrum fur Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe in Germany; and numerous other museums around the world.