Jonathan Cohen's photos with the keyword: religion

The Cave of Elijah is a grotto written about in the Hebrew Bible, where the prophet Elijah took shelter during a journey into the wilderness (1 Kings 19:8). In the Books of Kings Elijah had been travelling for 40 days and nights, when he takes shelter in the cave on Mount Horeb for the night. Upon awakening he is talked to by God. The exact location of the cave is unknown. There is a "Cave of Elijah" on Mount Carmel in Haifa, venerated for centuries by Jews, Christians and Muslims. Another cave associated with Elijah is located nearby under the altar of the main church of the Stella Maris Monastery, also on Mount Carmel.

The Stella Maris Monastery, or the Monastery of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, is a 19th-century Discalced (i.e., shoeless) Carmelite monastery located on the slopes of Mount Carmel in Haifa, Israel. The first monastery on this site dates to the Crusader rule of the region in the 12th century during which time groups of religious hermits began to inhabit the caves of this area in imitation of Elijah the Prophet. This ancient structure and several other subsequent ones have been erected and destroyed according to the vicissitudes of politics and religion. The current church and monastery, built under the orders of Brother Cassini of the Order, was opened in 1836. Three years later Pope Gregory XVI bestowed the title of Minor Basilica on the sanctuary, and it is now known "Stella Maris", meaning Star of the Sea. For much of the 20th Century it was occupied by the Military, first the British, and later the Israeli, but at the end of their lease it was handed back to the Order. The monastery’s main church resembles the shape of a cross. Its dome is decorated by colorful paintings based on motifs from both the Hebrew and Christian Bibles: Elijah rising to heaven, David stringing his harp, the prophet Isaiah, the Holy Family and the four evangelists. Latin inscriptions of biblical verses are written around the dome. The altar stands on an elevated platform situated above a small cave associated with Elijah. The cave can be reached from the nave by descending a few steps and holds a stone altar with a small statue of Prophet Elijah. The altar above the cave is dominated by a statue of the Virgin Mary carrying Jesus in her lap, known as "our mistress the Carmel".

Santeria is a religion of the West African diaspora. It is based on native African traditions that were brought to the Americas by African slaves. Native American beliefs, Catholicism and the experiences of slavery merged with these African religions to form what they are today. Santeria developed in Cuba, although it can be found in many countries today, primarily spread through emigration from Cuba. The orishas are the gods of Santeria. In Yoruba mythology, Yemaya is the mother goddess, patroness of women, especially pregnant women. According to many stories, she was present at the beginning of the world and all life comes from her, including the Orishas. She is the owner of the waters and the sea. Her colours are blue and white like the waters. In particular, she is the mother of Chango, one of the most popular Orishas of the Yoruba pantheon. He is the Orisha of thunder, lightning, justice, manly strength and passion, and the fire dance. The owner of thr Bata drums, he represents dance and music, and symbolizes the joy of life, the intensity of life, male beauty, passion, intelligence and wealth. His colours are red and white.

Robert Roberg (born in Spokane, Washington in 1943) has painted many images of the Apocalypse to warn people of what could happen if they did not follow God. Babylon, the Great, is Fallen illustrates a scene from the book of Revelation in which the apocalyptist describes the destruction of the city. In Revelation, Babylon appears as a temptress, "sitting on a scarlet beast … dressed in purple and scarlet" and holding a gold cup "filled with everything vile and with the impurities of her prostitution." The seven green hills below her are the kings who were seduced by her wicked ways, while the water represents all the nations under her power. Roberg surrounded the crumbling buildings with huge flashes of lightning and fluorescent colors to emphasize the violence of God’s wrath.

Felipe Archuleta was born in Santa Cruz, New Mexico in 1910. He made his sculptures out of wood and other materials he found himself or could obtain from his neighbours. He used carpenter’s tools to fashion the various parts of each work, and nails and glue to assemble them. He smoothed the joins with a mixture of sawdust and glue, which also built up the surfaces. Archuleta’s first sculptures depicted those animals he knew best – sheep, rabbits, burros, and cats. He soon began to make larger, sometimes life-size, animal sculptures, expanding his repertoire to include giraffes, elephants, monkeys, and others based on pictures he found in children’s books and natural history magazines. Archuleta generally emphasized the ferocious nature of the animals he portrayed by providing them with irregularly carved teeth, wide-eyed stares, and exaggerated snouts and genitals. Felipe Archuleta, who has spent most of his life in Tesuque, New Mexico, worked as a carpenter for over thirty years. In 1967, unable to find work, he prayed to God to alleviate his poverty and desperation. His subsequent religious awakening led to his work as a carver of animals, for which he has been justly celebrated. He died in 1991.

