The beasts and the prophets.

The Fox approached the Lion.

It walked on its hind legs

and both legs, before reaching into the sky.

He shouted: "I am the Prophet!".

The lion, amazed at such a being,

do not even think of him grinding head

and said: "This is an exceptional show!".

Fox, in trance, screamed to heaven:

"Is there here the best of the world

the strongest, most noble and that they comply? ".

The lion deeply flattered said to himself:

"Who better than I can receive a prophet?".

- "Sit down before me, listen to my ear is ready."

The fox stood erect, shaking his head:

- "I have a powerful message, formidable and heavenly.

Whoever may receive must pass a test:

a sacrifice to the size of universe

before the secret I can send it.

The lion, pleased that so we respect

level of power over all beings:

- "Speak," he said, whatever you ask, I accept. "

- "Give me 830 sheep and 400 goats.

- "Here they are." - Fox: "Do you grant me my last request?".

- "But since it is divine, I entirely accept.

- "If you do it, you'll be the king of the universe,

Your praise will be eternal, century after century.

But if you resume, you will become a dove. "

The lion was seized with fear and bow down to the ground.

- "Speak," he said, Thy servant respect you.

I have a speech or I become doves.

He trembled like a bush in the storm.

- "Give to heaven through me your secret wealth

and the mirage will continue, no one will see the real truth:

you're not lion but you are dove.

And you must give me every month 830 sheep and 400 goats.

- "I will," said the lion, dove word.

- "Then said the fox, will come the savior of all beings.

He will appoint you as the King of Kings, the Melech.

And I'll be with you more than your two eyes. "

The lion went into raptures, thanked the heavens and said: "I agree".

He bowed, waiting for the fox tells him: "Respite".

From the bushes came the other of the sect,

they strangled him, and made it repurent Day.

And they chanted: "Thank you, Creator of the universe.

You have created the imagination, religion, sects,

absurdity, stupidity, and we are gangsters

it was your will for the creation of the universe.

We are teachers, kings and priests.

Drink, drink, party.

They had not seen Behind

bushes came panthers.

They began around in a circle

and shouted: "We are the last prophet" ...

From afar, the painter painted the whole scene.

He kept the world in the light.

The paintings of Roee Suffrin interrogate us
Between light and darkness.
Men, not humans, like war.
They love war machines.
They teach their children war games.
They want them to be great killers.
Nothing but this in the universe.

All politics center on war.
With no opposition by spiritual leaders,
For they too are men.
Women live a life of torture: men wound and ruin them too

They imprison them in the mechanics of war management.
They tell them: work fast, stay locked up, turn your Retours,
and shut up.

Understand that you must: “be silent and disappear!”

Roee Suffrin, the painter, enters in the midst of this party.
On the canvas, their grimaces and games are revealed.
These killers imagine themselves greater than Heaven.
Their strength, their speed are their art.
Artists, depict the magnificent abstract beauty of our wars.
Pure art, if you please, without human beings.

The strokes fuse, explode and become entangled.

One sole light
remains,
preserves,
protects,
pure, beautiful, solid woman.
Her serene existence is their antithesis.
Her beauty is their failure.

She remains divine and solitary.
The painter loves her.
He and she are two prophets.
They interrogate us.

Part 2

Here they are, inseparable and grandiose (203 x 90 cm. each).
An epic atmosphere emanates from them.
It is, immediately, clear that these paintings are not comic strip cartoons for children or a TV film series where everything is pre-written and pre-determined, with the same ideas repeated for the umpteenth time.

Here, the essence is about interrogation. Let us look at these paintings closer, beginning with painting A (the lower one).

In both these paintings, a woman is surrounded by apocalyptic war scenes, but in each painting, the way the female figure is depicted is different, as is the mood.

In contrast to painting B (the upper painting), where the woman appears to stand in an active, combat position and dominates the scene, in painting A (the lower painting), she is surrounded and threatened by powerful forces, against which there appear to be no adequate arms. To her right, an adult woman has already failed and disappeared for ever. It is clear that the forces of war are very powerful, and no one can defend themselves against them. All the more so, a female who seems to be still a child.
The only human being who is in control is the conquering male, who has become a part of the machinery and whose face is no longer human, but stares impassively like a factory-made mask. This is today’s universe where countries devote most of their resources to fighting, destroying, defending and conquering.
The painter clearly shows that this is a universe that has been trafficked and re-organized by males. Against women who, apparently, possess no armor with which to defend themselves. Man fires his flame-launching penis at the lower zone of the female. We find again a similar structure surrounding man in this abstract painting by Roee Suffrin.

