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Michael Rogatchi Shtetl Stories Collection Review ( Excerpts)

By Michaël de Saint Cheron

Published first in the Shtetl Stories and Memories Art Catalogue (C) 2024.

Michael Rogatchi Shtetl Stories collection can be seen here.

Rabbi Menahem Mendel of Kotzk once uttered the words, that our dear Elie Wiesel repeated so often (which he attributed to Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav): “Ein Shalom yénitar milèv shavour “ (there is no peace greater than a broken heart ). Elie added to this  for his part: “There is no greater faith than a broken faith”. Isn’t this ardent force that nourishes Inna and Michaël, lies in this indescribable faith, this insurmountable faith that springs from a broken faith?

The artist’s love of Yiddish memory, like that of music, shines through each piece of the collection.

For my part, this is the first time that I have been able to see Michaël’s studies and sketches, some of them monochrome, as in his Homage to Elie Wiesel, or Homage to Leonard Cohen. 

If the connection with music is organic for the artist and his oeuvre, it is interesting and telling  that his Study for Yiddishe Son, for Elie Wiesel, also brings us to the domain of music, with this character (Elie as a child) playing the violin. 

It is the same for Shtetl Song, a very interesting work due to the form that Michaël Rogatchi chose, a flower which serves as a receptacle for a dance at the festival of Simchat Torah, where we can imagine in the foreground a group of young girls dancing in the middle of a assembly of men. Here, in the shape of the drawing, the artist has drawn a flower which has the shape of an eye – and we can see here a reminiscence of the parsha Re’eh from the Torah, chapter “See”. In this chapter, the central role is played by the pericope of eternal meaning at the pivotal moment, in which God gives to the Children of Israel, and through them, to the human race as a whole, an imperative of the choice between a blessing and a curse.  

Blessing for those who follow the divine commandments of sanctification of life, curse for those who refuse them. What could be speaking more acutely to humans in our 21st century than this meaning, this choice in between life and death, the choice between blessing and curse?

Let’s return to our Shtetl Song work. Contemplation of this Michael Rogatchi’s drawing on cotton paper immediately evokes for me the names of Paul Celan and Anselm Kiefer. In his first book  Mohn und Gedächtnis  (Poppy and Memory), Paul Celan composed an untitled poem: “Ich bin allein, ich stell die Aschenblume/ins Glas voll reifer Schwärtze. Schwestermund… (I am alone, I put the ash flower/in the glass full of ripened black,  sister mouth.. […]”. 

This verse has always fascinated Anselm Kiefer, and I associate it as if hearing  it again today, when I see this drawing by Michaël Rogatchi, Shtetl Song. What  is this Aschenblume, this Ash Flower, to which Kiefer, the German artist, but resident in France for thirty years, has devoted numerous works, being fascinated by the Celan’s paradox? Normally, we perceive a flower as a direct opposition to ash, isn’t it?  Or can it be seen differently ? In his poem, Celan brings together two contradictory, almost opposite words, and what they represent,  the ashes and a flower.  Irresolvable artistic aporia.

 Michaël Rogatchi, like many artists who lived through the horror or who were born afterwards, with a deep knowledge of it, chose figuration rather than abstraction, abandoning the famous Biblical principle of the prohibition of representation.  

Recently, Gehrard Richter chose to paint his Birkenau series, based on four absolutely unique photos of the members of the Sonderkommando unit of Auschwitz-Birkenau, taken in the greatest secrecy in the summer of 1944. The series contains several works, and it has been defined by a French art historian and director general of the National Institute of History of Art Eric de Chassey as Make  ( It) Visible.

Can we suppose that Michaël Rogatchi did not have to see these terrifying photos of an open-air pyre in which the SS butchers were burning the corpses of those tortured in the gas chambers? It would be too easy to think so. One does not need these indescribable images of the Shoah   (I prefer the Hebrew word SHOAH to that of the Holocaust) to paint, compose or write works on the Shoah, as very great artists have done and are still doing for 80 years. To do so is certainly a decisive mental and artistic act, and such homage can be not only monumental art, as it is in the case of four monumental paintings  Birkenau by Gerhard Richter. The Shoah is so often present in the work of Michaël and Inna Rogatchi, as it is in the entire oeuvre of Anselm Kiefer, without any photo being necessary for neither of the artists, as was the case for Claude Lanzmann in his cinematic masterpiece SHOAH.

