Wednesday, April 24, 2019

What's the Book About?

Through a Bible Lens: Biblical Insights for Smartphone Photography and Social Media is a highly acclaimed book by Prof. Mel Alexenberg that teaches how biblical insights can transform smartphone photography and social media into imaginative ways for seeing spirituality in everyday life. 




It speaks to Jews and Christians who share an abiding love of the Bible by inspiring the creation of a lively dialogue between our emerging life stories and the enduring biblical narrative.

DRAWS ON THE BIBLE FOR DEVELOPING CREATIVITY IN A DIGITAL AGE
Through a Bible Lens draws on Dr. Alexenberg’s research on creative thinking at the MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies and biblical insights he formulated as professor at Israeli universities to teach imaginative ways for developing creativity in our age of smartphones and social media.

TEACHES HOW TO MAKE THE BIBLICAL NARRATIVE A MIRROR FOR SEEING YOURSELF
Through a Bible Lens shows how to create a lively dialogue between your emerging life story and the enduring biblical narrative by Bible blogging your life. The blog is an ideal narrative form for developing fresh insights for revealing spiritual dimensions of your personal narrative.

SPEAKS TO MILLENNIALS IN TODAY'S LANGUAGE OF DIGITAL CULTURE
It presents to all generations the most up-to-date thoughts on how The Bible gives fresh insights on the impact of new technologies on contemporary life. Christians and Jews should buy THROUGH A BIBLE LENS for themselves as well as for their children and grandchildren.

OFFERS A BIBLE CURE FOR SMARTPHONE ADDICTION
Through a Bible Lens offers a spiritual cure for the serious problem of smartphone addiction by teaching how to shift focus from the screen to photographing your everyday life from biblical perspectives. It also shows how to delight in all that happens around you by turning off, tuning out and unplugging one day each week. Follow the "Bible Cure for Smartphone Addiction" blog.

A MUST-READ BEFORE VISITING THE HOLY LAND
It teaches how to transform your smartphone photographs into biblical messages emerging from what you see and share your experiences through social media. It's all in the book THROUGH A BIBLE LENS. 

To see inside the book and buy click here Amazon

Tuesday, April 23, 2019

Bible Blog Your Life by Turning the Biblical Narrative into a Mirror for Seeing Yourself

The chronological blog form invites the creation of a personal narrative, telling your story.  A blog is a web log, an Internet journal through which you can document the flow of your life’s activities, thoughts and plans.  It connects your past and present to your future through a stream of images and words. 

Seeing your life as a coherent narrative gives meaning to it.  You can discern the significance of events in your life by joining them together in a narrative sequence.   You can make sense of your life by telling it as a story through sequences of photographs in dialogue with creative texts. 

The blog form is an ideal literary and artistic structure for recording your experiences and commenting on them.  As social media, blogs open opportunities to share life stories with others worldwide through the blogosphere and Twitterverse.

The following photos from a Bible Blog Your Life post appear in my book Through a Bible Lens. I also wrote about them in a personal narrative "How an Angel Led Me into the Garden of Eden" https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/how-an-angel-led-me-into-the-garden-of-eden/.


I was keynote speaker at the inaugural symposium launching the Institute for Postdigital Narrative at ZKM in Karlsruhe, Europe’s foremost research center for art and new media.  The Institute’s founding director Professor Michael Bielicky wrote, “Mankind has always operated on narrative to explain and understand its own existence. Our times, in particular, call for the exploration, expression, and especially, creation of new story-telling formats.”

In The Art of Biblical Narrative, University of California Professor Robert Alter explains that the Bible “has a great deal to teach anyone interested in narrative because its seemingly simple, wonderfully complex art offers such splendid illustrations of the primary possibilities of narrative.”  Paying attention to the literary structure of the biblical narrative as you explore its content can offer you significant lessons on how to write your story as it unfolds both visually and verbally.          

Bible blogging invites you to link your narrative to the biblical narrative.   It asks you to create a dialogue between your story and the Bible’s story.  It presents opportunities to use your imagination for discovering how the biblical narrative provides fresh insights for seeing the spiritual dimensions of your storyline.

