Rabbi Janet Marder

Date

Blossoming and Shriveling

Introduction to Dedication of Memorial Plaques

On a hot Friday afternoon in July I visited the Jerusalem Artists House: a beautiful 19^th century stone building, surrounded by gardens, that used to be the home of the famous Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts – founded in 1906. This summer the Artists House featured paintings by Bruria Mann. A local Jerusalem artist, Bruria is now 78 years old.

Her paintings are mostly landscapes – the Jerusalem mountains, a view of the sea, silver-green olive trees and stony hillsides. The painting that captured my attention was called “P’richa U-k’milah.” Painted the year she turned 70, Bruria translates the title “Blossoming and Shriveling.” Most of the canvas is bursting with a garden of brightly-colored flowers – vibrant hues of blue and green, purple, yellow and red. And in the corner we see a patch of thistles and brambles – gray and brown, and painted with great attention to detail: you can almost feel the prickly thorns, and hear the snap of a dry stalk.

Bruria Mann’s painting “Blossoming and Shriveling” is her statement about growing older. It shows us, in a frank and unsentimental way, life in the midst of death; death in the midst of life.

The Jewish way is to live with that double vision all the time. At weddings we smash a glass to mourn for the destruction of the Temple ; after an unveiling at the graveside, the tradition is to share some sweet honey cake and make a toast to life.

Something is always happening in the garden – seeds are burgeoning, new buds are breaking through, withered leaves are falling from the tree. Even in winter, when you can’t see as much, life is stirring in the soil. It is never one thing or the other, never just birth or decay. Both are always in process – always and everywhere there is growth, decomposition, regeneration.

So we know death in the midst of life; so we live in the midst of death. So we remember the ones we’ve lost – remember their blossoming, their bright and vivid colors in the prime of life; remember their falling and fading away.

So each of us visits the garden of memory, to linger there, with smiles and tears, on a quiet evening in late September. There are patches of thistles, dry and desolate, for the sadness we carry inside. But in the foreground, we hope, is the vision of flowers, beautiful and fragrant, for all the love we gave and received. 

We go into the garden; we speak aloud their names; we promise that we will never forget.