Jerusalem-USA: Kansas and Israel: Linking the Center of USA to the Center of the World

29 June 2009

Kansas and Israel: Linking the Center of USA to the Center of the World

JerUSAlem is considered the center of the world in the traditions of both Judaism and Christianity. The geographical center of continental USA was named Lebanon for the cedars of Lebanon that King Solomon used to build the Temple in Jerusalem. Cedar trees dotted the landscape of north-central Kansas when the town was named in 1873.

I flew to Kansas City and took a small plane to Selena, rented a car and drove through miles of corn fields to Lebanon, a town of 350 souls in the center of the northern tier of Kansas near the Nebraska border. There were no people on Main Street when I drove into Lebanon at midday. Only the post office and general store were opened.

I went into the post office and asked how Lebanon got its name. As she postmarked stamps with “The Center of USA,” the postal clerk said that she had no idea how Lebanon got its name. She sent me across the street to the general store to ask. “Your in luck,” the store owner responded. “Every Tuesday and Thursday Gladys Kennedy quilts with her friends at the American Legion hall next door. Gladys knows.” He took me next door and introduced me to Gladys as the town historian. As she quilted, she explained that it was named for the cedars of Lebanon that King Solomon used to build the Temple in Jerusalem. She quilted a few more stitches and added, “I have a large cedar growing in my back yard, one of the many growing in this part of Kansas.” Gladys walked home to fetch a history of Lebanon for me to get the official version. She returned with a hardbound centennial volume, A Century at the Center: 1887-1987. I copied the following from the book while Gladys went back to quilting:

“Name of Lebanon Chosen: A group of early settlers asked Jackson ‘Jack’ Allen, an early settler of the community, to choose a name for the post office and village. Mr. Allen, A Bible student, was the leading literary man of the day and the settlers looked to him to select the name by which the post office town should be designated. ‘Why not the Bible?' was his first inspiration, and searching the pages, he stopped when he read The Cedars of Lebanon and suggested that name. Nobody opposed, and the name of Lebanon was recorded in the records. This was the year of 1873.’”

A mile out of town there is an official monument with a bronze plaque marking the geographical center of the United States. It is made of fieldstones stacked into a truncated pyramid holding a flagpole flying the stars and stripes. On the pebbled ground in front of the monument, I drew a left-handed spiral with golden earth from Jerusalem. I framed the Jerusalem spiral by drawing four corners with sand that my wife Miriam and I collected from the four corners of America. Sand from a Florida beach and from between granite boulders on the Maine coast formed the two corners on the right side of the spiral and sand from the beach where San Diego touches Mexico at the Pacific Ocean and from Neah Bay at the tip of the Olympia Peninsula in the State of Washington formed the two corners on the left side of the Jerusalem spiral.

I scooped up some black Kansas soil at America’s center and brought it with me to Jerusalem, honored as the Center of the World by both Judaism and Christianity. With the Kansas earth, I drew a right-handed spiral on a slab of stone beside the Western Wall retaining the Temple Mount. This Jerusalem stone combined with cedar wood from Lebanon was used by King Solomon to build the Temple in Jerusalem three millennia ago. As I was photographing the Kansas-earth spiral in Jerusalem to juxtapose with the matching Jerusalem-earth spiral that I photographed in Lebanon, Kansas, I realized that the biblical word “Lebanon” means “heart of the fifty.” The first part of the word means “heart” in Hebrew and the second part is the name of the Hebrew letter having the numerical value of fifty.

From my book: The Future of Art in a Digital Age: From Hellenistic to Hebraic Consciousness (Intellect Books/University of Chicago Press).

Mel Alexenberg

As an artist, my conceptual, environmental, and digital artworks have been seen by millions and are represented in the collections of more than forty museums worldwide. As an educator in USA, I am former art professor at Columbia University, head of the art department at Pratt Institute, dean at New World School of the Arts in Miami, and reseach fellow at MIT's Center for Advanced Visual Studies. In Israel, I taught at Bar-Ilan, Ariel and Tel Aviv universities and at Emunah College and Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. As a writer, my most recent books are: 'Through a Bible Lens: Biblical Insights for Smartphone Photography and Social Media,' 'Photograph God: Creating a Spiritual Blog of Your Life,' 'The Future of Art in a Postdigital Age: From Hellenistic to Hebraic Consciousness,' 'Educating Artists for the Future: Learning at the Intersections of Art, Science, Technology, and Culture' and 'Dialogic Art in a Digital World: Judaism and Contemporary Art' (in Hebrew). I live in Ra'anana, Israel, with my wife artist Miriam Benjamin. website: www.melalexenberg.com

Jerusalem-USA

From Jerusalem in Israel to JerUSAlems in USA

'This city of Jerusalem I have set in the midst of nations, with other countries round about her.' (Ezekiel 5:5)

JerUSAlem-USA is a participatory art project that links the twenty Jerusalems in the United States with the original Jerusalem in Israel. There are Jerusalems in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Maryland, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Utah, and Vermont.

The name of the American Jerusalems was inspired by the Bible where we read about King David establishing Jerusalem as the capital of the unified state of the Israelite nation more than 3,000 years ago. Today, Jerusalem is the vibrant capital of the modern State of Israel.

ON PARTICIPATORY ART

JerUSAlem-USA is a participatory artwork in which the artist invites the people in USA join with him in creating a collaborative work of art. Unlike the solitary role of the visual artist in his studio, the role of the artist in a networked world is shifting to becoming more like the role of playwright/producer/director in theater and film, composer/conductor in music and choreographer in dance.

In her book The Reenchantment of Art, Suzi Gablik proposes, “a new paradigm of participation in which art will begin to redefine itself in terms social relatedness…encouraging the emergence of a more participatory, social interactive framework for art, and supporting the transition from art-for-art’s-sake assumptions of late modernism.”

As the artist of ‘JerUSAlem-USA,” I create the conceptual framework, craft the score/script, and form a team of collaborators who together under my baton bring into being an aesthetic work of participatory art.

The significance of participatory art in our networked world is explored in depth in Mel Alexenberg's books Through a Bible Lens: Biblical Insights for Smartphone Photography and Social Media (Elm Hill/HarperCollins), and The Future of Art in a Postdigital Age: From Hellenistic to Hebraic Consciousness and Educating Artists for the Future: Learning at the Intersections of Art, Science, Technology and Culture (both published by Intellect Books/University of Chicago Press).