The Reverend Howard Finster was perhaps the most famous American religious artist of his time. He was born in Valley Head, Alabama in 1916 and died in Georgia in 2001. Because Finster realized that his congregation did not remember his sermons even minutes after he had finished, he published religious songs and poetry in local newspapers in the 1930s and hosted a radio prayer show in the late 1930s and early 1940s. He claims God charged him to illustrate his religious visions in 1976 when "A warm feeling came over me to paint sacred art." The official name of this painting – done in oils on wood paneling – is "God is Love. Seek his will and find his peace he saves from sin." Finster began building his everchanging environmental sculpture, Paradise Garden, on swampy land behind his house in the early 1960s. Composed of walkways and constructions made from cast-off pieces of technology, the Garden assembles individual monuments to human inventors into an all-encompassing "Memorial to God." Much of the building material in the garden was accumulated from Finster’s television and bicycle repair businesses and his twenty-one other trades.

Malcah Zeldis is a renowned Jewish American folk artist. Born in Bronx, New York on September 22, 1931 as Mildred Brightman, her family soon relocated to Detroit. A strong Zionist, after graduating from high school in 1948, Zeldis moved to Israel to live on a kibbutz. There she began to paint and met and married Hiram Zeldis, a writer and fellow native of Detroit. While living on the kibbutz, Aaron Giladi, an Israeli artist who had seen her artwork upon visiting the kibbutz, encouraged Zeldis to paint. In 1958, Zeldis relocated to New York with her family. For the next ten years, actively discouraged from painting by her husband and father and lacking the confidence to pursue it on her own, Zeldis abandoned painting to her role as mother and housewife. During the early 1970’s, once her children were older, Zeldis enrolled in Brooklyn College. In 1974, she graduated, obtained a divorce, and began to paint seriously. Zeldis’ paintings use a flat style and bold colors. Completely self-taught, Zeldis does not concern herself with academic rules of painting and instead follows her own. Her work is widely collected and exhibited, with collections at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the American Folk Art Museum, the Jewish Museum, the Milwaukee Museum of Art, and the International Folk Art Museum. It was used for an invitation and poster for the traveling exhibit, American Art on the Move, which toured museums during 2001. Most notably, Zeldis was the first living artist to have a solo exhibit at the American Folk Art Museum in New York in 1988. Zeldis’ work has also been published in many books, including the "Moments of Jewish Life." The painting of the wake clearly does not illustrate a moment in Jewish life since Jews don’t hold wakes or public viewings of dead bodies, nor are flowers present at Jewish funerals . Moreover, once the sacred society has prepared the body for burial and placed it in the casket, the casket is closed.

This procession is led by a priest, followed by a scribe holding his writing board and palette under his arm. The remainder of the figures bear food offerings, including loaves of bread stacked on one man's arms. From the Deir el-Bersha tomb; Egyptian, Middle Kingdom, late Dynasty 11 – early Dynasty 12, 2010–1961 B.C.E.

While late Old Kingdom tombs had included limestone statuettes of people engaged in chores such as food preparation, a new development occurred during the First Intermediate Period and Middle Kingdom. Now, models made of wood, a less costly material, were manufactured in large numbers and placed in the burial chamber to furnish provisions for the deceased in the afterlife. In symbolically providing for the tomb owner's needs, the models functioned in much the same way as painted scenes of these ...activities did on the walls of tomb chapels. The tomb of Djehutynakht contained what may be the largest collection of wooden models ever discovered in Egypt. At least thirty-nine of them, including these four, represent scenes of food production and crafts. Upon opening the tomb, however, archaeologists discovered that robbers had ransacked it in antiquity, possibly on more than one occasion, throwing the models haphazardly around the small burial chamber. Only through years of research and restoration are they being returned to their original configuration. The models vary greatly in quality, and many of them were mounted on pieces of wood recycled by the artists from old boxes or chests. The colorfully painted figures nevertheless convey a liveliness and energy that give us a sense of the bustling activities of Egyptian daily life. They also demonstrate innovative poses and subjects that would never have been attempted in the more formal sculptures that represented the tomb owner and his family. Food production is the dominant theme among the model scenes, and a variety of activities are represented. A number of models feature scenes of cattle rearing. The recently restored model shown here depicts plump steers being driven - reluctantly it seems - to a cattle count or perhaps to slaughter. The artist has taken pains to include lifelike details so that the robust animals contrast dramatically with their slouched, weary, and balding keepers. Toward the end of Dynasty 12 a change occurred in Egyptian burial customs for reasons that remain unclear. Although model boats continued to be placed in tombs, the scenes of crafts and food production disappeared permanently from the repertoire of funerary offerings. At approximately the same time, early versions of shawabtys, mummiform figurines intended to serve on behalf of the deceased in the afterlife, began to become more common in burials.