Bella Lipshitz
Scrolls of Choice
A graphic novel dedicated to the fate of two sisters, Orpah and Ruth, their relatives, ancestors and descendants. All the characters in this story make choices and accept the resulting consequences:
Should we continue with this current way of life, or abandon it in favor of something else or something completely new?
Should we adhere to established norms or violate them for the sake of other values?
Humility or independence?
To obey or to disobey?
In general: what environment should one choose to live in, so as not to lose one’s sense of self?
The sources I use are Megilat Ruth, midrashim and the Talmudic commentaries, and Megilat Orpah by Chaim Nachman Bialik.
The questions this body of texts poses to me are:
What does it mean to belong to a national community? How could such communities appear?
How does a person move from one national community to another?
How does identity selection occur?
What does the choice of when to obey and when not look like for a national community whose self-name is «God Fighter»?
How to resist assimilation if you are a small monotheistic community surrounded by aggressive polytheists who lived in this territory before you?
Both the graphic novel itself and the artwork I create while working on it will be posted here.
BELLA
LIPSHITZ
As someone familiar with ancient texts, it was very interesting for me to experience a completely different way of studying them. I admired the mode of thinking that produced this methodology and found many similarities with materials I was already familiar with (for example, ways of combining the central text and comments on one page, as well as certain historical parallels). Finally, I found a textual foundation for telling my own story, and received indispensable help from the group’s teachers.
Born in Russia, Bella Lipshitz repatriated from Ukraine in the fall of 2021 and now lives in Tel Aviv. She studied ancient Irish literature at university, and while living in India for three years she studied traditional patterns and graphic styles. Lipshitz is a book illustrator and artist, whose works have been exhibited in Ukraine, India, and Israel in Nomadic Souls (Jerusalem, Harmony Center, 2024) and the Shelter Exhibition project (shelters in Nesher and Acco, 2024).
