Many Hands Make a Mitzvah

One of the satisfying things about my work with genealogy is when I am able to help another person make an important family connection.  As I have created two Kehilalinks, websites for others searching their family history, I often have the opportunity to do that.  It frequently takes many hands to make a mitzvah (a kindness for someone else) and a recent experience illustrates that well.

The first step in the making of a mitzvah was an e-mail that I received last November from the head of the Radom Society in Montreal.  He advised me of the discovery of 72 previously unknown Jewish tombstones that had been erected into a monument in the Jewish cemetery in Radom, Poland.  As most of the tombstones in the cemetery had been used by the Nazis to pave the roads, the discovery of intact tombstones was a very important event. His uncle Haim Kinczler, head of the Israeli Radom Society, had been instrumental in discovering these tombstones and assuring that they would be available to those visiting Radom, a huge mitzvah in itself.  The Israeli prison system and the Polish prison system collaborated with the help of Polish prisoners and a British/Israeli philanthropist to build the structure that houses the tombstones. For more information on this project see my prior post Unusual Collaboration Unveils Lost Tombstones.

When I heard about the tombstones, my first thought was that I needed photos.  The tombstones potentially belonged to the families of those researching family from Radom and I had the means to reach them through the Radom Kehilalink. With the information that was provided, I contacted a friend at the Resursa, the Arts and Culture Center in Radom.  I had met Jakub on my last visit to Radom when he secured the key to the former cemetery for me so I could visit it.  I asked him if he might be able to take photographs of the tombstones for me and he graciously went out to the cemetery in the middle of winter to do just that and sent me a CD with the photos.

I then needed to get them translated so posted a request for help on the JRI-Poland e-mail list.  Two volunteers did the translation.  One of the translators, an Israeli friend with ties to Radom did an additional step cross-referencing it to the Book of Residents, a kind of ongoing census that records family groupings.

Up until now I was choreographing, arranging for photos and translations.  Now my hands-on work began as I had to isolate each picture for a web album, clean up the information into a format for the web and build the appropriate pages and links to publish it on the site.  I also submitted the photos and translations to the Jewish On-line Worldwide Burial Registry which will add them to their database that is easily accessible to researchers.  Finally I completed the circle by sending an e-mail to JRI-Poland’s email list to announce its availability.

Now I had only to wait to see where it led and it didn’t take long.  I already knew that one of my translators had found a family member in the tombstones that he had translated.  This week I spoke with a woman who is planning a trip to Radom who had discovered the Radom Kehilalink.  She reported that in looking at this database she discovered her grandmother’s tombstone.  The links to the Book of Residents further added to the information on her grandmother.

In order to connect a woman in Detroit, the child of a survivor, with her grandmother’s tombstone in Poland, it took many Israelis and Poles to create the structure, someone in Montreal to communicate it, the help of my Polish friend to photograph, two translators, one American and one Israeli and finally me to organize the effort and build it into the website.  Many hands make a mitzvah.

The Pathways of One's Life

Have you ever thought about how each action lays the groundwork for the next?  Any genealogist soon learns how each document provides information that leads to the next piece of information.  A census record helps you to hone in on an immigration record, a death or marriage record gives you the names of the prior generation.  Step by step we construct a family tree by leveraging off prior discoveries.  It is only when we look behind us that we realize how far we’ve come.

Lately I’ve been thinking of the process of genealogy as a metaphor for understanding the pathways of one's own life, not just the lives of our ancestors.  Just as with genealogy, we begin to understand and manage our path through life when we understand the way each step opens the door for new paths and how multiple paths can begin to weave together into a more powerful direction than any one path in isolation.  The often innocuous discovery can lead to opportunity.  Sometimes the opportunity is right in front of us, but we don’t recognize it until we are ready. 

I am an “ incrementalist” by nature, realizing that the big stuff grows out of many little steps.  And perhaps I am more focused on this than most, going so far as to keep a spreadsheet of steps taken and what they lead to. 

