Sky Tinged Red

Earlier this week my friend Dora mentioned to me that she had a book for me to read, a typical conversational topic for us. "What's the name?" I asked.

"Sky Tinged Red".

"Sounds familiar" I replied, only then realizing why. "Your father's book", I exclaimed. "You have it!"

A little background....Dora is from Radom, Poland, the same town as my grandfather. She was 15 years old when the war broke out. She spent the war years in the Radom forced labor camp, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. While her immediate family survived, 80% of her family did not, cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents were sent to their deaths at Treblinka.

Dora's father had the unusual distinction of surviving two and a half years in Auschwitz, a place where a few months was unusual. Isaia Eiger was an accountant in Radom where he also directed the Jewish orphanage and was active in the Zionist movement. He was sent to Auschwitz in 1942 along with 200 leaders of Radom. There he was part of the resistance. His survival hinged on his ability to speak seven languages. He became the registrar, taking information from the many people who arrived in daily transports. In this capacity he learned about subsequent events in Radom and how his family was faring. When Dora and her mother were sent to Auschwitz in 1944, her father was there to greet them. He was able to help them get indoor work as seamstresses during the harsh winter, furthering their own odds for survival.

Of those seven languages, Dora's father chose Yiddish as the language for this memoir. At that time Yiddish was the language of many Jews throughout the world. The memoir was written immediately after the war when memory was fresh, but it was not until his death in 1960 that Dora discovered three copies typed in Yiddish. In the intervening years Dora raised her family. It was not until the early 1980s that Dora took on the task of translating this memoir.  To her dismay she discover that it ended abruptly in 1942. She searched in vain for the other portion of the memoir. In 2006 her nephew brought over more of her father's papers that were in the files of her late brother. No typewritten pages were to be found.

It was only as she began to box these materials for Yad Vashem that she discovered the entire handwritten memoir. There it was hiding in plain sight. Busy searching for typewritten pages, they had missed these narrow yellowing pages, not recognizing them for what they were.

Once again Dora began to translate these pages. This was more challenging than before as Dora is now legally blind. Nonetheless she is quite indomitable. A lack of vision might slow her down, but not stay her from proceeding. With the aid of a magnifying machine she could examine each word. Letter by letter she transcribed it, building sentence after sentence. At this stage she couldn't read a sentence for context as it wouldn't fit on the screen at a magnification level sufficiently large for her to read. It took almost a year of painstaking work for her to complete the translation.

Almost seventy years had passed since it was written. Time for two generations to come of age, great-grandchildren her father had never known now stepped in to bring his story to fruition. Her two grandsons Etan and Jonah took the lead, driving the effort forward to share the legacy and story of their great-grandfather. I suspect there is a little "beshert" (Yiddish for fate) at work here, the pages waiting patiently to be discovered when the time was right.

I saw pieces along the way, serving as Dora's eyes as we read through the names list verifying spellings. Many of the names were familiar from my work on the Radom KehilaLink (Jewishgen.org ancestral website). Sometimes I felt as if I knew the residents of this town but soon I would know them through the lens of her father's experience.

Among the range of survivor accounts, this is an unusual and important book. There are not many people who were members of the resistance in Auschwitz and survived to tell of it. Even more rare is a two and a half year perspective on the camp from the inside. Isaia Eiger was a well educated and thoughtful man who tells his story for future generations, "a memorial to former comrades" and an "indictment of the murderers".

You can find some excerpts of the book on-line. You can learn more about it or purchase a copy on-line.

Art and Legacy

I have an event coming up that arose unbidden, the best kind!  It began to unfold when I was contacted by the Minnesota Jewish Theatre.

The Minnesota Jewish Theatre is a wonderful gem in my community.  I was introduced to it by friends and have been very impressed with the quality of its productions. One of their tag lines is "Telling Stories of Our Common Search for Identity", a theme that resonates deeply with me.  Given this history I was especially pleased when they contacted me in connection with their current play, "Handle With Care".