Michaël and Inna , in the part of her series, Shtetl Memories, which is combined in this joint collection with the works of her husband, choose to bring us, work after work, into their memory, into their imagination, into their timelessness, inhabited with the memory of the extermination. Thus, their works, studies, sketches, drawings, depicting and expressing much more than just a boy playing the violin, or just an accordionist sitting on a bench (Homage to Leonard Cohen) with winged figures above him, like angels, nor just a community dancing on a flower for Simcha Torah. 

Thinking about metaphors in Michael’s works, it brings us powerful paradoxes again. A  flower as such, let alone an eye, cannot be a place for dancing.  Only the Aschenblumen, the flowers of ashes, or the Auschenaugen, the eyes of ashes, can be places of ashes where bone can dance against the ashes.  

Michael Rogatchi’s Yiddish Song, the Psalm 9 – Ghetto Waltz,  or his Shtetl Song, are all works that bring to mind these powerful words from Anselm Kiefer, when he spoke of his numerous interpretations of the Celan’s Ashesflower, with  Daniel Arasse ( 1944 – 2003), the one of the most important French art historians , who died too young. In their conversation which occurred  on the France Culture TV programme in 2001, there is a telling episode: 

“Daniel Arasse: Let’s also talk about a word, an alliance of terms. I believe that you also borrowed it from Celan, his Aschenblume. 

Anselm Kiefer: Aschenblume, Yes, it’s very beautiful.

D.A.: “Flowers of ashes”.

A. K.: A flower is dazzling, it is an explosion of life, of joy, and if we associate it with ashes, ashes which are already the fruit of metamorphosis, we suspend time by bringing the two elements together, at the same level. »

This collection of works by Inna and Michaël Rogatchi suspends our time and our imagination, their drawings make us hear the songs in the  secret of the soul of Elie Wiesel, in particular his “Ani Maamin”: “I believe in the coming of the Messiah, and although he delays, I will wait for him every day”.  Elie’s version of the essential for Jewish soul Ani Maamim, came to him, as he has told,  from the heart of the Shoah, from a nephew of his rabbi of Wiznitz, who had sung it in front of him one Shabbat in 1943. Wiesel always remembered that special song, all his life. 

The Rogatchis’ works from their Shtetl Songs collection are also infused with magnificent songs of Leonard Cohen, and many other songs and much of the other essential music, like that of Gustav Mahler, one of the most gifted ancestors of Inna Rogatchi.

“There is no greater peace than a broken heart » . There is no artworks greater than those which make us hear the Song of our Souls and this Cry of Heaven.     

Dr Michaël de Saint-Cheron ©

President , The André Malraux International Research Center (CIRAM)

Philosopher of religions, art critic, author of “Soulages, d’une rive à l’autre” (2019) and “The Seven Heavenly Palaces of Anselm Kiefer” (2025, Actes-Sud)

Paris

June 2024

Essay by Inna Rogatchi – November 2021. The Essay was first published in The Times of Israel ( November 7th, 2021), followed by re-publications in Le Tribune Juive ( Paris, France), The JerUSAlem Connection Report ( Washington D.C., the USA), and the other international media.

Remembering Leonard Cohen on the 5th anniversary of his passing  in the special series of artistic homages. 

Inna Rogatchi (C). Postcard from the Bald Monk. Homage to Leonard Cohen. Art collage boarded on panel. 80 x 120. 2021.

“This is not silence

This is another poem” – wrote that remarkable man back in 1958, when I was still a baby, and Leonard, who was from the generation of my parents, was a young poet of twenty four, and who already then said that he ‘knows the silence’. 