Let me give you an example…Recently I was invited to show my artwork on Radom, Poland at the arts and culture center in the city of Radom.  I’ve had many people ask how that came about and I realize there is no simple answer, multiple threads connected to create that opportunity.  Just as I often retrace my steps in genealogy to understand how I solved the puzzle, I began to retrace my steps in life.

In actuality it started over five years ago when I tracked down a second cousin in Israel.  His daughter who spoke English became my point of connection.  When she was going to a conference in Montreal, I flew up to Montreal to meet her.  There I also met her cousin who is head of the Radom Society, the organization for survivors and children of survivors of Radom who live in Montreal.

And another thread…Early this year I developed the Shtetlink for Radom, Poland.  The Shtetlink is a website for Jewishgen.org that is created to help others researching family from that town.  In developing the site, I connected with people all over the world sending out 400 e-mails to fellow researchers.  One Israeli friend provided me with a homemade film of the Jewish community of Radom that dated to 1937, five years before that community was annihilated.  In taking stills from the film for the website, I realized its potential as source material for artwork.  That same friend connected me with the arts and culture center when I was planning a trip to Radom.  They very kindly assisted me in getting the key to the cemetery as well as providing photos for the website. 

I’ve been working on a series of artwork on Radom, but feeling the need for story to breathe life into it.  My work typically is a vehicle to tell a story and while the Radom work captures a picture of the former Jewish community, it needed more.  I do quite a bit of public speaking and it was through an arts connection who heard me speak that I was introduced to a woman in my community who is a survivor from Radom.  She has graciously agreed to let me interview her and incorporate her memories with my artwork.

So we have the website, source material feeding into a body of artwork, a survivor’s story, a connection in Radom and a connection in Montreal.  Now we have only to set it in motion.   I have a mental image of a pinball machine shooting the ball forward. A month ago I received an e-mail from the head of the Montreal Radom Society telling me about a new development in Radom.  I’ve written about it in this blog at An Unusual Collaboration , but essentially it was the discovery of 70 previously unknown Jewish tombstones that had been hidden away and are now incorporated into a monument, that had recently been dedicated.

Now to appreciate this fully you must realize that the Nazis used many of the Radom tombstones to pave the roads, not only destroying the synagogue and the people, but also destroying the history of past Jewish families as reflected in the cemetery.  I promptly decided I needed to get pictures of the tombstones for the Shtetlink, but how to do so?  An e-mail to my contact at the arts and culture center soon secured their agreement to send me photos.  Of course, I also shared with them the link to my artwork on Radom and the story of my interviewing the survivor.  They quickly responded with a request that I consider showing my work in April when they do a focus on the former Jewish community of Radom.

 And that is how things happen.

Paintings: Version Two

It has been a busy couple of weeks since our return from Eastern Europe.  Much of my time has been spent adding my genealogy research to the Radom Shtetlink site.  If you are interested in the genealogy side of things you can find a summary of what has been added on the home page of the Radom Shtetlink (see link on right).


Currently I am working with a film from 1937 of the Jewish community of Radom.  As the film quality is poor (picture lots of people waving and the camera jumping around), I’ve decided to place stills on the website.  It must have been a big event to have the community filmed as everyone turned out to be captured on film.  There is a general spirit of gaiety that comes through despite having no sound. People bow, wave, shake hands, dance and hold their children up to the camera. And yet it is a sad film.  I can’t help thinking that most of the people in it were murdered just a few years later.  I watch for people who resemble my father, wondering if I might spot one of my great-uncles by happenstance.


 I’ve also begun to spend time at the studio working on pieces for a show in London in January.  I will be exhibiting my series of work that is based on my experiences in Lithuania.  The work will be at the Woolfson and Tay gallery.  Its founders produced a wonderful film of the survivors of Vilnius called Surviving History so our directions link up nicely.  I had contacted them originally hoping to show the film in conjunction with my artwork and ended up planning a show for their gallery.


