This piece was commissioned as a gift to an attorney. It features the first three words from a verse from Deuteronomy, which translates to “Justice, justice you shall pursue, that you may live, and inherit the land which the Lord your God gave you” (Deuteronomy 16:18) The first three words, “Tzedek Tzedek Tirdof”, can also be understood to be the imperative “pursue justice!”. In this papercut, I’ve organically embedded that Hebrew command above a hanging scales of justice, and the English lives on the two scales.

Around the outside, the English letters shining outward, is an excerpt from Marianne Williamson’s poem “Our Deepest Fear,” and it reads:
“We are all meant to shine,
As children do.
We were born to make manifest
The glory of God that is within us.”

The large Hebrew letters are inspired by the letters used by Gad Almalia in this “tree of life” piece.

[Update] I created a new version of this design, with different text around the outside (this is shown in the last thumbnail). It’s an excerpt from Abraham Joshua Heschel’s book The Prophets. The text in the papercut is “Justice exists in relation to a person, and is something done by a person. Justice is not an abstraction or a value.” Later in that text, Heschel elaborates by saying, “An act of injustice is condemned, not because the law is broken, but because a person has been hurt.”