Isles Of The Forsaken, an illustration of the plight of Agunot by Ilene Winn-Lederer (2002)

Contributor(s): Ilene Winn-Lederer

Shared on: 25 March 2024 under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license

Categories: Art & Craft, 🌐 Agunah Day (Adar 13)

Tags: 21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., agunot

Isles Of The Forsaken (ink drawing, 2002) is intended to address the tragic situation of many Jewish women, who, abused, abandoned and wishing a divorce, are refused a get (bill of divorcement) by their husbands who may use their wives’ need for this document as a threat for ransom in obtaining custody of their children.

In the event of abandonment and/or civil divorce, a Jewish woman may not remarry without a ‘get’ document which must be signed by two witnesses and dated.

The meaning of a ‘get’, which is the Hebrew term for Gmar Tov (good completion). It is sometimes better to have peace reign in two houses, than strife, discord and disrespect in one home. The ‘get’ consists of twelve lines written in such a way that no writing may be added. For example, extenders may be added on specific letters to avoid adding text between lines. The setting of this image is a metaphorical space out of time, however, locations mentioned in the gittim (pl.) must be geographically specific to avoid confusion between other similarly named locations. The husband’s name, nickname and/or pseudonym must be included.

This image was suggested many years ago by the situation of an acquaintance with several young children who was a victim of her husband’s physical/psychological abuse. Sadly, she had a very difficult life and has since passed on.

Click to enlarge.

Isles of the Forsaken (Ilene Winn-Lederer, 2002)

. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike . 4.0 . International .

“Isles Of The Forsaken, an illustration of the plight of Agunot by Ilene Winn-Lederer (2002)” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.

Ilene Winn-Lederer

Ilene Winn-Lederer is a Pittsburgh-based Jewish artist in the United States. Originally from Chicago, she attended the Art Institute of Chicago and the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. A member of the Pittsburgh Society of Illustrators, Winn-Lederer’s clients have included The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Hadassah, NY, Lilith Magazine, Children’s Television Workshop, Scholastic, Charlesbridge Publishers, Simon & Schuster and Cricket Magazine. Her drawings and paintings are included in public and private collections throughout the United States, Europe and Israel. These are published under her imprint, Imaginarius Editions. She is the author and illustrator of Between Heaven & Earth: An Illuminated Torah Commentary (Pomegranate, 2009). In 2014, Ilene published An Illumination Of Blessings, the result of a successfully funded Kickstarter project.is It is a collection of thirty-six illustrated blessings with detailed commentaries that are drawn from the Jewish tradition of Me’ah Berakhot (100 Blessings). The illustrations include calligraphy in Hebrew and English, an artist’s preface and introduction by renowned Judaic scholar Marc Michael Epstein. In 2015, Imaginarius Editions released Notes From London: Above & Below, a collection of annotated illustrations drawn from pocket journals maintained during her visits there between 2002-2009.

Stable Link: https://opensiddur.org/?p=55035

Associated Image:

Isles of the Forsaken (Ilene Winn-Lederer, 2002)

(This image is set to automatically show as the "featured image" in category pages and in shared links on social media.)

Source Data: XML | JSON

Re-formatted: HTML | ODT

Terms of Use: Be a mentsch (a conscientious, considerate person) and adhere to the following guidelines:

Properly attribute the work to Ilene Winn-Lederer.
Clearly indicate the date you accessed the work and in what ways, if any, you modified it. (If you have adapted the work, let us know so that the contributor might consider endorsing your revision.)
Provide the stable link to this resource: <https://opensiddur.org/?p=55035>.
Indicate that the original work was shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license. (To redistribute or remix this work in any format, modified or unmodified, you must refer to the terms of the license under which the work is shared.)

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 volunteer contributors, or its 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.

Support this work: The Open Siddur Project is a volunteer-driven, non-profit, non-commercial, non-denominational, non-prescriptive, gratis & libre Open Access archive of contemplative praxes, liturgical readings, and Jewish prayer literature (historic and contemporary, familiar and obscure) composed in every era, region, and language Jews have ever prayed. Our goal is to provide a platform for sharing open-source resources, tools, and content for individuals and communities crafting their own prayerbook (siddur). Through this we hope to empower personal autonomy, preserve customs, and foster creativity in religious culture.

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

Pocket Reddit Facebook Bluesky Telegram WhatsApp SMS Email