 In order to simplify shipping, I am taking paintings that I have done on board and redoing them on canvas which is lighter-weight and doesn’t require framing. It is an interesting exercise on many levels.  There is part of me that hates to sell a painting because each one feels unique, something that I could never capture again.  Many paintings evolve in a serendipitous way through happy accidents and lots of experimentation.  There is no formula to easily reproduce it.  Occasionally I think I should be recording my steps in creating a painting, but I think too much analysis would get in the way of its evolution.  My compromise with the analytic side of my brain is to keep photos as a record of the process. If I flip through them in a slide show I can see how the painting evolved.  Because my focus is on showing a series of works, selling a core piece too soon interferes with that objective.  By doing multiple works, I am more free to let go, realizing that while I may not recreate the same piece, I may well create one I like better.


 I am giving myself permission to change a painting the second time, it needn’t be an exact replica.  Sometimes I like version 2 better.  Because paint goes on differently on different surfaces I can’t get certain effects on canvas that I could do on board.  I make lavish use of medium to try to make the surfaces more equivalent.


 So let me share a few version 2s with you.  You may remember Buried Truths based on the Polish journalist who lived in the forest of Ponar where he witnessed the murder of the Jewish community.  He wrote about what he observed and buried his pages in bottles in the ground.  The original one is on  the left and Buried Truths 2 is on the right.  The original is a little darker, murkier.  I discovered in the first one that I liked the line that cut across and wanted to highlight that so in version 2 you see it is much more distinct.  One would think that this would be an easy one to reproduce as it is not particularly representational, but it was actually quite difficult.  It may not come across well in a photograph, but the painting is built up with medium to create an almost fossilized effect when I glazed the medium with white. I also had some accidental drips in the first one that I decided I liked.  In the second version I tried to get it to drip blue across the iron oxide thinking of the drips as the roots of the trees reaching deep into the earth.

I am probably not done yet as I think I will want to make some of the background bottles slightly darker to distinguish them from the foreground and darken some of the background. Fortunately I have lots of time to play with this.


Another one which I have been working on is Sholom Aleichem with the old man who came to the restaurant in Vilnius only to reveal that he once lived there during the time of the ghetto.  There were a few themes that were captured in the original painting- a coal chute with a child who was hidden below, the gate to the tunnel which ran from the synagogue behind the restaurant under the building and out the ghetto gate.  There were also circles signifying the wall of wine bottles that now stands in this gentleman's former bedroom.  In the upper right corner they melt into the night sky.  Again the original version is on the left and version 2 is below in the center.

While I liked the image of the man in the first painting, I wanted him to be looking more contemplative so I tried a different view and changed him a bit.  I liked the wine bottles, but decided to have them overlap the man and liked having the background merge with the painting.  On the right I decided to add a new image - coal.  As the chute led to a a coal bin, I thought it would be interesting to paint coal which I did through the use of medium and glazes.  As an aside, I find that I need to take time from the studio to do other things and let ideas emerge.  In this case I was walking around the lake with a friend when I saw rocks that reminded me of coal.  I promptly took that image back to the studio. The gate still needs some work and I keep debating whether to have a child on the chute.  The scale seems too small for the painting.  It is likely that will get painted out or reformatted in some fashion.


What I find interesting about this image is that the images of coal, the circles of the wine bottles and the night sky could stand on their own as an abstract painting. Without the central figure they take on a symbolism of their own.  Perhaps they will find their way into a new painting in this form.



Both of these paintings require more work so I will feature them again as they evolve.  The third painting that I have been working on is Afikomen which is based on the hidden matzo factory in the Vilnius synagogue during Soviet times.  The imagery really didn't change between the original and the version 2, but I found that I couldn't get certain effects as easily on canvas.  As you can see they are not dramatically different except some colors appear more blended on the canvas.What is interesting about the process is that the original evolves organically.  It is only after it is done that I look at it analytically and think about repetition of form and how fields of color interact.  In version 2 of this painting I was less involved in organic evolution, but more focused upon capturing color and line.

So preferences?  Is version 1 just the prototype to be improved upon or does it have something unique by being more part of an organic evolution?  The mere exercise of putting these side by side has me itching to make changes to my version 2s.