Image of the Week: The Four Sons
˙© D. Yael Bernhard
I don't usually write about Passover at this time of year, but this paper is part of my new calendar, The Jewish Eye Calendar of Art – and with the Jewish new year coming up next month, August is the month for promoting it.
Plus, The Four Sons is not just about Passover. It's about how parents teach their children by telling them stories. For though the Passover seder is guided by a printed book called a haggadah (which means "the telling"), the stories told each year on the occasion of this home-based holiday are traditionally told out loud. Over the centuries, this has evolved into an oral tradition – one which has survived periods of persecution, expulsion, and discrimination against Jews. You can't burn a story or kill it in a gas chamber.
In addition to the story of Exodus, the Four Sons and their attributes are told on Passover in order to spark discussion, and to bring out the personality types of children everywhere. As the carriers of tradition, each generation must take care to pass these stories down to their children, who will carry them forward.
The Four Sons shown above embody four basic archetypes: the Wise Child (chacham), the Wicked Child (rasha), the Simple Child (tam), and the Unconscious Child (she'anu yodea lish'ol). The Wise Child is receptive to learning about his heritage. The Wicked Child rejects and denies his heritage, rebelling out of pure insolence. The Simple Child is naive but curious, and has the potential to learn. The Unconscious Child is completely disconnected, and "does not even know to ask."
Can you tell which is which in the picture? Each quality is personified as a separate child, but in reality they exist to greater or lesser degrees within all children, changing as the child develops. Nor are these qualities linked to gender. The term "The Four Sons" is a product of a culture that once valued educating boys over girls. How pleasing that this is no longer true, and that Jewish tradition itself has the capacity to evolve.
It's said the hardest part of parenting is not the sacrifices we must make, but the fact that we cannot choose what those sacrifices will be. Like a hand dealt from a deck of cards, parents don't know what kind of personality their child(ren) will have. This is what is symbolized by the Four Sons of Passover, which I designed to resemble the figures on playing cards, made into a mandala that points in all directions. The most challenging part of this image was creating a structure that was symmetrical and balanced (two faces full front, two in profile, oriented in four directions), yet full of non-repeating elements. I must constantly resist the urge to repeat elements in my art (must be my background as a percussionist) which I felt would be detrimental to this piece. The only repeating elements are the shapes at the center of the mandala, and the coloring of the four sons' skin and hair. This restraint took all my willpower! – like resisting eating more than one cookie.
The Four Sons is for sale, and will be shown at my art studio sale on August 28th and 29th. If you're local, I hope you'll stop by. I'll also be giving an online talk about my calendar art at the Woodstock Jewish Congregation on Friday evening, August 20th. Please inquire if you would like more information.
The Jewish Eye 5782 Calendar of Art is available in my webstore and on Amazon. If you order it from Amazon, please consider writing a review!
You can view the entire calendar here.
A good week to all –
D Yael Bernhard
http://dyaelbernhard.com
children's books • fine art • illustration