From Spock to <i>Shekhina</i>

From Spock to Shekhina

Written by Josh Hamerman

Leonard Nimoy’s spiritual trek

The script for the Amok Time episode of Star Trek simply called for the half-human, half-Vulcan Mr. Spock to give a "Vulcan hand salute." The writers left Leonard Nimoy, the actor who played Spock, no instructions on how to form an alien greeting. But Nimoy remembered the Kohanim. As a child in his Orthodox synagogue, he had seen these descendants of the Temple priests shape their fingers into the Hebrew letter shin (the first letter of Shaddai, one of the names for God) during the priestly blessing on Yom Kippur. "I just showed the gesture to the director and we introduced it into the show," says Nimoy. "What happened was quite remarkable in the way it took hold. Within a few days after that episode aired, people began giving me that gesture on the street. In a lot of cases, though, people still have no idea what it really means."

Nimoy’s latest project originated in the same Orthodox synagogue where Spock’s Vulcan greeting was born. Shekhina, his provocative, recently published book of photographs, explores the concept of God as a female presence—Shekhina in Hebrew. The Shekhina is traditionally thought of as God’s presence in the world, but early Kabbalistic texts have also referred to the Shekhina as a feminine being. "When the Kohanim would perform the priestly blessing, it was a very powerful and theatrical event," he says, "My father told me not to look and I didn’t really know why. I was discussing this with a rabbi a few years ago and he said that the reason my father told me not to look was because the Shekhina was entering the synagogue at that time in the service, and the sight of the Shekhina is too powerful for the average person to view. It was such a powerful experience for me as a child."

Born to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents in 1931, Nimoy grew up in a tenement apartment with his parents, grandparents, and brother in Boston’s West End. "Growing up in my home...I think I was well exposed to the idea of community, and the idea of living an ethical life," he says. "Charity through personal family offerings and through our synagogue was a big factor in the life that surrounded me. Those traditions have stayed with me."

Nimoy began acting as a child at Boston’s Elizabeth Peabody Playhouse, and by the time he was a teenager he was performing at B’nai B’rith war bond rallies and reading Jewish stories on the radio. He won an acting scholarship to Boston College but soon left college for California, where he gradually began to score roles in movies and on television. Nimoy had no idea that stardom was just around the corner when, in 1964, he
appeared in an episode of the TV series The Lieutenant. The show’s executive producer, Gene Roddenberry, noticed Nimoy and cast him as Spock in his new science fiction series. Star Trek premiered in 1966 and, although it only ran for three seasons, Nimoy’s character became a cultural icon around the world.

After Star Trek, Nimoy directed the films Three Men and a Baby and The Good Mother, and reprised his role as Spock in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and its five sequels, two of which he also directed. Nimoy has lent his time to various political and social causes as well. He was active in the anti-Vietnam War movement, supported former Senator Eugene McCarthy’s 1972 presidential campaign, and volunteered on behalf of Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

As both actor and activist, Nimoy played his role in front of the camera. Now, his fascination with Jewish mysticism has brought him over to the other side of the lens. "I’m intrigued with a very broad spectrum of aspects of the [Shekhina] persona, from the extremely spiritual to the erotic," says Nimoy. Indeed, some parents might want to shield their children’s eyes from the book’s more risque images. Where the female models in his series of somber, black-and-white shots are not utterly nude, he dresses them only in diaphanous, ghostly-white prayer shawls. As reported in the Forward, Nimoy even pulled out of an October fundraiser for the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle after the event’s director refused to show pictures from the book he deemed inappropriate.

Nimoy is an eager student of the many fantastical conceptions of the Shekhina. One belief holds that Moses and the Shekhina lived together as husband and wife and that, upon his death, the Shekhina carried him to his burial place on her wings. Another tradition portrays the Shekhina as the "Sabbath Bride," who mates with God each Friday to usher in the Sabbath. "There is also the theory that there are divine sparks that have spread across the universe as a result of the spiritual vessels exploding," says Nimoy. "My sense is that the Shekhina travels with humans to help collect this light and create healing—the tikkun that we talk about. In my book I have her collecting these sparks of light and growing into a beam of white light energy."

At 71, Nimoy still cannot escape Spock’s pointy-eared shadow. But while his alien alter-ego now wanders the galaxy only in late night re-runs, Nimoy’s own artistic journey is far from over. "I’m still exploring the impact that [the Shekhina] has had on me," he says. "The photography work is part of that exploration."

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Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.