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SVC professor chosen as Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture fellow

SVC professor chosen as Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture fellow

by Public Relations | September 19, 2024

LATROBE, PA – Ben Schachter, an illustrator and professor of digital art and media at Saint Vincent College, was selected to be a Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture (MFJC) fellow.

The fellowship will enable Schachter to ink, color and publish his graphic novel “Paradise: Abuya.” The novel is based on the Talmud story “Four Who Entered Pardes.” He received support for drafting the project from a faculty grant.

“Paradise: Abuya” follows the Talmudic story of the Four Sages who enter Paradise and explores the idea of who is worthy to understand mystical matters. Something different happens to each of the four sages—one dies, one goes insane, one loses his faith and the fourth returns unharmed.

“Elisha ben Abuya is the sage who loses his faith, and he has been the subject of numerous retellings of this tale in literature,” Schachter explained. “In my project, he serves as a witness to the fate of the other three. My illustrations interweave references to rabbinic writings and historical interpretations of this story and the lives of these four sages.”

Schachter is among 31 MFJC fellows from around the world, including 13 Americans, chosen for 2024-2025. MFJC has offered fellowship grants since 1965.

About Ben Schachter

Schachter is director of the Visual Arts Division of the Fine Arts Department in the School of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. Among the courses he teaches are Dynamic Typography and Motion Graphics, Game Art, Storyboarding for Graphic Novels, and Before Disney: The Art and Science of Animation.

An internationally acclaimed designer and graphic novelist, Schachter received the Emma Lazarus Award for a design combatting antisemitism. His illustrated short story "Las Huellas del Diablo" was a finalist for Solstice magazine’s graphic literature award in 2022. “Achnai Pizza,” his first graphic novel, explored how interpersonal relationships can be destroyed by arguing without listening.

“Eruv Maps” is a series of paintings by Schachter that depict boundaries within which Orthodox Jews are permitted to carry objects on the Sabbath. The paintings have been displayed at the Jewish Community Center of Greater American Jewish Museum, the Hebrew Union Museum in New York, the Yeshiva University Museum, the Yale University Institute for Sacred Music and the Jerusalem Biennale. View his portfolio at https://benschachter6bcb.myportfolio.com/.

About the MFJC

Founded in 1965 by Dr. Nahum Goldmann with German reparation funds, the initial mandate of the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture was the reconstruction of Jewish cultural life around the world after the Holocaust. It achieved this by identifying and supporting scholars, academics, rabbis, educators and other communal Jewish professionals. Its mission has since broadened and evolved and now is dedicated to the development of the social capital of the Jewish people and the fostering of global Jewish connectedness.

 

Portrait Ben Schachter

Ben Schachter

Ben Schachter teaching a Saint Vincent College student

Ben Schachter teaching a Saint Vincent College student.

Julien Vonovier (center) and the Swiss U16 national team celebrate their third-place finish at FIBA EuroBasket 2024

Work-in-progress image from “Paradise: Abuya”

Work-in-progress images from “Paradise: Abuya”

Work-in-progress image from “Paradise: Abuya”

 

 

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