Image of the Week: Hunters' Hanukah
© Durga Yael Bernhard
Hanukah is early this year – tonight is the first night we light the menorah. Around here, this also means the holiday falls during deer hunting season. For me, it brings back memories of another Hanukah during hunting season, captured in this painting that was part of my calendar, The Jewish Eye 5776 / 2015.
The hunting cabin depicted here sits on the northern edge of the Catskill Mountains. Ten minutes of climbing the steep, wooded mountainside quickly yields a panoramic view to the north: a patchwork of fields and forest rolling toward Albany. Hunting here is synonymous with hiking, as we made our way on foot up the remains of an old logging trail. Deer are sparse in this terrain; one must walk the land often in order to see even one. Bear tracks are more common, along with coyote, fox, and wild turkey. Here and there, an old hunting stand crumbles in the fork of a tree. The wind comes in long surges, audible at a distance as it rushes through bare branches – an ocean of air gathering in great, cold swells across the mountain.
Then, silence and the twittering of a bird. Nature admits us humbly into her wild sanctuary: both a privilege and respite from the grind of everyday life.
In this place, it is easy to find HaMakom – המקום – one of several Hebrew words for the Eternal, or “Placeness” – the substance and source of Creation. To breathe the vast and pristine air, to participate in the cycle of life and death as my ancestors did, brings me closer to them – the ancient Israelites who hunted and slaughtered, skinned and butchered, sacrificed and feasted on wild and domestic animals. Though my hunting companion and I were thousands of miles from the mountains of Sinai and wadis of Judea, as we lit the menorah that night I felt connected to that faraway time and place. The Hanukah candles seemed to push back the night – nine strong on the last night of the Festival of Lights. I thought of all that has been sown in the far-flung Diaspora over centuries of Jewish exile and migration. I thought of the halutzim (pioneers) of our parents’ and grandparents' generation, who worked the land in Eretz Yisrael. Here in North America, we've worked the land in our own way – tilling the earth, growing vegetables, raising animals, gathering plants – and hunting meat.
I sought to preserve the moment in this painting which is more like an illustration, with the mountains proportioned in a manner contrived to show the night sky; in reality, the top of the ridge was far beyond our view. The blessings of Hanukah reached all the way to this little cabin, tucked away where Creation still dominates our human presence – and a Jew can still disappear in the forest.
The original painting of Hunters’ Hanukah is for sale. It's small, measuring 14″x18". Presently the painting is included in my Eye on the Mountains exhibition of landscapes of the Catskills, on view at the Catskill Watershed Corporation in Margaretville, NY. It's also available as a poster.
Chag Chanukah Sameach – Happy Hanukah! – to my Jewish friends,
and may we all have a December filled with light.
D Yael Bernhard