See Bible Blog Your Life, an exemplary blog created by my wife Miriam and me as a narrative of our daily life http://bibleblogyourlife.blogspot.com.  The book Through a Bible Lens teaches how to Bible blog your life by weaving smartphone photographs together with a creative Twitter text. 

Monday, April 22, 2019

Don't Pass Over the Significance of the Shape of Matzah

My wife Miriam and I experienced Passover as the Holiday of Freedom by participating in creating a Jewish community for the holiday on the Greek island of Crete.

I photographed hand-made round matzah and machine-made rectangular matzah. These matzah shapes in relation to the spiral challah eaten when Passover ends give us clues to understanding the structure of Jewish consciousness.



I write the sentences in my Times of Israel blog post as Twitter tweets. See https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/dont-pass-over-the-significance-of-the-shapes-of-matzah/

It is based upon the “Torah Tweets” blogart project that I created with my wife Miriam http://bibleblogyourlife.blogspot.com

Through a Bible Lens: Biblical Insights for Smartphone Photography and Social Media explores the conceptual background for Bible blogging.  It is written in the language of digital culture and social media for dissemination throughout the Twitterverse and blogosphere.

Sunday, April 14, 2019

Discover a Bible Cure for Smartphone Addiction in Dr. Alexenberg’s Through a Bible Lens

Press Release from Evangelical Press Association

Research at MIT, Columbia University and universities in Israel by Dr. Alexenberg is revealed in his new book

A spiritual cure for the global epidemic of smartphone addiction is revealed in the highly acclaimed book Through a Bible Lens: Biblical Insights for Smartphone Photography and Social Media by Dr. Mel Alexenberg.  It is based on his research on the interrelationships between digital culture, creative process, and biblical thought at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and as professor at Columbia University and universities in Israel.

The intensity of this plague becomes evident in a Google search “smartphone addiction” that yielded 51,100,000 sites, and 8,380,000 sites for “cures for smartphone addictions.” Scientific papers in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions and other journals of psychology and public health claim that smartphones are the biggest non-drug addiction of the 21st century.

In the language of digital culture: Dr. Alexenberg wrote Through a Bible Lens in the language of digital culture to reach millennials, the most addicted population, while teaching all generations the most up-to-date thoughts on how the Bible offers fresh insights on the impact of new technologies on contemporary life. The book offers resources for The Bible Cure as a three-step program:

Turn off, tune out, unplug: The first step found in the words of the Ten Commandments, “On six days do all your work, but on the seventh day you shall have a Sabbath of compete rest, holy to God,” invites you to turn off, tune out, unplug once a week. Make every seventh day different from the other six days of the week. Enjoy family and friends, walk in the forest and fields, and watch the sunrise and sunset.

Reboot your smartphone for spiritual seeing: The second step of the cure does not ask you not to use your smartphone, but rather to redefine how you use it.  Reboot your smartphone for spiritual seeing so that you see beyond the digital world of the screen. Experience the real word by transforming your smartphone into a camera for photographing your everyday life from biblical perspectives. 

Bible blog your life: The third step teaches you how to use your smartphone to build a personal Bible blog for creating a vibrant dialogue between your emerging life story and the enduring biblical narrative that you can share with others.  The Bible Cure is equally effective for preventing smartphone addiction.

“The iPhone has changed our culture and our ways of thinking and acting in the world. The book offers profound insights about meaning and purpose in contemporary life in a brilliant and sustained exposition. Great book!” Dr. Ron Burnett, author of How Images Think; president, University of Art and Design, Vancouver

“A unique and fascinating book. Who would have thought that there would be a way to connect smartphones to the ancient world of the Bible?” Prof. Gerald R. McDermott, Beeson Divinity School, Stamford University, Birmingham, Alabama

"Offers a template, a guidebook on how to experience images of the Divine in every moment and use blogging technology to disseminate them. The wisdom found in this unique book invites us to share the story of our Divine journey.” Bishop Robert Stearns, Executive Director, Eagles’ Wings, New York

“A joy to any lover of the Bible, Christian or Jewish. I not only endorse it, I look forward to integrating these ideas into my personal encounter with Scripture." Dr. Jim Solberg, author of Sinai Speaks; USA National Director, Bridges for Peace 

Book details: Title: Through a Bible Lens; Author: Mel Alexenberg; Genre: RELIGION/Biblical Commentary/Old Testament; ISBN: PB -9781595558312 / HB (CW) – 9781595557124; Pages: 244; Publisher: Elm Hill/HarperCollins; Book’s blog http://throughabiblelens.blogspot.com.

