DESIGN A TORAH, AND A TREE OF LIFE.

THE TREE OF LIFE.

Jill Waddington.
2009.
jillwaddington@hotmail.co.uk

By interpreting one line from Morton’s essay quite literally I have decided to “Design a torah and a tree of life”. By investigating the Hebrew Bible I discovered that the Jewish Torah contains 613 mitzvot (commandments). Much like the instructional form of Morton’s writing, these commandments are either positive; to perform an act (mitzvoth aseh) or negative; to abstain from certain acts (mitzvot lo taaseh). There are 365 negative commandments, corresponding to the number of days in a solar year and 248 positive commandments, ascribed to the number of bones and significant organs in a human body.

Although the tree of life is widely known as a Darwinian diagram mapping the path of evolution it is also understood as a tree planted by God in the Garden of Eden, whose fruit gives everlasting life. These parallels between science and religion fascinate me and seem to lend themselves to the diversity of suggestions in Morton’s ‘Remember I’m Going to Mark You’.
I aim to combine these ideas in ‘The Tree of Life’ to create a modern extension of the Torah. On a bare tree (no buds or leaves) I will invite the audience to literally add a commandment or instruction to the branches on small slips of paper, much like Japanese ‘wish trees’ found by temples (many people write their wishes on slips of paper and tie to trees, with the belief that the more times each wish is read the more powerful it becomes; during exam time thousands of students flood to the wish trees to ask for successful results). As more commandments are added to ‘The Tree of Life’ the fuller it will become; the written experiences and values from the audience literally bring the tree into full bloom. I will allow 365 slips of paper for negative commandments and 248 slips of paper for positive ones; each person will decide which slip to take, what to write and will add it to any branch of the tree.

‘The Tree of Life’ will be a literal representation of the audiences’ life-experiences, mantras or beliefs that have served them well or instructions or suggestions on how to lead a fuller life. It will serve as a cross-section of modern principles and faith; a physical social sculpture. Once the tree is full I will de-construct each individual slip of paper to create a book documenting all suggested commandments.