After a visit to my studio they asked if I would be willing to participate in a program to complement the play, an exhibit of my work and a talk about the blending of art and legacy.  They spoke with Mt Zion in St Paul who agreed to host the show and event.  That felt particularly fitting because one of my interviewees spoke so glowingly of the community he found at Mt Zion.   Now I'm trying to figure out how to talk about this project as it is the first time I have focused solely on this work without my prior series also being exhibited.

Fortunately the work itself helps me as it has story embedded within it.  I also have videos from the project so am busy creating video excerpts to share the stories that were my inspiration.  When I develop new artwork, I also need to find new ways of talking about it, pulling out salient themes.  As legacy is central to what I do, I've been thinking about what it is and how we experience it.

We talk about legacy as what we pass on to subsequent generations, but I think many of us would be hard pressed to state our legacy, some because we may not have yet found it, others because it seems like a rather grand concept to apply to our everyday lives.  Even though legacy was the focus of my interviews, I often discovered it through circuitous routes.

For many of my interviewees it was story itself, for others it was shared through food and song, passed down through generations. Sometimes artifacts such as Sabbath candlesticks. represented the rituals that were continued from one generation to the next.  A few of my interviewees wrote books that shared their stories.  Two of my interviewees took in new immigrants, exposing their children to a broader world and embracing these new children as their own.

Personal attributes also were shared and often absorbed through children and grandchildren.  A toughness and carry on attitude from Hana who lost her family and was on her own at 16.  A shrewdness from Sam who traded bricks to the Poles in exchange for bread and knew to lie about his age to save his life.  An appreciation of the world and ability to move within it with ease from Harold and Dorothy.  From Walter,  a gentle demeanor inviting others to find common ground. From Fannie,  a deep commitment to and involvement in the Jewish community. From Shirley the ability to use her imagination.

So many of my interviewees were extraordinary storytellers who taught me a thing or two about how to tell a story.  I found myself hanging on their words eager to know where they would take me.

I have realized that legacy need not be grand.  Few of us will invent a new vaccine, create a world renowned work of art or discover new frontiers.  Fortunately for us, legacy can be embedded in the everyday world in which we live, in food, in song, in how we interact with our children and with the world around us. One of the most important things we can do is to value, preserve and share our stories, never knowing who they will touch or how they will shape the future, but trusting that somehow they will.

For those in the Twin Cities, please stop by for the reception and talk on April 30th 6:30 PM at Mount Zion, 1300 Summit Avenue in St Paul. The show will open midday on April 29 and come down on May 3rd.

Remembering

Yesterday was the day on which we remember the Shoah. In my community of the Twin Cities it is held at a different synagogue each year. Each year fewer survivors remain. This year I was unable to join my community in this commemoration as I am in Madison, Wisconsin gathering with other artists from Minneapolis-St Paul, Madison and Milwaukee. Each of those cities is participating in The Jewish Artists' Lab, a project of which I've written in this blog.* This was the first time we met with the other cities to discuss how the projects are developing.

On the first evening I was glad that they incorporated a Yom HaShoah commemoration. In some ways it was more personal as it encouraged greater interaction within our group. The facilitator spoke of the enormity of 6 million deaths and the difficulty of fully appreciating the loss of individuals when framed in such scope. She then recounted the story of one individual and asked each of us to in turn recount the story of someone lost in the Holocaust who in some way touched our life.

My mind began to race. Which story would I recount? I have done so much work around the Holocaust, my problem was not a dearth of stories, but too many. I waited while several of the artists told their story. Each clasping hands and joining the growing group in the center after they told their story. My heart was beating a little faster waiting for my opening, hoping I wouldn't choke up. It is often unpredictable when I tell these stories, sometimes factual and calm, sometimes caught in emotion.

When I rose, I began to tell the group of my grandfather who came to America in the early 1900s. He was the only one who came, leaving behind about 50 family members of his extended family. Virtually all of them died at Treblinka, no record in the Nazis Holocaust records as Treblinka was a death camp. They only kept records of those viewed as worker inventory, good for a few months of labor at best.

I told them of the film I had of the Jewish community of Radom, Poland, a homemade film done in 1937. It captured the community when it still thrived, five years before so many of its Jewish residents were murdered. In the film they were still light-hearted, playful as a former resident filmed them circling through the streets of their community. When I watch the film I watch for men who resemble my grandfather. Several of his brothers remained in the town.

