UPCOMING DORTORT EVENTS
Winter 2027
The Dortort Center is proud to present this special book event:
Renowned Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz will be talking about his latest most personal book
PSALMS
Between Us
A Rabbi and his Christian Mother on Faith Love and Loss.
Rabbi Shmuly will be in conversation with Rabbi Aaron Lerner, president and CEO of the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles.
Thursday, January 21, 7-9 PM
Winter 2027 Art Opening
Found and Sacred: Judaica Assemblages
Ed Buttwinick
Thursday, January 28, 7-9 PM
Artist’s Statement
I see through the lens of an artist fascinated by nature, art history, and the heritage and culture of Jewish identity. My work focuses on Judaic themes drawn from my upbringing and the well of our religion and its multifaceted past. The Jewish People have historically valued narrative and literacy, two vehicles of storytelling that are deeply woven into my art.
Duchamp and Rauschenberg influence the constructed assemblage techniques I use, in which relationships among eclectic, unrelated, and mundane materials express ideas and emotions. I speak the language of symbolism, paradox, and metaphor.
The path of my creative process is guided by walking the elusive edge between the real and the imagined, the serious and the playful. Striving to give meaning and significance to items that once lived in one form and now exist in another, a dialogue begins with drawings and coalesces with found objects. Line becomes shape while image and form become subject and theme. A particular moment or concept in our history is then revealed and the story is told.
Artist Bio
Ed Buttwinick is a Judaica themed assemblage artist in Los Angeles, California. He began his art education at Fairfax High School in Los Angeles, and earned a B.A. in Art at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). After teaching in L.A. City Schools for a decade, Ed, with his wife, Linda, co-founded the Brentwood Art Center (BAC) in 1971. The BAC is a school of fine art for children, teens, and adults, and has become a cultural landmark in the art community of West Los Angeles. During his 34 years as the BAC’s Director, Ed’s community service included working with the West Regional Advisory Council of the Cultural Affairs Department; A Window Between Worlds, a non-profit organization benefiting abused women and children; and the Board of the Los Angeles County Art Education Association. He was presented California’s Outstanding Supervisor of Art Education Award in 1987, and a City of Los Angeles Certificate Tribute Award in 2005. Ed’s work is held in the permanent collection of the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. He was a repeated guest lecturer at the Rhea Hirsch School of Education at Hebrew Union College on the subject of art and spirituality, and his work was exhibited at American Jewish University. Ed passed away on October 9, 2025 leaving behind a unique body of Judaica work and the legacy of the Brentwood Art Center.
Sharon Gabay
Jerusalemites
Thursday, January 28th, 2027
Artist’s Statement
Thirty-three photographs forming twenty-one works: twelve pairs, in which two photographs are hung side by side and
answer each other, and nine single photographs that hold the wall on their own. Jerusalem, 2011–2026.
Jerusalem is usually documented through its stones: the Western Wall, the spires, the walls. These images of the city —
eternal, monumental — accompanied my previous books. This book seeks to shift the gaze from the symbols to the living
fabric; from the myth to the reality.
The perspective presented here is that of a native son, from a family whose roots run generations deep in this city. It is a
gaze formed by living in the city, not by visiting it. A gaze that rests on a continuous familiarity with the rhythm of the
street, with slow changes and recurrences, with people who pass through and people who stay.
Street photography in Jerusalem is a complicated matter. The camera is present in a charged space: religions, identities,
political tensions and social divides. And yet, within this complexity there are moments that do not seek to represent
anything. Two nuns, a woman in a hijab with her children and a baby stroller, an ultra-Orthodox man — all at the same
gate of the Old City, in the same moment, breathing in the smell of the same bagel.
The camera serves here as an observing instrument. It does not seek to decide or to beautify. It documents incidental
moments, beauty and pain existing side by side. This is Jerusalem without makeup. A Jerusalem of flesh and blood.
This book is the record of fifteen years. Not a one-time project, but an ongoing process of thousands of hours of walking,
observing and waiting. An attempt to create a human archive of a city that changes and stays the same. A deeply local book
that seeks to speak in a broad language. A book about Jerusalem — but also about a person in a city.
These are the Jerusalemites.
Artist Bio
Sharon Gabay is an Israeli photographer and the author of six photography books. His work centres on the people and
streets of Jerusalem and on portraiture of Israeli public life. Over two decades he has photographed Israeli political,
cultural, academic and religious figures, alongside a continuing body of documentary and street work.
Spring 2027
You Are Cordially Invited To Our Spring Concert 2027
Sunday, April 18th, 4-6PM
"Open Your Heart"
Songs of love and peace, prayers sung in Hebrew and English
Starring Cantor Boaz Davidoff and his daughter Maya Davidoff
cosponsored by:
