JAE Speaker Spotlight: Peter Margolis

Peter Margolis recently joined Jewish Art Education's Speakers Bureau as a presenter in the Greater Philadelphia area.

What led you to decide to become a JAE presenter? To me, JAE epitomizes the online/offline symbiosis that informs contemporary Jewish life. Distributed digitally but presented in real time and mostly in person, it enriches and celebrates Jewish life as it is enacted in the “third space” that is neither entirely virtual nor entirely physical. This is the place where Jews and everyone else live now, and this is where I want to make my contribution.

What do you find most rewarding about your role as a JAE presenter? I am

especially attracted to the spiritual dimension of JAE. We take the invisible, non-material electronic impulses that comprise our digital materials, craft them into images, and enact them in an aesthetic experience that transforms and enriches people’s lives – a true act of Creation on a human scale – providing them with an entry into Jewish civilization.

Who is your favorite Jewish artist? My favorite Jewish artist is the Israeli artist Shraga Weil. Although he worked in several media, he is best known for his prints, and my encounter with them was quite literally life-changing. His illustrations of The Dead Sea Scrolls in English, a book club selection in my father’s library, compellingly displayed the captivating essence of the Land of Israel. This ignited in me the desire to see it for myself and set in motion all the many adventures of my life that have followed.

Do you have a favorite JAE program? My favorite presentation is "Jewish Roots of Modern American Star-chitects". As a very amateur student of architecture, I have long recognized architecture as both a determinant and a reification of every age. As the largest man-made works of art, buildings constitute giant canvases for the expression of ideas and ideals, and make them available to everyone. It is in that sense that Jewish architects infuse their insider-outsider status into the challenges, ambiguities, and traditions (or disruptions) enabled by contemporary technologies and materials.