Hineni | By Laurie Pollack

This summer, we are featuring meaningful art in our new blog series: Art and Identity. In this week's post, Laurie Pollack reflects on the Hebrew phrase, Hineni, through her art. If you have artwork and commentary you'd like to share, please email Liz er@interfaithphiladelphia.org and Andrew jaf@interfaithphiladelphia.org

I do not call myself an artist but I describe myself as a poet who sometimes also plays with paint.

My main genre and where I feel I may have a gift, is writing not art.

I paint not to perfect my rudimentary skill or create fine art but to express myself. I do not have the skills yet to express myself and may never get there.  But I find meaning in it  and do it anyway 

I am Jewish though not religious, and sometimes write or paint  on Jewish themes.

Here is a painting I did at the start of the pandemic, which hit us a little while before Passover.

It is called "Hineni".

The numbers refer to the 10 plagues

"Hineni" means in Hebrew: I am present.

On the left is an egg shaped earth: our planet and its people are bleeding, suffering. But blood is life.

For this reason the waves of the sea we must cross to get to a better, new, maybe not normal, are strewn with hearts/love: love is what we are carrying with us as we walk through the sea together.

The question marks? because we just don't know, do we? Will the water part? Will we all, or some of us be drowned? But we can't go back. Egypt/old normal, is over.

I find it amazing I painted this on March 15th.  Days before our lockdown started. At a time when 140,000 human beings perished here and half a million people lost worldwide would have seemed unthinkable.     It is now late July
But so much still resonates with me in this piece

I think we are still in the middle of the sea. I wonder what we will need to get to the other side and what the other side will look like?

Yours truly,

Laurie Pollack