By Dr. Inna Rogatchi, Israel National News—
The significance of various periods in our Jewish calendar makes our life thoughtful, reflective and meaningful. But there is nothing like a special time of those ten days in Tishrei between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur when many of us are awaiting anxiously the High verdict for each of us for the year to come.
In more general terms, the time preceding Yom Kippur is probably the time of our highest anxiety on what will happen to us, our family, friends, beloved ones, our people and our country in a new year ahead of us. Is there a way to transliterate our inner thoughts in that period into visual images? I think so.
Challenges of the Ten Days of Repentance: in Life, in Thoughts, and in Art
In my work Challenges. Questions and Answers (2020), I am addressing this group of intentions, which are especially palpable during the Ten Days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
As the main, or prevailing mental process during that Ten Days period is a self-inspection, I reflected on it in another work, Life-line I (2020). What we see in the work is the moment when a person amid the daily routine is stopped for a moment to check upon his or her own actions and intentions.
Since the time of its composure at the Geonic period, this is from VI to XI century, our entering into Yom Kippur has been rendered endlessly in many directions of art and music, from poetry to classical original music renditions by Max Bruch and the others. And of course, visual arts.
I have created my own artistic interpretation of Kol Nidrei in the work which emphasises the strong and unified – and unifying – movement to ascend. What is ascending? Our aspirations for Mercy at the very moment of the beginning of Yom Kippur. In this mixture of aspirations, there are mighty and fine ones, conscious and subconscious ones, more sure and less sure ones, all of them directed towards the ultimate place of our hopes. Continue Reading….
