2003 - PROFILE: Nimoy

By Rahel Musleah

Once ambivalent about his Vulcan alter ego, the real-life Spock now realizes that Star Trek is about tikkun olam, healing the world.

Leonard Nimoy is again treading the line between the hum and the otherworldly.

The article tells how Nimoy explores the feminine presence of God through the very physical female form.
"I am intrigued with scriptural mythology that tells us that God created a Devine feminine presence to dwell amongst humanity. I have imagined her as ubiquitous, watchful and always in motion."

"Thou didst clothe thyself in light as with garment." (Psalm 104, 2) made Nimoy cloth models with nothing more than light. Sometimes he wraps the models in a sheer white talit or winds black tefilin around an arm. The interplay of light and darkness reflects the conflict between spirituality and materialism, good and evil, the erotic and the Divine, male and female, explains Nimoy, who has worked on the project for the past eight years.

His images have generated their own conflict. He admits that it would be "disingenius to ignore the discomfort". He concludes the subtext of the objection is: "Get the woman out of the story." Nimoy says that his book of photographs "elevates women in Judaism. I didn't realize that would be an issue. Some say I'm introducing sexuality into religion, but it's been there for centuries."

Nimoy uses slides to trace his photographic career at other venues. He began shooting photographs in his teens, studied at U.C.L.A.

To explain where the hand – gesture came from he covers his head with a talit and stretches out his hands to demonstrate the situation in the synagogue where he, as an eight year old boy, experienced the blessing of the kohanim: They were ecstatic. They were bold. Shouting in fluent Hebrew: "Yevarekha... Ya'er... Yisa... ve-yasem lekha shalom." He removes the talit and shares: "I was impressed."
His rabbi, John Rosove, also his wife's cousin, later explained that this was the moment the Shekhina enters the sanctuary to bless the congregation – a sight too much for human beings. So Shekhina, the book, was born.

At first he was uncomfortable with the idea of using nude models, but with the encouragement of his wife, Susan, also an artist, he relaxed his inhibitions. "Artists should be free to explore their art.", says Susan. "This work, Nimoy says, "is absolutely uniquely mine."

Comments from author Letty Cottin Pogrebin and Art critic Donald Kuspit:

"Nimoy's representation of the female immanence of the Divine transforms idolatry into homage and photography into spiritual rapture." "What is really unusual about his female figures is that they signify profane and sacred love simultaneously," says Kuspit calling Nimoy a spiritual rebel.

The subdued warm-toned beige-and-brown décor sets off his own photographs and the contemporary art he and Susan collect.

His career is summarized. Content Nimoy states: I don't have a burning desire for some unfulfilled achievement."

"I always felt good as a Jew in Star Trek," Nimoy says. "Only later I began to realize why. In the largest sense, Star Trek is about tikkun olam, literally about the healing of the world – going out there, finding problems and trying to help. The Nimoy family supports Beit T'shuvah, a Jewish recovery center in Los Angeles, funded the rehabilitation of New York's Thalia movie theatre and Los Angeles Griffith Observatory, offers scholarships, underwrites concerts and is in the process of creating an endowment at Columbia University. A student's training is funded to lead a reformed congregation where Nimoy's relatives live in the former Soviet Union and he created a scholarship for Russian Jewish children and others at Temple Israel whose parents cannot afford tuition. He speaks nationally on behalf of Israel and in the United Jewish Communities and is an avid student of the Holocaust, Jewish history and kabbala. "Shekhina has given me my pathway back."

"Usually when I finish the Amida I look around to see how many people have sat down. The last time I was at the services I was so deep in thought that I was the only one left standing. I sat down feeling something joyous. I'd found something I'd lost."