The new art work and musical video presented here has been created by the artist Inna Rogatchi on the eve of Rosh HaShanah 5778.
The work, while showing a wide variety of the characters and situations, aims, at the same time, to reflect on the essence of the Jewish ‘spiritual psyche’. It aims to bring out the qualities which makes Jewish people the one family as it is seen by the artist: love, in-born and bred by one’s family tenderness, personal caring, attentiveness. It also reflects our genetic love for music, strive for creativeness, and never-stopped curiosity towards the world. It tells about Jewish dream-like thoughtfulness originated from our eternal, mighty literature starting from the Tanach and coming strongly up to S.Y. Agnon’s magic prose, and very much including magnetic tales by Rabbi Nachman from Breslov. Those tales, their characters, their thoughts and metaphors, their open and hidden meaning, have a special grip on everyone who had read it once. They are becoming the one of beloved treasures in one’s life, turning by their yet another new side every next time one returns to this miracle of the Jewish spirit. It portrays our super-resistant sense of humor, our playfulness and smiling attitude to life. Smiling, does not matter what.
In the words of Inna Rogatchi : ” In the period of time close to every Rosh HaShanah, the souls of our people, the souls of our beloved ones are looking on us from the High. It is a period when the special bond between us here and them there is becoming the most palpable. It is the period when we almost can see that bridge that Rabbi Steinsaltz is describing, if one would like to think about it and try to get the meaning of the concept.
In my supposition, it is not only them who are looking on us every eve of the Rosh HaShanah. It is also us who are thinking on them. Seeing them. Remembering them. Singing with them The Song of Our Souls”.
Well-known French philosopher and art critic, close friend and colleague of Elie Wiesel and the author of nine book on and with Wiesel, Michael de Saint-Cheron has reacted to the new Inna Rogatchi’s work in the following way: ” Inna Rogatchi’s Our Souls art work is ‘very special’, as Elie who had a very strong bond to Rabbi Nachman, would have said it. In its concentrated, palpable mystic, it shows the enlightened character of Jewish mysticism, which is its special, if not unique, feature. This work also reveals Inna’s love for human beings and for life in all its generosity. It is a song of love” ( Paris, September 2017).
Attribution of the work:
Inna Rogatchi (C), (R). Our Souls. Watercolour pencil over authored pigment print on cotton paper. 40 x 50 cm. 2017. Emerald Tales series.
Inna Rogatchi is writer, artist and film-maker. her forthcoming film is “Dream, Memory, Love. Michael Rogatchi: A Portrait of the Artist” ( 2018)/