Author: Inna Rogatchi

Excerpts from Inna Rogatchi’s essay, November 2018:

I remember how I was gravely impressed by hearing that public farewell of Leonard. My close  friends who were the same impressed as I was on the depth and openness of the crossing the line between the Worlds, were trying to console me concluding:”So, Leonard was ready, indeed”. I knew that, but the departure is not the thing to be consoled about, especially when the leaving one was that man. We were trying to express what we felt at the time, on that rainy day in November 2016.

Two years on, and one year since I slowly re-started to hear Leonard’s records, I just can not do it with his last one. Not with all songs there, nor with the first one which is the last one for me. It is beyond my capacities.

But how special are the ways of our sub-consciousness in getting out of the maze of longing. The next thing I found myself doing after realising that I won’t able to hear the Leonard’s last album ever it was writing a letter to him. Not in words, but in images. It did come on its own, I did not plan it. I created some new work fighting that gloomy autumn reign, and upon seeing some of the work, I have sensed that it is about Leonard.

There was one mighty tree that was as if speaking, it has so much to say, and its narrative and its accents were changing due to the weather, season, mood, and time. I have realised that this is my letter to Leonard.The letter which will be coming to him, up There, during all seasons. With the message or love and remembrance carried on ‘the high silver nerves’, as he had put it in his Window song almost forty years ago.Inna Rogatchi (C). Letter to Leonard. Homage to Leonard Cohen. Original art panel. 60 x 85 cm. 2018. The Rogatchi Art Collection.

I glanced on the calendar – it was 6 Chesvan, the actual date of the Leonard’s yahrzeit.

Instead of the unbearable farewell prayer-song of the man who was a blessing and a gift to us all, I came back to the Cohen’s The Window – and it let me out of this maze of longing, slow but assuredly.  

Excerpts from the art essay by Inna Rogatchi (C).

September 2018.

Tribes. The Sons of Israel: Special Art Project

Inna Rogatchi (C). The Tribes Song. Sons of Israel series. 2017.

For three years, I have been working on a special art project depicting The Tribes in the way of metaphorical art and settled in landscape of the Eretz Israel.  After making all the shooting in Israel, I have continuing my long enough research through various Biblical sources and worked on the concept of the series. In the project, The Tribes are conveyed in the symbolic way corresponding to the vision of the each Tribe by their father Jacob. The allusive ‘portraits’ of the Tribes are supplemented by my fine art photography works of the landscapes of the Land of Israel which are setting the symbolic ‘portraits’ of the Tribes into the atmosphere and spirit of the live landscape of the Eretz Israel.  Tribes in the full name of the project are called The Sons of Israel.

After that, I completed my project of three years in no time. I was totally amazed on the speed of its completion. The work that normally would need a month was done in a week; the other stage which normally would take from a week to ten days, and I am an avid worker, took just a couple of days, amazingly. I told to my husband that I have had a special feeling that somebody – Somebody – was carrying me on, that I was acting with a mighty help.  Inna Rogatchi (C). Bilvavi. The Hills of Galilee. The Sons of Israel series. 2012-2018.

I came to help of my artist husband in my project, incorporating some fragment of his great paintings from the famed Forefathers series into my fine art collages for the Tribes, notably, his famous Lion of Judah created in 2008, the image known widely due to its multiplied publications. I also included in the project’s video presentation the Michael’s important painting of Jacob, his other Biblical works, and his recent art work which was the one of the prototypes for the special tapestry at the Begin Centre in Jerusalem.   

Creating a special musical art video as the Tribes presentation, I had no question on what would be its music. Bilvavi, of course.  I have asked leading London Rabbi Lionel Rosenfeld for the permission to use the record of their great Shabbaton Choir’s splendid performance for our joint commemoration. The response from our dear friend came within a couple of minutes.

Tribes. The Sons of Israel musical art video :

The Connection of Us All

Since the moment when the unique melody of Bilvavi has become the a special dimension of the video of our The Sons of Israel project, I am thinking on many generations of Jewish people throughout the history and their interconnections. There are so many inter-connections between the all parts of these stories of spiritual overcoming the hatred and destruction that our enemies are throwing at us during all our history, and in the painful realities of our days, among the people we know and love.

Inna Rogatchi (C). Benjamin. The Tribes. 2014.