This man was a pride of Jews and the world: sublime talent in literature, music and painting, genuine warmth, fantastic humour, elegant modesty, rare charm, self-ironic dignity, and immense magnetism. We all were blessed by his presence at our age. I am positive that anyone who once visited Cohen’s concert left the premise becoming a bit better person. I am also positive that that was the real mission of Leonard’s earthly life: to make many of us a bit better by his own inner light, would it be via a couple of lines, or a song which would jump into your subconsciousness for good, or a drawing which is drastically different from anything you saw and is so honest intellectually that it let you to hear the artist voice speaking to you through his as if a bit naive lines. 

And we personally, my husband and I, we were very blessed by Leonard’s always amazing and always warm and smiling presence in our both lives.  Five years on since you cannot speak with Leonard any longer, his ring is on my husband’s desk in the most central place, just in front of Michael’s eyes, his photos with his autographs to us are in my study and in our dining room, and his books, also autographed, are everywhere, and are read often. The only thing still problematic during these five past years is Leonard’s records. To my own surprise, I still find it uneasy to listen to his records because his voice makes the missing worse.  

Towards this sad anniversary, commemorating the five years since Leonard Cohen’s passing, we were asked to prepare a special presentation of our both’ art dedicated to our beloved man. 

I am sharing it with a wide audience now remembering the man who ‘knew the silence’ , but who also knew in his masterhood how to ‘ring the bells’. 

When Michael created his  well-known Jewish Melody series, he did one of the best works in that very strong and universally admired collection as a homage to Leonard. The work Zion Waltz which is well-known today was inspired and is dedicated to Cohen. And he loved it.   Michael did a special large version of the work and we sent it to Leonard to Los-Angeles. It was close to his 79th birthday. We heard from Cohen at once:  “Michael, at my age, I am busy with giving my things to people. But not this one. Not this.” ( September 2013, Leonard Cohen’s letter to Michael Rogatchi. The Rogatchi Archive).

Michael Rogatchi ©. Zion Waltz. Homage to Leonard Cohen. Special version. Original drawing in mixed technique. 65 x 50 cm. 2013. Leonard Cohen estate. Canada.

The smaller version of this drawing ( 50 x 35 cm, 2013) is still a part of our The Rogatchi Art collection. It is really hard to part with this very work. 

No wonder that Michael chose dove as an artistic allusion to Leonard. Michael’s own refrain throughout the years that we knew Cohen, was always the same: “Leonard is the real Cohen, in anything he does, and how he does it. Even when he does nothing”.

And I am not surprised for a bit why Leonard who did love Michael’s art in general and appreciated it very highly, why he felt that special attachment to these doves on Michael’s artwork dedicated to him, so immediately and so firmly. 

Here we go: “ I saw the dove come down, the dove with the

 green twig, the childish dove out of the storm and

 flood. It came towards me in the style of the Holy Spirit

 descending. I had been sitting in a cafe for twenty-five

 years waiting for this vision. It hovered over the great

 quarrel. I surrendered to the iron laws of the moral universe which

 make a boredom out of everything desired. Do not surrender,

 said the dove. I have come to make a nest in your shoe. I

 want your step to be light”. 

And his step was light indeed. One might call it a flight. 

Later on, Michael has created an emotional oil painting based on the image which has become so close to the heart  of Leonard, the doves. 

 The work was created during the last period of Leonard’s life when he was suffering a lot and was quite fragile, but always customarily brave. Michael painted his homage to the great man full of light and warmth, emphasising that in his perception, the warmth of Leonard’s legacy has filled the world, literally.  This one was most likely the last work created  by Michael which Leonard saw in the course of our personal exchanges.

Michael Rogatchi(C). Zion Waltz. Oil on canvas. Homage to Leonard Cohen. 120 x 100 cm. 2016.

Leonard also knew and appreciated Michael’s earlier homage to him which was created as a result of us attending several of Leonard’s concerts in Europe in 2010 during his famous World Tour 2010. Every one of those concerts was different. It was Leonard’s life, or a serious part of his life lived on stage and generously shared with thousands, every time he performed.  Seeing Leonard personally in Florence and Warsaw allowed Michael to get close to his world and the complex way of expressing it. This is how Michael’s first homage to Leonard was born. The work was created in Florence, and was part of  Michael’s notable Rogatchi Blues 10-month exhibition in Florence ( 2010-2011). 