Then I told them of the one person with whom I felt a special connection. Her name was Szajndla Wajnberg . She was a second cousin. We share the same great-grandparents. She was 19 years old in 1941 when the Nazis required her to file an identity paper. She was a beautiful young girl. Her photograph is in a circle and feels more like a keepsake one might give a boyfriend than a record for the Nazis. She was murdered the following year. We often use euphemisms. We say "she perished" as if the event that caused her death was remote, detached, rather than an act of aggression.

Our common great-grandmother was named Szajndla also. She died in 1920 and her great-granddaughter was named after her a few years later. Had I been born in Poland, my name, Susan, would more likely have been Szajndla. An accident of timing and birth meant my father was born on this side of the Atlantic, his cousin on the other. I took the hand of the person next to me.

*The Jewish Artists’ Laboratory is an arts initiative through the Sabes Jewish Community Center featuring 17 artists exploring the theme of Text/Context/Subtext through study and art making. The project is funded through The Covenant Foundation and similar projects are being done in both Milwaukee and Madison. Artists explore how the theme of Text/Context/Subtext is relevant to Jews and non-Jews, to religious and non-religious, to the community and to the individual, to the artist and the non-artist.

Blowing Kisses

I touch bases with my mother daily and today I hung up the phone chuckling.  "I just blew your Dad a kiss", she had said.  "Huh?" I replied.  My father passed away early last year and my mother now marvels that she never imagined she would live an entire year on her own, with a cat no less. She never had a cat before and is as mystified at the connection she feels for this furry creature as the fact that she is managing without my father.

She now hastened to add that my dad's picture had just come up on her picture screen and it was an old one of which she was quite fond, hence the kiss.

My mother is 86 and I am afraid it is too late to introduce her to a computer.  We have, however, often wished we could easily share pictures with her.  When a friend mentioned the Pix-star to me I was intrigued. It is like a digital picture frame, but with some unusual features.  It allows anyone to email pictures to the device.  They then come up automatically on the screen.

Unlike a traditional digital picture frame where someone needs to manage the card, this can be managed from afar and operates via Internet in addition to supporting a SD card. An email with a picture as an attachment is all that is required and multiple people can add to it.  A password enables one to go in and see what is on the device and organize it into folders if you wish or take some pictures off.

The one drawback is that you need an Internet connection and a person who is not computer literate may not have one.  In this case I installed wireless because it made it easier for both my sister and me when we spent time with my mother.  I wanted to make sure she got the benefit of it as well through pictures.

She is amazed when new pictures suddenly appear.  It is like magic.  She looks up as she eats breakfast and there are images of her recent visit with her great-grandson. How did they get into there she asks? She recalls how amazed her immigrant mother was at her world.  Now she often feels like her as she observes ours.  I confide to her that sometimes I'm amazed too.

When I last visited I used my mouse scanner to scan some of her old pictures and added those as well.  For elders whose memories are beginning to flag, it provides a way to keep the important people in their life visible and to remind them of special memories that they share with family members.  Sometimes I'll ask her to describe the pictures and we reminisce together about shared experiences.

When we first installed it my sister sent a message saying not to send more pictures of our late father as it made my mom sad.  A short time later she said to ignore that earlier instruction as my mom decided she liked them.  And now she’s blowing him kisses.

Breathing Deeply

 I often am surprised by what I don’t know about Judaism.  I am especially intrigued with how certain texts relate to creativity. The Artists' Lab is on the theme of Text/Context/Subtext. I hadn’t thought of Jewish texts as a catalyst for my artwork and am pleased to discover they can function in that way. I come out of sessions of the Artists' Lab* with all of my synapses firing.

As we were in the midst of Passover last week, the Jewish Artists’ Lab touched on topics related to the Exodus from Egypt.The rabbi began the session asking if we felt enslaved or liberated by our artwork. I thought of when I have a painting that isn’t working and need to let it go to start anew. I often feel a sense of enslavement, hesitant to paint over it, yet not satisfied with the result. Others talked of that mix of feelings when one starts an artwork, both anticipation and also a sense of obligation to one’s work.

