A local Jewish literacy organization has teamed up with artists to bring one of the most poetic books of the Bible to life.
G-dcast, the San Francisco–based nonprofit that has won acclaim for its short online videos animating the weekly parashahs, or Torah portions, has now tackled Psalms — the book of 150 anonymous poems, traditionally attributed to King David and popular among Jews and Christians.
“Basically we’re trying to go through all of the Tanach, and the Psalms are something that isn’t covered as much as, say, the Torah,” Jeremy Shuback, G-dcast’s assistant producer, said of the project.
The original idea was to create videos for all 150 psalms, but that was deemed unfeasible. So G-dcast settled on a contest featuring four winners whose poems would be animated, Shuback said.
One of the winners, Berkeley’s Ariel Root Wolpe, wrote a song inspired by Psalm 23, which describes God as a shepherd.
“I chose this psalm because I needed a way to express the passing of my grandfather,” Wolpe said in an announcement on the release of her video. “The song aims to convey the beauty and desolation of mourning.”
The contest, dubbed the Psalms Project, was launched in January, soliciting poems and songs inspired by particular psalms. The winning entries were animated and are being rolled out in July and August.
The contest was aimed at Jews between 21 and 30. The grand prize was $1,000, and the three runners-up each were awarded $300.
Shuback, who was tasked with commissioning animators for the project, said his online search connected him with artists as far away as Germany and Macau.
“We can’t afford to pay Disney rates,” Shuback explained. “So it’s about finding animators who are able to do things that are really good quality, but also with a more speedy technique.”
Not only has Shuback been thrilled with the resulting animations, but he said the experience also has been a meaningful one.
“The challenge was how to not just look at it as a music video, but add some educational component to it,” Shuback said of setting the poems to animation.
With that goal in mind, Shuback worked with the animators to make sure each video had a direct connection to the specific psalm so viewers would understand the underlying messages.
The grand prize–winning poem, by Rachel Lopez Rosenberg of San Francisco, was inspired by her work as a healthcare chaplain and was written to mirror Psalm 90.
The other two winners were Elijah Aaron of New York City, who wrote a poem inspired by Psalm 1, and Jina Davidovich, also of New York City, whose poem was inspired by Psalm 42.
To view the animated psalms, visit www.g-dcast.com/psalms.