Michael Rogatchi (C). Blue Sound. Homage to Leonard Cohen. Oil on canvas. 110 x 100 cm. 2010.

But there was a very special story regarding that Leonard’s concert in Florence that has marked that very concert in hearts of many people, including Leonard himself.

I never spoke about that heart-wrenching episode publicly. It was his only concert in Florence in September 2010, and it was organised at the Santa Croce Square with a double-purpose: to accommodate the maximum amount of people while staying in the historical heart of Florence, as Leonard wanted to make this one concert in the great city not in artificially for Firenze modern setting, but in an organic history-breathing centre of it. People were all over  Santa Croce that night. Additionally to lucky ticket-holders, dozens of people literally were popping out every single window and balcony from all the houses around the square. It was a super feast, with these added innumerable lights from myriads of windows all around. I never saw anything like that and will remember that light filled with smiling faces from over-crowded windows and balconies forever.  Everybody was very happy in that spontaneous multiplied audience. It was late in the night. The concert was supposed to start at 9 o’clock, but ran late. Still, everyone was rather cheerful under the plaids in the fresh air. 

When Leonard appeared on the stage, as often, in his customary jumps and with that ever-boyish smile, the thousands of people waiting for him on the square and all around it, up to the evening skies of Firenze, were greeting him cheerfully. He smiled again and started to work, the concert started. Soon into that, some shriek was heard very loudly among the audience. And many people thought – and told each other – ‘Ah, what an exalted person! Why could she not hold her excitement until Leonard will finish his song?.. What a misbehaviour, really.’  The shrieking happened during  Cohen’s second or third number during the concert, at the very beginning of it. 

Then all lights around the improvised hall under the open skies went on suddenly, and the concert itself was put on hold. The announcement went on informing us that there has been a medical incident among the members of the public and an ambulance is on its way as one woman was very unwell. You need to know Italy and Italians: when it concerns somebody’s health, people are very patient. Fortunately, the hospital was very near. In the silence, with Leonard behind the scene, we all were waiting for the ambulance. People on the balconies saw the situation better. Nobody left, neither from the audience, nor from windows and balconies. 

Instead of Leonard’s band playing his melodies, we all were listening to the accelerating sound of the ambulance which rushed in. We waited. Doctors rushed the patient to the hospital. The pause was substantial, up to 40 minutes. When Leonard was able to continue the concert, I saw around – nobody left, neither from the ticket-holders area, nor from the balconies and windows around. No one. When Leonard came back on the stage, in a subdued mood, understandably, people greeted him as a member of one’s family. And we were indeed the one family under the ultramarine skies of Firenze that evening when Leonard Cohen sang there.  I was wondering knowing his sensitivity if he would be able to continue to perform that night which started so misfortunately. Not only he did. He did it so cordially, so intimately, so humanly that he and his organic compassion covered us all in the midst of the night which became chilly as it could be in Italy in early Autumn.

There is also Michael’s study for that oil painting, which was done by him after that memorable family-like concert at the Santa Croce. The study is unique.  Michael Rogatchi (C). Study for Homage to Leonard Cohen. Pencil on cotton paper. 50 x 40 cm. 2010 Florence.

Leonard’s passing in early November 2016 was a heavy blow to us although we knew that it would be imminent. Still, it is always so incurably painful. As Leonard said himself:   “And death is old,

But it is always new”. 

Michael’s artistic reflection on Leonard’s passing has become his soulful artwork Full Moon Drink IV.Michael Rogatchi (C). Full Moon Drink IV. Thinking on Leonard Cohen. Indian ink, oil pastel on dark-blue Italian hand-made cotton paper. 65 x 50 cm. 2017.

My own first artistic homage to Leonard was created in 2012, with a special artwork Heart Talk. The work is picturing snow with a red leaf in the middle of it. I actually did nothing to create it. When we returned from a journey, I went to our garden and saw there that leaf on snow, very lonely, and at the same time transforming, melting the snow, making it much less frosty, especially near to the leaf. Making it bearable, in one word. And I thought immediately: “This is the portrait of Leonard. Nothing more, nothing less”. Inna Rogatchi (C). Heart Talk. Homage to Leonard Cohen. 2012. Private collection. Chicago, the US. Special Leonard Cohen Commemorative Edition. 2021.

