Cultural Diary series
Perhaps one needs to live enough to realise that a genius is ageless.
Non-existent age of a genius has to do also with migration of souls whatever sceptics on the subject might be saying on this magnetic fact of the universe and experiences of our existence there.
According to the certain school of thinking in Judaism tradition, every soul bears its certain ‘age’, so to say, which defines the behaviour of the person in whose body it lives. This is what people mean when saying about someone ‘he or she was born as an old man or woman’, or to the contrary, this is, in fact, the reason explaining ever youngish behaviour and reactions of the people in an advanced age. It all is there, marked by ‘the age’ of our souls that we, our bodies are hosting during a span of our conscious existence in this world. Or rather they, our souls are hosting us which would be the more correct way of describing it, I think.
Joy with Tears
In Jewish tradition, we have ten major holidays annually, with only two of them, Simcha Torah and Purim, is about exalted joy. And on Purim, that joy comes after miraculous rescue from a mortal danger and prospect of total extinction.
Many of us knew in generations that our Jewish joy is so often a joy mixed with tears, so often it contains an essential drama in it. We are genetically aware of the complexity of our joy, and many of us, also in generations, value it as a more precious gift in our lives, the same as it was known in our families and went back by generations.
Bar-Mitzvah in front of the Auschwitz entrance
The scale of the Shoah prevents us from perceiving it in a whole. Human psyche’s self-defence mechanism is evoked, often blocking us from absorbing it in its enitre shocking volume. We know its methodic plan and idea. We also know the incomprehensible outcome of it. It comes as facts of history. But what connects us with our brethren perished in that unspeakable crime is the way of personal identification with real people from those six – and in all likeness, more – million murdered Jews. That’s why many of us randomly adopt one Jewish person from the Yad Vashem data-base every January 27th, to identify with that Polish girl, or that Hungarian boy, or that Lithuanian woman. My husband and I are doing it annually, and we treasure that somber but also warm and personal moment when a face and a name appears on our screens and we are able to commemorate the taken lives of more than six million souls while identifying with just
OSIP
January 15th, 2020 has marked one of the most special commemoration dates in this year’s cultural calendar, the 130th birth anniversary of Osip Mandelstam, Russian poet of Jewish origin, vulnerable and hunted man who has created a cosmic, unparalleled quality of poetry that has become a distinctive mark of literature of the XX century in general.
This anniversary could well be his 300th or 30th one. He is from the category of eternal lights, and there are so very few of them.
Michael Rogatchi (C). OSIP. Portrait of Osip Mandelstam. Oil on canvas. 70 x 50 cm. 1993. The Rogatchi Art collection.
Artistic View:
The Ancestors Family series
Michael Rogatchi Contemporary Biblical Art
As central as the Jacob family is in Jewish spiritual life and narrative, as it is in
Michael Rogatchi’s series of his contemporary Biblical art works known as
Forefathers project.
In the case of Jacob and his family, the artist sees it in two ways: as continuation of the line of the Patriarchs, of which Jacob was the last one; and as of fundamental beginning of the Jewish nation. “
We all are children of Jacob”, – Michael says often.
What is interesting is that Michael’s paintings on the Jacob family created in different periods of time during a six years period are all united by the dominating expression in them, light. According to the core of all portrayed characters, that light in Michael’s paintings is different. It represents four different types of spiritual light.