Akedah: The Binding of Yitzhak, 2023

Cover: Laser, cedar wood, natural jute cord
Book pages: Handmade paper, letterpress, botanical inclusions, thread

Akedah: The Binding of Yitzhak tells the haunting Biblical story of Abraham who is commanded
to sacrifice his son, Isaac (Yitzhak, in the original Hebrew). This 36-page accordion book aspires
to capture the breakdown of language in the face of trauma.
As the story unfolds, the letters and words become more fragmented and disjointed. The text
itself runs along stark mountains painted with Japanese inks and is interspersed with commentary
from Jewish and non-Jewish sources. These interpretations range from the Talmud to Danish
philospher SØren Kierkegaard to American folk singer Bob Dylan.
In addition, a sub-text of silence is created through multiple blind embossments that have been
letterpressed into the custom handmade paper. Black has blind embossed Hebrew and English
words or parts of words throughout the work as well as Sarah’s name to emphasize her
psychological presence even though she does not physically accompany her husband and son on
their journey.

“It took five years to complete this work,” said Black, 67, who lives and works in Arlington,
Virginia. “I wanted people not only to read this large-scale artist book but also to imagine the
desert trek and recreate it for themselves.”
Akedah: The Binding of Yitzhak is being issued in an edition of eight copies. The first has been
acquired by the Dorot Judaica Collection of the New York Public Library and the second copy
was purchased by the Rare Books division of Washington University in St. Louis. A third has
gone to Columbia University in NYC.
Black last completed the widely-acclaimed artist book, The Amichai Windows, a limited edition
artist book of Yehuda Amichai poems that opens a window onto love, war, and being a Jew in
the 20 th century. “. . . a towering achievement in American arts and letters,” wrote Aharon
Yermiyahu Taub in his review for the American Jewish Libraries Newsletter.
Black’s work is also found in the Rare Book Division of the Library of Congress, the Beinecke
Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Library, the
University of Michigan Special Collections and the University of California at Berkeley’s
Bancroft Library as well as private collections.
Akedah: The Binding of Yitzhak has naturally felled cedar covers lasered with the title and is
bound/unbound with natural jute ribbon. To highlight the presence of fire, Black also has burned
inside the pages, thus creating gaps in the story, as well along the top of the hand-deckled paper,
which unwinds like desert mountains. He also has artfully combined handmade papers from the
United States, Nepal, Mexico, India and Japan as well as wax, wood chips, cords and botanicals.
As part of his grappling with this traumatic story, Black crafted three dialogues—his own
interpretations, as it were—with the three main Biblical characters, Sarah, Abraham and Isaac.
These are contained in a supplemental booklet along with all of the work’s quotations and his
own new translation.