The work was exhibited widely at many of my exhibitions of various projects, such as The Joy of Mercy, and Horizon Beyond Horizon, and  became rather  popular among the global fans.  

Leonard  was aware of this homage to him, my Horizon Beyond Horizon collection, and  the  video-essay which was opened by his poetry, and he did very graciously thank me for  ‘fine understanding’, with that unique smile, always so personal and always so warm. How is it possible to make such a fleeting gesture of our behaviour as a smile into the legacy? – I often think,  because of some few people who did manage to do it. Leonard’s smile is indeed a legacy of its own. 

Later on, in connection with the second anniversary of Leonard’s passing, I created another  artistic homage to him, original art panel Letter to Leonard ( 2018).  We were travelling again, it was chilly and busy around. Fortunately, we had a great tree in front of our residence. That tree was almost speaking to me, day and night. Or was it I who was speaking to it? 

Letter to Leonard. Homage to Leonard Cohen. Original drawing in mixed technique on authored pigment print mounted on an art panel board. 80 x 120 cm, framed under museum organic glass, size in frame 84 x 124. 2018-2021. 

For the first time, the artwork was presented as an illustration in my essay Way Out of the Maze of Longing  dedicated to the second anniversary of Leonard’s passing. Later on, I produced a large original  Letter to Leonard art panel. 

The third of my personal artistic homages to Leonard is  a recent work, and it has been created for commemoration of the 5th anniversary of Leonard’s passing. The works refers to Leonard’s famous Anthem song from his Future album ( 1992), the song which has become one of the Leonard’s most popular ones, because of the line which has become a motto for millions, 

There is is crack in everything, 

That’s how the light gets in. Inna Rogatchi (C). Homage to LCohen. Caran d’Ache Neopastel, encre l’alcool on authored pigment print on cotton paper mounted on board. 80 x 120 cm. 2021.

As we all know, these lines have been overused, possibly. But at the same time, it is so true. So very true. Dear, dear Leonard, he knew it – and so many other essential things – so well. He formed it so eloquently, so beautifully. In that very best possible understated way which gets to you immediately, straight to the heart, no questions asked. And stay there.  As it is seen from my fourth artistic dedication to the great and unique man in my new Postcard from the Bald Monk work completed recently. Bald Monk was Leonard’s name in his private email address. I still have it in my email system. How on earth can I delete it?.. It makes me smile every time I came across it. And I hope his spirit smiles as well in its gentle hovering over us here. 

November 2021

Michael Rogatchi’s Art in Modern Spirituality

Reminiscence on the first yahrzeit of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks. Essay by Inna Rogatchi. First published at The Times of Israel, October 25, 2021. Also published in The Algemeiner ( New York, the USA), The JerUSAlem Connection ( Washington D.C., the USA), Le Tribune Juive ( Paris, France), and the other international media.

Reminiscence on the first yahrzeit of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

Chesvan 20th, 5781, the last year, was on Shabbat. In the secular calendar, it was November 7th, 2020. On Motzei Shabbat, in that special Shabbat-blessed mood being both relaxed and uplifted, we turned on our devices. And got the shock. In our Inboxes, there was the news of Rabbi Sacks’ passing. Totally, completely incomprehensible news. The shock was so powerful that we remember that Motzei Shabbat evening a year ago in such graphic detail as it had happened not even yesterday but just today. 

Such a shock occur rarely in one’s life. It was like seeing a picture of a nuclear test on a screen: irreversible and quiet. Only it was not a test. Top articles on The Times of IsraelRead More

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Of course, we knew about Jonathan’s illness. We asked our friends for prayers for him literally three weeks before that devastating news appeared on our screens on November 7th, 2020. And we knew that it was not the first attack of that merciless illness on him. We just were not prepared for such an abrupt end. Inna Rogatchi (C). Portrait in Light II. Windy Pictures series. 2020.

