Charlemagne Palestine’s “Bear Mitzvah in Meshugahland” features hundreds of plush toys, including teddy bears, which the artist regards as shamanic representations of the soul. Charlemagne Palestine, best known for his avant-garde and experimental music compositions beginning in the 1960s, has been incorporating bears and other plush toys into his installations and performances for decades. The teddy bear’s invention in 1902 by an immigrant Jewish couple in the same Brooklyn neighborhood where Palestine was born has become a near obsession for the artist.