Shiviti (scalable vector graphic) art, by Yaakov Love

Contributor(s):

Ya'akov Love

Shared on:

10 June 2024 under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license

Categories:

Art & Craft

Tags:

Psalms 16, meditation, שויתי shiviti, Psalms 67, 21st century C.E., 58th century A.M.

DOWNLOAD:

Shiviti with circumlocutions (safer to print) | Shiviti without circumlocutions (genizah interrment preferred) | Notes (ODT | PDF)

I created this Shiviti in the lead up to Shavuot 5784 (2024) to use in a Shavuot learning class on the Shiviti. My scalable vector graphic (SVG) Shiviti is based on many traditional ones I’ve seen, and inspired by my love of Judaism, mysticism, art, computers, and coding. Since it was generated for the purpose of study on printed worksheets over Shavuot, the letters of the Tetragrammaton are separated by dashes. (A maqaf may be preferable but was not available in the scribal font “Stam Ashkenaz CLM” I utilized.) Elsewhere in the letter art, the traditional circumlocution for the divine nameא-ל is used. The overarching concern here was to prevent the work from requiring the same treatment given to works in which divine names are explicitly printed. (For a teshuva on this topic, find “YD 276 – On the Exodus (and Genesis) of Shemot” (Avram Israel Reisner, CJLS 2003).) A second version of the Shiviti using the original divine names in unchanged forms is also provided for viewing on screen (not recommended for printing).

The first Shiviti I created was one I made by hand around 2014 at Kol Zimra,^[1] A chant leader’s professional development program led by Rabbi Shefa Gold. at a craft shiviti making workshop taught by art therapist Judith Dack with Rabbi Shefa Gold. I was later inspired by the Shiviti rendered in vector art (SVG) by Andrew Meit published on Open Siddur. Andrew had converted a Shiviti from a raster image provided by Aharon Varady, that had originally been shared by the sofer, Ba’al haKokhav (a pseudonym of the author of a now inaccessible post of a once popular messaging board online.)

The SVG file was created by hand coding XML in a text editor with Unicode Hebrew and hyperlink sources for texts to Sefaria and Open Siddur (no design tools were used). The open-source vector art application Inkscape was used to render the PNG (raster graphic at 400dpi resolution) and PDF (with embedded font and hyperlinks) directly from the SVG. The only technical requirement should be availability of the font “Stam Ashkenaz CLM”.

Shiviti with circumlocutions and with sources hyperlinked (Yaakov Love 2024) – black on white

Shiviti with circumlocutions and with sources hyperlinked (Yaakov Love 2024) – white on black

Notes[+]

Notes
1	A chant leader’s professional development program led by Rabbi Shefa Gold.

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“Shiviti (scalable vector graphic) art, by Yaakov Love” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.

Ya'akov Love

Yaakov (James) A. Love (Hebrew: יַעֲקוֹב שָׁלוֹמִי לוּב ) is a Scrum Master in Austin, Texas. He graduated from Texas State University with a double BA in Computer Science and Philosophy. He also completed some graduate work in Jewish Studies from the Laura and Alvin Siegal College of Judaic Studies. Love currently serves as president of Congregation Shalom Rav (Austin's Reconstructionist and Renewal congregation).

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שִׁוִּיתִי | Shiviti by Mashiaḥ Asgari (ca. late 19th – early 20th c. Herat, Afghanistan)

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A screenshot of Pesach Dahvid Stadlin from a video recording of his singing "Love Song to Arabs from a Jew"

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Additional Notes:

The views expressed in this work represent the views of their creator(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Open Siddur Project's developers, its diverse community of contributors, patrons, or institutional partners.
We strongly advise against printing sacred texts and art containing divine names as these copies must be regarded with reverence, complicating their casual treatment and disposal.
If you must dispose of a printed sacred text (one containing Divine Names), please locate the closest genizah (often established by a synagogue) and contact its custodians for further instructions. We also recommend using Morah Yehudis Fishman's Prayer for Adding a Work to the Genizah.

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ויהי נעם אדני אלהינו עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננה עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננהו "May the pleasantness of אדֹני our elo’ah be upon us; may our handiwork be established for us — our handiwork, may it be established." –Psalms 90:17