The focus of the session was on "Ruah" which means “breath”. Ruah is spiritual and creative energy, the breath of God. We began with a passage from Exodus 6:9 that talks of when Moses first tells the Israelites that he will deliver them from bondage. The passage says they would not listen to him because of m’kotzeir ruah (literally shortness of breath) and cruel bondage.

We talked about how oppression can create such distress that one can’t hear or perhaps imagine a different life. I found myself thinking of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. When one is seeking to meet basic needs, concepts of imagination, spirituality or creativity may be of lesser focus.

We played with words and their meanings. "Inspiration" as filled with creativity, the breath of God, derived from the Latin "spirare" which means to breath. "Expiration", emptied of breath as when we expire.  I love the layers of meaning embedded in words, metaphors hiding in plain sight.

In addition to the passage itself, the rabbi also shared responses through time, from Rashi in 11^th century France, Sforno in 15^th century Italy to Hirsch in 19^th century Germany. There is a long Jewish tradition of sharing commentary across time and geography. Time indeed compresses as we join around the table.

We turned to a more contemporary response, Aviva Zornberg in The Particulars of Rapture. She posits that “in order to hear we need to clear ourselves of obstruction, open ourselves: for that reason we read the narrative of the Exodus, culminating in the Song of the Sea, before reading the shema prayer (which means “hear”). ” The Exodus prepares us to move past “shortness of breath”, past oppression and obstruction, to be able to hear again as represented by the Shema.

But what of Ruah as it relates to creating? In fact the first use of the word is in Genesis 1:1-2 where God creates the world. The passage translates to “In the beginning of God’s creating the heavens and the earth, when the earth was astonishingly empty, with darkness upon the face of the deep, and ruah elohim hovered upon the surface of the waters, God said, “let there be light”.” Ruah exists even before that first act of creation.

I thought about the relevance of these passages to the creative process, the idea of clearing ourselves of obstruction, breathing deeply in order to welcome ruah into our life, enabling us to hear and create. Perhaps it is not a coincidence that so many of my ideas come to me in child’s pose in my yoga class as we practice breathing.

Also in this vein we discussed Counting the Omer, something with which I had not been familiar. This is a verbal counting of the 49 days between Passover and Shavuot. The purpose of this count is to remind us of the link between Exodus which Passover commemorates and the giving of the Torah which is the focus of Shavuot. The Kaballah focuses upon these 49 days as a period of spiritual growth preparing for the acceptance of the Torah, again a clearing out of obstructions, making room for Ruah.

Breath and smell also bear a relationship. The Havdallah ceremony entails smelling a blend of spices to close out the Sabbath, bringing us back to the work-a-day world. I find myself thinking that many of our sessions have focused on the senses, seeing, hearing, smelling. We use our senses to let the world in and in turn to create.

In each session the first half is discussion, the second an exercise. Our subsequent exercise was two-fold, one a yoga breathing and visualization exercise and the second one with words. The word exercise, which is a little easier to capture in this medium, focused on writing our story in six words, a distillation that challenges an essayist like myself. My short-lived attempt at Twitter ended in frustration at its word limit. I met with a little more success in this endeavor. I’ve written in this blog of setting the table to invite surprises into our life so I came up with two six word stories to reflect my life themes: "Solving Puzzles, Telling Stories, Inviting Surprises" or “Setting the Table for Unexpected Surprises”.

So let me divert a little from the Artists’ Lab and give you an example of that. As a planner by nature, I can plan too much and not leave enough room for the unexpected. Part of me likes to know what is coming even though I know surprises are the wonderful gifts that have moved my life forward. I’ve learned how to set the table, create circumstances that invite surprises in while still preserving some structure. Years ago I used to take my mother on trips to Europe. I always would reserve a hotel in our first city and our last, but in between we played it by ear. I think you would call that “planned uncertainty”. We’d arrive by train at the station and book a random hotel. That way we had flexibility in our schedule and an opportunity for surprises while still preserving the certainty of a hotel upon landing or before departing. Had I planned out every detail I would have known exactly where I was going and when, but not the wonderful detours of discovery.