In the midst of this nightmare, let us hear what the painter is telling us through the female figure.

A painting is a life within a life. Here are the two paintings in a home situation. On the right wall, two Roee Suffrin paintings on the Torah frame a picture of a family scene (woman and children). Opposing this happy display, are the two war paintings with the female figures at their center. But it is, in fact, one scenario in which the painter interrogates the spectator: Roee Suffrin is an interior architect, an architect of universes, assistant to Bezalel, who gives shape to our spiritual roles, so that we won’t forget them. and depicts the forces with which to build and live.

Here, then, is the young woman in the midst of a cruel, powerful male war which, clearly, targets the very essence of her being.

Her style is that of a civilization which creates and demands a particular look, set by the fashion of the day.

But the young woman has succeeded in maintaining her childhood, her youth, her strength, with no budget, in a demonic, organized world. She does not have the face of the adult (the woman to her right) who accompanies her and is completely neutralized.

While this young woman, like all of us, no matter what masks we cover ourselves with, is the victim of the laws of this implacable era, she possesses a purity of being which is evident in the way she points to her heart and in her delicate, white blouse. Her body is pure and alive, like the words of the Psalm: “libi uverssari ieranenu en el hai, my heart and my flesh will rejoice in the living God.” Here, in the heart of the hell of modern society. What protects her, is not the shield fashionably slung around her hips, but the purity of her being, her strong, determined mouth and her gaze “towards the hills from whence cometh my help.” A gaze filled with the initial project of Creation, steady, trusting, imploring without succumbing. But let’s not be mistaken: this is her only garment, her only shield, her true, trusting nature. She is the true representation of King David’s Psalm: “gol al Hashem darkekha uvetah bo ve hu yaase, direct towards Hashem your path and trust in Him and He will make.”

This is the strength of Roee Suffrin’s painting: to be capable of depicting the world as it is and to show, confronting the challenges and not running away, wherein lies victory….albeit a victory that will always be incomplete.

The gaze of this young woman is that of the painter which he shares with us. It is the “shiviti Hashem le negdi tamid, I have set Hashem always before me” of King David who was well acquainted with wars, and human and sexual aggression. The power of this painting is impressive for this young woman survives in the midst of an inhuman society. This is the drama of Esther and of every woman.

This young woman, this Esther, is also every person who is a member of Israel-woman. Every Jew is thus represented in her figure. She is in fact an allusion for the nudity and makeovers which society wishes to impose on her in order to use her, and then kill her like a despised animal. The painting shows us that it is solely our gaze – through our imagination and enslaved participation in this society – which sees her as partially indecent. In actual fact, the spectator who looks at her “closely” does not see her at all as bare but as someone who is being symbolically attacked and is able to protect herself.
This is a rare example of respect for women in today’s society, and the painter shares it with us.

I had to look at the painting many times before I was able share in this perception of the painter, for he is not a journalist or smooth-talking TV commentator. He is someone who constantly interrogates himself about his role in the evolution of society, and whose priority is to see and to help others see – just like the prophets – not just talk for the sake of talking.

Painting B (the upper painting)

Let us look now at the evolution of this epic drama which has no relation to the style today’s quick, superficial eyes are used to: that of video games.

The powerful “forces” of painting A return, but are seen for what they are, fragile and vulnerable. The Jewish woman-Esther has neutralized these infernal machines: they have crumbled and fallen into an abyss, the evil male half-human, half-machine has disappeared, like the idiot Haman.

The young women is now totally protected and dressed in a garment of beauty.

She is a mature, graceful, feminine woman as in the Song of Songs, and nothing can spoil her. She disengaged herself from intrusive pressures and she is surrounded by light, for she herself is light. She wears no mask or protective glasses, they have fallen at her feet: her gaze is a gaze of light for the spectator who observes her and has no need to penetrate her intimacy.

The angle of her arm reveals her hand, in contrast to painting where the young woman’s hidden hand appears amputated (she was, in fact, holding between her fingers the secret of her connection to the Almighty). In painting B, the woman’s garment preserves her intimacy but does not hide her power, her personality, her holiness, her might allied with the Almighty.

Jewish and Persian anthropology in the work of Roee Suffrin

True, men are making war and hunting in the Retourground and, in the main scene itself, they are numerous, but they are all lauding the praises of a woman who, as in painting B, is active and waving her arms. Here, beauty is not being manipulated or debased; society is functioning as it should.