Contact the author at melalexenberg@yahoo.com for further information, book reviews, interviews, and articles.

Through a Bible Lens: Biblical Insights for Smartphone Photography and Social Media is available on Amazon, other Internet booksellers and bookstores

Friday, April 5, 2019

Discover Spirituality in the Post-Digital Era with Mel Alexenberg’s 'Through a Bible Lens'

Press Release from the publisher Elm Hill/HarperCollins

Mel Alexenberg’s latest book helps readers rekindle their faith in the age of smartphones and social media

Mel Alexenberg redefines what it means to be Christians and Jews in the post-digital era in his new book, Through a Bible Lens: Biblical Insights for Smartphone Photography and Social Media. What was originally a blog-art project has becomes a worldwide inspiration for many believers to see biblical teachings in a modern light.

Over the centuries, the Holy Bible has been one of the best-selling books and the most widely distributed piece of literature of all time. According to the Guinness World Records, this book has sold over 5,000,000,000 units as of today.  However, with the prevalence of social media and smartphones, it can be difficult to reconcile its usage with spirituality.  This is the conundrum that Mel tackled in Through a Bible Lens.

As an artist, writer, and educator, he has delved into the interrelationships between religion and the modern world.  Apart from his literary works and lectures, he also uses his passion for post-digital art and his Jewish consciousness to provide a fresh perspective regarding biblical insights for people, both young and old, from all walks of life. His reflection and unique take on spirituality transcend the boundaries people have created to distinguish race, age, religious affiliation, and beliefs.

In Through a Bible Lens, the author illustrated his life in Ra’anana, Israel, with his wife Miriam Benjamin, and their children and grandchildren.  Using photographs of their daily routine and his deep understating of the Bible, he was able to transform the use of smartphones and social media into a way of observing and sharing biblical narratives as they unfold in everyday life.

“There is confluence emerging in the twenty-first century between biblical consciousness and post-digi8tal culture.  Both share a structure of consciousness and its cultural expression that honors creative process and a different spirit.” Said Mel.  He continued, “Make the dialog between the biblical narrative and your life story reach the ends of the Earth through the blogosphere and Twitterverse.”

Through a Bible Lens: Biblical Insights for Smartphone Photography and Social Media is available on Amazon and other Internet booksellers and bookstores

Book details: Title: Through a Bible Lens; Author: Mel Alexenberg; Genre: RELIGION/Biblical Commentary/Old Testament; ISBN: PB -9781595558312 / HB (CW) – 9781595557124; Pages: 244; Publisher: Elm Hill/HarperCollins

Contact author for information, interviews, articles, book reviews. 
melalexenberg@yahoo.com 

Tuesday, April 2, 2019

TIMES OF ISRAEL Article "Discovering a Bible Cure for Smartphone Addiction"

At The Times of Israel, read my article "Discovering a Bible Cure for Smartphone Addiction in Through a Bible Lens"

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/discovering-a-bible-cure-for-smartphone-addiction-in-through-a-bible-lens/

This is one of the 50 photos in the book "Through a Bible Lens: Biblical Insights for Smartphone Photography and Social Media"

ISRAELSEEN Article "Dr. Mel Alexenberg: Bible Cure for Smartphone Addiction Revealed in New Book"

 Read my longer and more detailed article in IsraelSeen "Dr. Mel Alexenberg - Bible Cure for Smartphone Addiction Revealed in New Book"

https://israelseen.com/2019/04/02/dr-mel-alexenberg-bible-cure-for-smartphone-addiction-revealed-in-new-book/

This is one of the 50 photos in the book "Through a Bible Lens: Biblical Insights for Smartphone Photography and Social Media"

THROUGH A BIBLE LENS explores the Bible, the best selling book in the world, from the viewpoint of life in today's digital era.

Scroll down to see praise for Through a Bible Lens  from Jewish and Christian spiritual leaders and experts in digital culture. In his highl...