PHOTO: Diane Fredgant, a self-taught silk artist, engages the standing-room only audience at the Eastside Jewish Commons Thursday, Oct. 17 during the talk-back portion of the event, “From the Belly of the Mishkan: Art and Performative Poetry.” Twelve years and counting in the making, her hand-painted silk piece is festooned with Hebrew and English, a tree, branches, leaves and many layers of meaning. (Jenn Director Knudsen for The Jewish Review)

By JENN DIRECTOR KNUDSEN
For The Jewish Review
Just as a sukkah is temporary, so, too, is an embrace. But the feeling of it can last.
“Embrace” is a common theme of the “The Modern Mishkan” installation by silk artist Diane Fredgant. Debuting at the Eastside Jewish Commons for an event that purposefully coincided with Sukkot, Fredgant’s literally and figuratively expansive piece remains on display through through Simchat Torah (Friday, Oct. 25).
The Thursday, Oct. 17 event, “From the Belly of the Mishkan: Art and Performative Poetry,” included music by members of the band DownStairs, the poetry of Brian Rohr from his recently published “Shaken to My Bones: A Poetic Midrash on the Torah” and an artist talk-back.
Last August, Rohr approached Fredgant about holding a joint event weaving together his poetry and her art. Eric Stern, the EJC’s arts curator and events coordinator, said that he jumped at the opportunity to offer an “uplifting” affair that would occur after Oct. 7 “to remind us of our collective neshama (soul) with art, poetry and song.” 
During the mid-October evening’s talk-back, one member of the standing-room-only audience said, “I felt like the branches enfolded and enveloped me.” Said another: “I felt like I was being hugged by the scrolls, like they could wrap around me.”
The Hebrew word mishkan has many meanings, including a reference to the tabernacle in which G-d – via G-d’s words in the scrolls of Torah – dwells. After the destruction of the Temple in ancient times, the Torah’s dwelling place became transitory if not temporary, a venue that could and did move, from community to community.
At the EJC, The Modern Mishkan is composed of 71 square yards of painted silk that Fredgant inked with the 613 commandments in both Hebrew and English. Its centerpiece is a primarily blue chuppah-like structure whose key feature is a brown tree with many branches and green leaves that reach up and over the canopy to form an opaque roof that light filters through.
Flowing like two outstretched arms from the left and right of the three-sided structure are the proverbial pages of Torah. Each side ends in a wooden spindle; the display reaches eight feet in height.
A self-taught silk artist, Fredgant, 64, believes the seed of her Modern Mishkan idea was planted more than a dozen years ago. She credits P’nai Or’s Rabbi Aryeh Hirschfield, z”l, as its gardener. She recalls his retelling of Exodus 25-27 that minutely details the construction and adorning of the original tabernacle. 
“For most people, it’s a snorefest,” she said of the Torah text. “But for me, for some reason, I loved it” as the rabbi brought to visual life the original structure destroyed in 586 B.C.E. “I am so visual, that that really spoke to me,” she said.
Fredgant says The Modern Mishkan is not yet completed; she doesn’t know when – or if – it ever will be. But she does know it holds people and community tight. 
She said, “I’m hoping that people will feel connected – to each other, their Source, their sacredness. To not feel alone. This is my way of putting this out there.”
“My space is set up as self-reflective, surrounded and embraced by Torah.”
Learn more about Fredgant’s work at silksbydiane.org 
A self-described dinosaur who still keeps a hand-written daily calendar, Jenn Director Knudsen has published work in The Boston Globe, The Oregonian, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Forward and HuffPost, among other outlets. Her most recent personal essay is available at The Mother Chapter. Find her on Substack.