A keen eye vs. a sharp tongue

WGN anchor reports on start of Yom Kippur. SCREENSHOT
WGN anchor reports on start of Yom Kippur. SCREENSHOT

Following Yom Kippur, social media flooded with indignation over a major mix-up at a Chicago news station that botched a well-intentioned effort to acknowledge the Jewish holiday. The image illustrating the report was of the yellow star that Nazis forced Jews to wear, complete with the German word “Jude” on a background of a concentration camp uniform.

After days of online vitriol, the president of the New York Board of Rabbis, Rabbi David Seth Kirshner, appealed to his network, sharing the apology issued by the broadcasters: “In the wake of a holiday about forgiveness, I humbly suggest we as a community accept the apology and stop circulating the picture and story. It was clearly a mistake, and to turn it into a viral anti-Semitic tirade, is a futile exercise.”

While I concur, the question remains: “How did this happen?” The answer lies not in nefarious anti-Jewish sentiment, but in an epidemic of increasingly impoverished visual literacy, affecting even those in the business of disseminating images.

I worked with a designer who submitted a clean, modern proposal for a conference poster, but in the combination of colour and form, I saw an echo of the pink triangle and requested a redesign. She obliged with the implication that I was overreacting, which I suspect was due in part to her lack of awareness that the pink triangle represented Nazi persecution of homosexuals.

On another marketing campaign for programs about contemporary Russian Jewish culture, I cautioned the designer against using red as the signature colour. Because, red plus Russia means something, especially to the Russian audiences we were targeting.

Over the course of history, forms, colours and symbols gather potent meaning. It’s our responsibility to be able to “read” the signs of all cultures, not just our own. Hammer plus sickle means something. Star plus crescent means something. For Jews, blue plus white connotes tradition, the tallit, Israel itself. “Kachol v’lavan” is ubiquitous among Jewish organizations, trading creative experimentation for the significance suffused in the enduring colour combination.

Even when The CJN launched its long-awaited redesign in 2014, it did not depart from the predictable colour scheme. It’s a welcome change when Jewish organizations push into new imaginative terrain. I support the intentions of another newspaper to diverge from “the traditional blue that anchored the Forward for years,” as editor-in-chief Jane Eisner explained this past spring regarding the Forward’s redesign process. The results, however, are disappointing.

Of their colour choice, Eisner wrote: “Gold is the emblem of excellence dating back to biblical times. And America was the Goldene Medina for the founders of the Forward.” Eisner can call their new logo “gold” until she’s Israeli-flag blue in the face but when I read the Forward online, all I see are yellow icons against a black banner – a stark, uninviting colourscape with a palette similar to the image that launched a firestorm at the Chicago broadcasters.

It would be absurd to suggest that a great Jewish newspaper has a covert anti-Semitic agenda any more than Chicago’s WGN does; yet the choice of so-called gold on black is nearly as myopic as that Yom Kippur misstep. When paired, these colours trigger a series of historical associations and their usage suggests a befuddling disconnect from that reality.

When those whose very role it is to disseminate ideas and images demonstrate a lack of awareness of the iconography of our times, it is highly disconcerting. However, instead of merely attacking the media, the Jewish community, which places a premium on critical thinking and advanced study, should equally promote enhanced visual literacy both within the Jewish world and without.

Visual acumen is becoming ever more essential as both the public and the private spheres are flooded with imagery where even credible sources prompt close scrutiny. It behooves us all to absorb this barrage of visual information with a discriminating and sensitive eye, informed by history and global currents.


Originally from Montreal, Evelyn Tauben is a writer, producer and curator based in Toronto