My husband Michael, who has a sober and strong mind of a scientist which was his first profession before he turned to be an artist, was in complete denial on the idea of Jonathan’s passing. I never saw anything like that in my husband’s behaviour during many decades of our life. Michael loves Rabbi Sacks dearly and deeply. He could not come to terms with that fact for a very long time. 

And I was gasping for air, both literally and metaphorically, and was thinking , being terrified, of Rabbi Sacks’ family, his wife, lady Elaine, children, brother, grandchildren, close friends who are at the same time close friends of ours. That whirl of disbelief was overwhelming. My first tribute in memoriam to Jonathan was born that night.Inna Rogatchi (C). Wind in Yellow. Homage to Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. Windy Pictures series. 2020.

We closely followed all the stages after that terrible loss of a unique man . We were co-living every stage of our all’ physical departing with Rabbi Sacks during this first year.  Michael spent the Jewish year 5781-5782 circle reading all five books of Rabbi Sacks’s elegant commentaries to the Torah weekly, with increasing love and attachment. I wrote about our constant return to thoughts about Jonatan during that first year of his permanent physical absence in my Yom Kippur essay this year. 

And we salute all the noble and loving efforts made by his family, friends, colleagues, pupils and followers of Rabbi Sacks to keep his legacy alive. 

During that year, I was thinking about Jonathan very often. What was the factor, the substance, the actions that has made that very person so universally beloved? In another Jewish miracle, I have got the answer to my standing question on the Shabbat that preceded the date of the first yahrzeit of that rare human pearl of our time. It was not a factor, not a substance, not an action, or many of them. ADVERTISEMENT

It was a quality. One particular quality that was distinct in Rabbi Sacks and that made people love him instantly and for good. That quality was grace. 

One cannot be trained to be graceful. One cannot learn how to be graceful. One cannot pretend to be graceful, nor can one mimic grace. Grace is a gift, and we know from Whom. It was the grace that made Rabbi Sacks’ speeches to get to peoples’ hearts directly. It was the grace that stayed in his eyes, in his smile, in his genuine attentiveness towards the people who all did feel that unmistakable, from His Royal Highness to the children in the Israeli hospitals. 

You can fake politeness, you can pretend attentiveness, you can mimic charm. You cannot make grace up. And Jonathan was gifted with grace which shined in anything he did, in the way he lived, in the words he wrote, taught, and addressed. 

Genuine gratefulness is a very rare quality in our all lives, Jewish or not. But an organic Jewish gracefulness makes an indelible impact on people’s lives for good. ADVERTISEMENTMichael Rogatchi (C). Zion Waltz. Fragment. Indian ink, oil pastel on dark-blue hand-made Italian cotton paper. 50 x 35 cm. Leonard Cohen Family collection, Los Angeles, the USA.

A year on, we are entering the mark of the first yahrzeit of our great contemporary, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. Just prior to this date, a special volume of his writings and speeches, The Power of Ideas, was published thanks to the devoted efforts of his colleagues at The Rabbi Sacks Legacy Trust. 

The reading of Jonathan’s thoughts during the last twenty years, from 2000 onward, seemed to me to be the most appropriate thing to do during these reflective days. All of the sudden, one of Rabbi Sacks’ short reminiscences from his very well-known Thought for the Day two and half-minute appearances on the BBC radio during thirty years, transferred me to another dimension. 

The name of that page-and-a-half reminiscence is Love. And it is so special that I was tempted to type it in its entirety and to share it as widely as I possibly could. 

Some phrases of this graceful text got me chilled. “But this year I’ve been unusually conscious of the joy that comes through love” ,- said Jonathan in his appearance on the BBC Radio 4 on February 14th, 2020, the last year, addressing his astounding in its openness thoughts on love on the Valentine Day which is not celebrated in the Jewish tradition, as he pointed there promptly in the beginning of his addressing. 

‘This year’, he said. The reason was that in the summer of 2020, Rabbi Sacks and his wife, lady Elaine, the one of the most charming and nice women I’ve met, were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. He managed to celebrate it with his beloved, just a couple of months before his passing. That kind of love can really make a miracle and keep a person up beyond the bonds of medically possible. Michael Rogatchi (C). Chuppah Memories. Pencil on white cotton paper. 15 x 20 cm. 2017. The Rogatchi Art Collection.