Ruah and surprises, perhaps there is a relationship. Sometimes excessive planning enslaves us, blocking us from hearing that quiet voice inside of ourselves, obstructing us from creativity and the chance discovery. Opening ourselves up to the unknown, the unplanned, the breath of God, isn’t that the very essence of creativity?

*The Jewish Artists’ Laboratory is an arts initiative through the Sabes Jewish Community Center featuring 17 artists exploring the theme of Text/Context/Subtext through study and art making.  The project is funded through The Covenant Foundation and similar projects are being done in both Milwaukee and Madison. Artists explore how the theme of Text/Context/Subtext is relevant to Jews and non-Jews, to religious and non-religious, to the community and to the individual, to the artist and the non-artist.

Painting Light With Dark

When I was in NY I had the opportunity to see some wonderful exhibitions. One of my favorites was the Matisse show, "In Search of True Painting", at the Metropolitan. I've seen many shows of Matisse, some at museums in France that are totally devoted to his work, so it is no small thing when I say that this was the best Matisse show I have ever seen. It was exceptional because it examined process and often quoted Matisse rather than art jargon.

At the last Jewish Artist Lab we discussed whether we liked explanatory text with paintings. The group was divided, but all were in agreement that they abhorred art jargon, fine words that create nothing of real meaning. I like clearly written explanatory text and try to add it to my work.

The beauty of this show was that they let Matisse speak and give us a view into his approach and thoughts. In his paintings titled Bowl of Apples on a Table and Apples (23rd & 24th image down) he is reported to have said in a 1936 interview, "Why should I paint the outside of an apple, however exactly? What possible cause could there be in copying an object which nature provides in unlimited quantities?" Matisse is as concerned with backgrounds as he is with the subject and used black freely. "Before when I didn't know what color to put down, I put down black. Black is a force; I used black as a ballast to simplify the construction." I found that I especially liked his paintings that made use of black.

I was interested in his process of sometimes working in tandem, repeating compositions to compare effects. He worked in pairs, trios and series. His focus was not just a finished painting, but an examination of the process.

I learned a bit about working in pairs when I prepared to exhibit my Lithuania series in London. I repainted several paintings on canvas rather than the original board to make them easier to ship. The act of painting the same subject twice was a learning process. I often tried to "fix" something only to find that I preferred the original and the "fix" lost something. As I lived with them I became equally fond of the "second child", loving each painting for the features that made it unique. I usually work in series and have observed how my style and process evolve with each painting. I become bolder and more relaxed as I progress, more confident that something interesting will result even if not what I anticipate at the outset.

The text noted that in 1914 Matisse was focused on means of representation, the role of color and what constitutes a finished canvas. I chuckled at the last item as I know too well how sometimes a too finished canvas loses something that existed prior. I have often wished for an "undo" button. I find I need to live with a painting in my studio for some time before I declare it done and I've been known to take a painting down from a show and totally rework it.

Of the paintings that really gripped me visually, one was Interior With Goldfish (18th image down). Matisse was intrigued with using a window as a passageway between interior and exterior space. In a 1914 interview he notes, " When I paint I see (my subject) in relation to the wall, in relation to the light of the room in which it is enclosed, in relation to the objects that surround it." I loved the repetition of forms, both the linear forms, but especially the arcs that formed the bridge and goldfish bowl.

The other one that I found especially pleasing was Interior With a Violin (29th down) in which his use of black so beautifully captured the difference between light and dark. He literally used black to paint light.

One room was totally composed of his process and reproduced a show he had at the Galerie Maeght . In that show he exhibited photos of paintings as they progressed so you can clearly see the experimental nature of his process. a similar progression is shown in photos of his painting The Blue Dress.

 I have always loved Matisse's later work and his use of color and form. Interior With an Egyptian Curtain makes use of black to paint light in addition to rich colors.


The show is now closed, but a catalog is available as well as some useful text and images on the Metropolitan Museum site.

