ATLANTA, GA.- The Breman, a Jewish museum and cultural center located in the busy Midtown district of Georgia’s capital, is presenting “The Guiding Hand: The Barr Foundation Judaica Collection of Torah Pointers,” an intriguing and artful exhibition of objects central to Jewish prayer and ritual.

For centuries, these ceremonial yet practical instruments took the shape of a tapered shaft ending with a miniature representation of a hand with its index finger pointed. While they continue serve a traditional function -- to keep one’s place in the Torah scroll when reading from its densely hand-lettered Hebrew text without touching the fragile parchment surface — many contemporary pointers have evolved into stunning works of art.

Whether ancient or contemporary, basic or exotic, a pointer such as these is called a yad (literally the Hebrew word for hand) or, for more than one, yadim. “The Guiding Hand” includes more than 130 yadim from multiple countries (from India to Russia to the United States); by artists and craftspeople from many time periods and faiths; and created in a vast array of media. Though most of the objects run from just a few inches to less than a foot, The Breman exhibit, continuing through December, showcases the boundless creativity that artists and craftspeople applied to each relatively small work.

In honor of her late husband Jay Barr, Virginia resident Clay Barr began collecting Torah pointers nearly three decades ago. Without realizing that he was sparking a collection, Jay Barr had purchased two antique Torah pointers at Sotheby’s, donating them to his lifetime synagogue, Temple Beth El in Norfolk, Virginia, in honor of relatives. When she decided to build a collection to honor her departed husband, Clay Barr initially followed Jay’s lead by pursuing antique pieces.

"My inspiration to memorialize Jay with torah pointers arrived as an epiphany -- sudden and whole,” she said in a talk during “The Guiding Hand’s” recent opening in Atlanta. “Building upon these pieces has brought me solace.”

Yet after several years in which the was drawn mainly to yadim of wood or precious metals created by artisans in the 18th and 19th centuries, Barr said she asked herself, “Was I justified in treating antiquity and quality as synonymous?”

Soon she began rigorously researching, pursuing and commissioning contemporary artists -- notable among them, Tobi Kahn, Wendell Castle and Albert Paley -- to create yadim.

“I devoted myself to championing living artists, to supporting the production of modern Judaica of the highest caliber,” recalled Barr, who is president of Missions Possible, a Norfolk gift and event planning service. “I challenged the makers to elevate yads from embellished ritual objects [into] genuine artworks.

“I encouraged the sculptor, the jeweler, the designer, the furniture maker, the woodcarver and the glassblower to channel their full inspiration into their pieces,” she continued. “I believe the application of modern, unconventional media to an ancient form addresses our very conception of how a yad can look and what a yad can be and still retain its original purpose.”

Highlights among the contemporary works on view in “The Guiding Hand” include:

• Stacey Lee Webber’s yad made of copper pennies fashioned into a keyhole saw.

• George Worthington’s pointer is a sensuous sculpture of carved wood that resembles a flowing ribbon.

• Marjorie Simon’s haunting Never Again, with its train car and train tracks, references Auschwitz. It is a stark reminder of the Holocaust and ongoing persecution the Jewish community faces even close to home today. Yet as a counterpoint to the representation of Holocaust horrors, the idea of transformation is represented by vines, which suggest resiliency and tenacity, appearing dead in winter and then rising with life in the spring.

• Considered the father of the American craft furniture movement, Wendell Castle fabricated a Parsons table as the base of the only yad he produced prior to his death in 2018. The table is made of rosewood and maple, the pointer it holds of silver and stained walnut, the hand of sign foam and acrylic paint. 

• The son of Holocaust survivors, Tobi Kahn created a wooden yad referencing forms from nature, then finished it in acrylic. The sculptor-painter, an observant Jew, has said, “Your soul gets healed when you see something beautiful.”

The Breman’s founding executive director Jane Leavey, serving as curator for the collection’s Atlanta showing, said that “The Guiding Hand” “presents both an understanding of the Torah’s centrality in Judaism and the yad as an art form, both ancient and contemporary.”

For her part, Clay Barr said, “Like the collection, I too have grown -- in both my faith and my knowledge of Judaica.”

Though she is now in her 80s, she added with resolve, “I remain determined to enhance the selection indefinitely.”