Ashkenazi Thinker

Art is intersectional. It arises from both within and without, cross-fertilized by circumstances in the artist’s life. This painting comes from such a confluence, of both recent events in my life and past experience that dates back to my childhood.

One of my closest relatives as a child was my maternal grandmother, Regina Loew Werner. Nana Jean, as I called her, was raised in an orthodox Jewish family in Pezinok, Hungary (now part of Slovakia). Raised in a climate of rising antisemitism, she was eager to pursue a better life, so when she had an opportunity to sail to America in 1912, she took it. At the age of 18, Regina left her family behind, and never saw her parents, four sisters, aunts, uncles, or cousins again – all were deported to Auschwitz at the end of WWII.

Many survivors of the Holocaust are silent about the past, preferring to leave it behind. My grandmother escaped before the war started, but she was still profoundly affected – and her silence affected me deeply in turn. I often stayed with Nana Jean overnight, and was witness to her deep sighs, long pauses, and the way she would hold her hand to her cheek and stare off into space.

Through my grandmother, the Shoah (“Holocaust” in Hebrew) made an impression –nay, an engraving – upon my young mind. I didn’t understand it at the time, but I knew I would learn about it in the future. When I did, as a teenager, I was further shaped and sculpted by the history of what had happened to my ancestors, both immediate and stretching back centuries. Both harsh and hopeful, that sobering history caused my young brain to imagine and consider what my beloved grandmother – she who baked apple pies from scratch and sewed nimble little dresses for my dolls – had left unspoken. I had a lot to think about, and brooded over my Ashkenazi Jewish heritage.

Fast forward fifty years until last winter, when I had an opportunity to work with a hypnotist who specialized in past life regression. Eager to explore this territory, I allowed my curiosity to overpower my skepticism. For two hours I let the high, serene voice of a young Chinese woman guide me back in time. I did not cross into another lifetime, but felt as if a river were washing over me, tumbling down my Ashkenazi roots from the darkness of Eastern Europe – dark, dark it was, and rich with human yearning and expression. This was my father’s maternal lineage, not my mother’s – but it was similar, flowing down from Russia and Rumania . . . so many of them . . . farmers, mothers, rabbis, tailors, peddlers, ordinary people, talented musicians, aspiring scholars and scientists . . . I knew no specifics, but felt the collective current of all that human potential, all those lives spilling down the rapids of time and spiraling into me. Much of that potential was cut short, aborted by the horrors of the time. And much of it, I felt, had flowed into the depths of my soul, emerging in another time, this time in which I live. I wondered, is this where my artistic inspiration comes from?

The image of this ancestral river stayed with me, and took its place among the many paintings in my mind waiting to be done. When its time came some ten months later, I struggled to articulate the figure of myself as a troubled teenager, pondering her people while also receiving their unfulfilled energies. The few sketches I did failed to express the original vision.

But it wasn’t too long before life provided the missing piece. While visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, I wandered through Gallery 800, which features late 19th and early 20th century European art. There I came upon a bronze casting of Rodin’s famous sculpture “The Thinker.” I was struck once again by the massive figure, both grounded and emotive. The man does not hold his hand to his cheek like my grandmother did, but leans his chin on his knuckles. Behind the sculpture is an extraordinary painting of a luminescent sunset, aflame in color with a dramatic cloudscape that was almost surreal. The juxtaposition of the dark figure with the painting was dramatic.

And there it was – the missing piece of my painting. On the train ride home along the Hudson River, I was already doing new sketches. My teenage thinker faces the other way, but holds the same pose. This young figure reflects on her history, receiving its legacy, and takes her place in time – time as fleeting as the red cloud that hovers over still waters, then sinks out of sight. The world turns in relation to the thinker, and that which we think about.

By visually quoting a historical work of art, a painting anchors a new rendition in relation to that which came before, and that which will follow. Though the ripple effects of the Shoah may peter out in the minds of younger generations, this is an arc in time that cannot be erased. Whether we hail history or not, still it unfolds and washes over us. We are both downstream and upstream in the river of time and events.

Something to think about.

Someday, I’ll paint a larger version of this image. It’s only a matter of time.

Ashkenazi Thinker illustrates the month of July 2026 in The Jewish Eye 5786/ 2026 Calendar of Art. The calendar is available in my webstore, on Amazon, or on Etsy. Rosh Hashanah is just around the corner! The Jewish Eye makes a great gift for the New Year.

The original painting is for sale.

Next week, I’ll write about the cover image.

A good week to all!

D Yael Bernhard
https://dyaelbernhard.com