My Intergenerational Self

A recent New York Times article by Bruce Feiler reported on a study that found that children who know about their family history are more emotionally healthy, more able to recover from challenges. It is all about having a unifying narrative, preferably a healthy one. Feiler references the research done on this topic by Marshall Duke and his colleague Robyn Fivush. They work within the interestingly named Center for Myth and Ritual in American Life at Emory. Intrigued by Feiler’s article, I decided to dig a little deeper and read a number of papers by Duke and his associates on the "intergenerational self." Their finding is that through reminiscing and family stories, children develop an "intergenerational self” that defines one’s place within a larger family narrative. By anchoring their sense of self in a larger family context, their sense of self is strengthened.

So this got me thinking about my family’s narrative. As a family historian I have a strong intergenerational self and have learned much about my family going back several generations. My thoughts focused on the more recent generations, what my parents shared with me about themselves and about my grandparents. I know that education and teaching were central to my parents’ narrative. Both were smart kids without resources,raised by immigrant parents in Brooklyn. My father had the benefit of the GI bill which took him to Stanford. He later became a professor. My mother went back to college and became a teacher.

I have a letter that my maternal grandfather wrote to my mother when she graduated from college. In it he wrote a defining statement, “It is good to donate the knowledge to others.” I loved the choice of words, to donate the knowledge, to give it freely. Interestingly my parents both taught, my sister started out as a teacher and both of my nieces are currently teaching. Most of our family also has graduate degrees. Although I didn’t seek out a teaching career, I find that now much of what I do relates to teaching and education. In my family we seek out education and then we donate the knowledge.

I never really knew my paternal grandfather, but I knew many stories about him, a rather telling one from my aunt. My grandfather ran a surplus store and during the Depression they lived behind the store. If you couldn’t afford the rent, the marshals would come and put everything out on the street corner. My grandfather was fortunate to have a truck and if he couldn’t pay the rent, he would pay the marshals a few dollars to load the contents onto his truck and he would drive to his new location. This story conveys a shrewd man and perhaps a little anti-authoritarian, characteristics that would describe my father as well.

My father was not a rule follower and he was very successful by charting his own path. “Don’t let the bastards get you down,” was his refrain, viewing anyone who didn’t want him to do what he wanted to do as one of those bastards. When my brother tapped into the PA system in high school and the school authorities frantically searched for the source, my father was secretly amused. I think it appealed to his anti-authoritarian side and a certain appreciation of creativity. He didn’t sit around waiting for permission and he was a doer.  

My mom used to say if they had been in a concentration camp during WWII my dad would have likely survived. (I think only Jewish families contemplate such grim "what ifs"). He knew how to take care of himself and rely on his wits. I remember him taking me aside once and telling me that I would be OK because I was a survivor. I felt like I had been knighted into a secret society. I knew something important had been communicated.

Interestingly money was not part of the family narrative. My dad would often talk of how he came from poverty, but his point wasn’t that he achieved great wealth, but rather that he had found a comfortable life doing what he loved. My father chose academia over a corporate world where he could have had a far more lucrative career. And he supported my efforts regardless of whether they were well compensated. He was equally proud, whether I made my career in finance or the arts, and I did both. Both he and my mother loved what they did and they wanted their kids to love what they did as well.

My dad used to tell the story of a coin toss. As one of his university stints was coming to a close, he and a co-worker were both interested in one permanent position.They ended up doing a coin toss for the position. He lost, but ultimately he won. His next step introduced him to a person who would lead him to his life’s work. So one of the lessons I learned was that defeats are often opportunities if viewed through the right lens. If you can’t pay the rent, you can get the marshals to load your truck.

And there are lessons to be learned from defeats.Years ago when I had a career upset, my father remarked, “It was about time you landed on your ass, you were getting entirely too smug.” No one minced words in my family, the message was clear - failure is a necessary step along the road to becoming a full person. If nothing else it teaches humility. Later in my life when I experienced challenges I often asked myself what I was supposed to learn, looking for the lesson that would add meaning to the experience.

So I think there is something to this family narrative stuff. The gifts that I received from my family history are gifts that play out every day of my life.

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