Mitzvah beautifier: David Moss gives Judaism fresh artistic expression
His artistic range ranges from architecture to Hebrew calligraphy.
By DAVID GEFFENPages from the Moss Haggada.(photo credit: DAVID MOSS)In 1983, a friend told me about an artist who was showing the first few pages of a groundbreaking handwritten and illuminated Haggada on parchment that he was commissioned to create. As David Moss – a Jerusalemite who made aliyah that year – described his deeply researched, inventive and innovative use of Hebrew lettering and imagery, I was struck by his enthusiasm and his creativity. It was a memorable meeting which I’ve carried with me for the many decades that I’ve followed Moss’s development and career.Moss, a fifth-generation Ohio Jew born in Youngstown in 1946, was raised in Dayton in a home overflowing with creativity instilled by his father, Jack Moss, a composer, poet, inventor, writer and musician. He attended a liberal arts school, St. John’s College in Santa Fe, where he devoted himself to the classics of the western world. After college, he wanted to immerse himself in his own Jewish civilization and set off to Israel to prepare for enrollment at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.It was in Jerusalem that Moss experienced what he calls, “his magical moment.” A local Torah scribe calligraphed the Hebrew alphabet on a scrap of paper and handed it to him. He describes his deep, visceral response to these letters. He began copying them, composing words and inscribing Biblical passages.David Moss at work in his Jerusalem studio. (Photo credit: Matan Katz)Moss attributes his entire, multifaceted artistic career to this moment and to the explosive, creative power he intuitively sensed to be present in these 22 letters. “As I was falling in love with the Hebrew letters, I came to learn about an antiquated Jewish art form – the hand-illuminated marriage contract – the ketubah. I saw examples of the charming, lovingly created folk art ketubot from the Middle East, and the exuberant baroque contracts from Italy,” he says. “I asked about who was creating these today, and was informed that this art form had died out years before and the ketubah had become a drab, printed form filled in by the rabbi and hidden away in a drawer by the couple.”Moss was determined to revive this beautiful Jewish art. He started by making ketubot for young friends getting married. People saw the results and began to commission him. Word began to spread when he wrote the article on ketubah-making in the first Jewish Catalog. The real break came in the early 1970s when the editor of National Jewish Monthly, the B’nai B’rith magazine, became enamored of David’s unique combination of tradition and contemporary expression and ran three cover stories on Moss’s ketubot within a few years.For Moss, the creation of a ketubah is an intimate collaboration between a couple and himself as he interviews them about all aspects of their relationship, their Jewish commitments, their family, and their dreams for their marriage. All this he seeks to synthesize in the final work. The scope of his work in this field is conveyed in a book he produced called Love Letters.The ketubot, reproduced include exquisite, detailed floral patterns, delicate paper-cut borders, hand-gilded lettering, bold modern graphics, intricate micrographic designs incorporating whole biblical books and whimsical fantasies. Nanette Stahl, Judaica Curator of the Yale Library comments: “David’s art is exquisite. He single-handedly reintroduced ketubah illumination into modern Jewish life and has created ketubot of stunning beauty and majesty.”The artistic techniques Moss honed in his ketubot both for newly-wed couples and for anniversaries served him well for the major work for which he is probably best known, The Moss Haggada. The few pages I had seen ended up becoming a 100-page, large format manuscript which took three full years to complete