In short, these two paintings by Roee Suffrin represent a hymn to life, a powerful lesson for those who are able to benefit from it. We are, now, able to understand more the Persian Jewish Retourground of the painter, through his maternal side, and the culture which inspired this poem (no. 244 or 239 depending on the edition) by Hafez, the poet whom every Iranian knows by heart: “every person who, in this circle, does not live for love (zande be eshk), recite now before him, even before his death, the prayer of the dead.” In his paintings, Roee Suffrin has given us a great visual aid to remind us of the primacy of life. The aim of the Torah is solely “asher tihiyu, so that you may live.” And when he is a great Jewish painter, he knows, like Bezalel, how to see and how to show us the best of things, the challenges, and the goal and path of life.

The hand of the young woman in painting A, which rests in a special way on her heart and which is not seen, is exactly what Hafez writes in his book Divan, poem 373: “I possess a jewel and I seek someone who knows how to look at it.” In poem 239 or 242, he writes: “the friends are gathered in reverence, for here is THE Presence in the solitude of intimacy.” Through the young woman, like Esther, Roee Suffrin has shown us this “presence (hozur) in The Presence” and invited us to share in it. We are thus requested to adopt the approach of shiviti, the position which Hafez calls: “embracing the heart (delnavaz).” The painter, through the work he shares with us, like the prophet, is someone who, before he paints, listens “Shema Israel” and trains himself in love (“mehr varzan” in Persian) and succeeds in having a “heart which caresses and embraces.”

Roee Suffrin’s paintings depict the Jewish approach to war which, unlike the machine-gunning and killings of modern wars, focuses on the essence of things. Only the Just, the tzadikim, went to war. We now understand why: they had the ability to transform cruelty into love, just like Moshe when he prayed and raised his arms to Heaven.

In order to fully understand this Jewish approach of seeing the essence of things, we need to refer again to what I wrote about in my lengthy expositions on Jewish meditation (link) and Jewish respiration (link).

I am not putting forward, here, a university ethnology thesis. I have simply understood what Esther discovered in her intimate dialogue with the King and what paintings such as these by Roee Suffrin teach us.

I am not putting forward, here, a university ethnology thesis. I have simply understood what Esther discovered in her intimate dialogue with the King and what paintings such as these by Roee Suffrin teach us.

We have seen Esther and Mordekhai’s power to reverse war and aggression. We shall now conclude by meditating in front of these paintings and in front of the scroll of Esther, by listening to verses by the great Persian poet Rumi. How did Esther (or the young woman in the painting) succeed in reversing the orders of the authorities? This is the essential question. This is the key to the power of love. Let us listen to what Rumi teaches us about this, for the Sages of the Talmud told us to take what is good from other nations, not what is bad.

In quatrain 311, Rumi, like the painter, shows a remarkable understanding of the extra-ordinary nature of love and the power of love:
“Dar eschq, ke djoz me-e baqa xordan nist, djoz djane dadane, dalil e djan bordan nist.
In love, if you do not drink the wine of permanency and eternity, and if you do not give your life, you will not find a reason to live.”
No verse has so well defined the power of love, as demonstrated by the young woman-Esther, and the illusion that happiness can derived from warfare and aggression.
Listening to these words, I spontaneously wrote down the two verses in a calligraphic style reflective of the soaring feeling I experienced, repeating the lines to render the double movement of a couple and highlighting the words “mei-e baqa, wine of eternity” and below “djan dadan, give his life.”

The sense of certainty and assurance in the gaze of the young woman in painting A also evokes Rumi’s quatrain 766 in which he writes that love travels from infinity (az azal ast) to eternity (ta abaad) and is characterized by unconditional giving (bi adad). He even goes on to say that a person who has not loved in this way will not be able to resurrected on the day of judgment (ashkara) when resurrection (qiamat) will come.

Finally, in quatrain 895, Rumi applies this concept in a very realistic manner, just as the young woman in painting B is realistic and successfully transforms the world around her. Rumi writes that “without love (bi eshq), there is no augmentation (afzun) of joy (neshat), or of pleasure (tarab), nor goodness, nor harmony. Life is then solely about producing (like our reckless consumer world), just as billions of drops of water join together to form the sea, but only the dimension of love truly lived (vodjud) can create the wonderful emergence of a pearl (dor). This is painting B.

We can live all of this. As it is written: “be orekha nirei or, in Your light, we shall see the light.”

What wonderfully inspiring daily teachings are found in these paintings by Roee Suffrin.