A year after that both deeply emotional and highly dignified celebration of their Golden Wedding anniversary, on August 31st this year, 2021, Lady Elaine was speaking, bravely, elegantly, and graciously at her husband’s matseva, stone-setting  ceremony. In her speech, she was mentioning that special wedding anniversary which they managed to celebrate with their family. She also pointed to the mercy  of the quickness of Rabbi Jonathan’s departure, the quickness which relieved him of prolonged torment of the nasty illness. 

And then, lady Elaine shared a very private thing in anybody’s life. Mentioning that Rabbi Jonathan has left our world in the early hours of Shabbat ( which always is a mark of a special bond between a person and the Creator), she said: “Jonathan’s last words were “Good Shabbos!” to a very kind doctor. Who can ask for more?..” 

Indeed. And that Love reminiscence which Rabbi Sacks decided to go on air with on the Valentine Day the last year of his life, with its unprecedentedly open and disarmingly touching sharing of the nucleus of their both’ fifty years of life, is staying in my head now together with lady Elaine’s brave and generous sharing the last moments of the life of her beloved. Of the man and the Rabbi who meant and means so much for millions of people world-wide. Michael Rogatchi (C). Heart Dance. Indian ink, oil pastel on red Italian hand-made cotton paper. 36 x 25 cm. Soul Talk collection. 2018. The Rogatchi Art Collection.

Recently, another great Jewish British personality, playwright Tom Stoppard was speaking at the joint memorial service for the late John le Carre and his wife who died within a few months of each other. There Stoppard’s expressed the following thought: Often, we are thinking that with our friends passing, they are left in the past while we are continuing to live. In fact, it is on the contrary: our friends, after their passing, are as if crystallised in our conscience. Their essence is getting closer and more tangible for us on a daily basis, while we, still living, are left – in our conscience – in the past, with our friends there. In the time when they were alive and we were together. 

I cannot formulate it better. Stoppard is a profound thinker and a great writer. He is also a great Jew, even though he decided to let it be known to the world when he was 83, just last year, with his great Leopoldtstadt play about which I wrote a special essay at the time. 

What is almost unbelievable is that Stoppard’s great, most important in his long, quite significant career Leopoldstadt play which I called Tom Stoppard’s Kaddish, was premiered in London practically at the same time when Rabbi Sacks did come public with his Love story on the BBC radio 4 largely popular program, in the first half of February 2020.  I do not believe in this kind of coincidences. 

Tom Stoppard is a great British Jew, as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks was. With their torments of any sort kept inside decisively. With their brilliant minds engaging millions effortlessly. With tightly guarded elegant privacy, which allows those  precious sharing of their innermost feelings  extremely rarely, under truly extraordinary circumstances of their lives.

This was the case with Stoppard, with him writing his Leopoldstadt and getting the performance public in early February 2020, and also recently, in the way he said farewell to a dear friend. This was the case with Rabbi Sacks when he did share his love to his wife with the world , at the same time last year. The year which made him ‘unusually conscious’ with regard to the most personal, most treasured, most important for him thing.  The last year of his just seventy-two-year long life. 

Inna Rogatchi (C). Poem 40. Poems collection. 2020.

Thinking the whole past year of this tremendous loss, my husband and I completely agree with Tom Stoppard’s paradoxical reflection. We remember those precious moments we were blessed with to spend with Rabbi Sacks and his wonderful wife Elaine, we remember many of his always warm appearances. We remember the reactions of people around him, with their eyes shining while they were listening and speaking with Jonathan. We remember his inputs, his stands and interventions, brave, necessary, to the point. We remember it all as if it is happening now. We indeed feel ourselves there, with him, next to him.

And then we realise that we all in so many places of the world are going to commemorate his first yahrzeit on Chesvan 20th, 5782 , and that still is hard to comprehend in full. 

Such is the strength of the people who were gifted with grace which not only made their presence magnetic and benevolent during their life-time, but which still keeps the thoughts about them enlightened and memories of them tangible ever after.

Such is the legacy of graceful Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks. 

October 24, 2021.