Inner Lights Throughout a Year: Art & Miracles

Presentation of a new Inner Lights: Jewish Year art collection of the works of artistic interpretation of an annual circle of Jewish holidays

Part III of 3

Part 1 can be read here. 

Part II can be read here. 

From Purim to the Day of Love

Continuing and rounding the presentation of the new collection of modern-day artistic interpretations of annual Jewish holidays, the miracles of Purim , Pesach and Shavuot are examined here, with  two more miracles that has enriched the life of many people throughout the history: the miracle of Jerusalem and the miracle of love. In Jewish tradition, miracles are perceived to some extent as vitamins of life. I tried to figure it out artistically in my new collection.

Presentation of the part 3 ( of 3 ) of the Inner Lights art collection dedicated to an annual Jewish holidays.

Purim is a gift to Jewish people historically. A celebration of this gift of salvation has become an organic part of Jewish tradition throughout the centuries. There are many aspects in the Purim miraculous story that can be analysed in depth. It is an incredibly rich and multi-sided unique episode in history that has become the source of inspiration for many generations. 

Among many aspects of Purim, the devotion of Esther is one of the cornerstones of our victory. What can a human being, a woman, not a soldier, do in order to save her people? To save them en masse from mortal danger that if succeeded could preclude the fate of an entire people for generations ahead? 

The brave heart can resist evil, and when it is done consciously, it can also help a person to be inventive in the ways of salvation, with the Creator’s help. Esther has become not only an indisputable heroine of Jewish people forever, but she also has become a symbol for devoted and resourceful personality that sets up the sample to follow. 

When the circumstances happened to be as bleak as it was back in the city of Shushan in the 5th century BCE, and it tends to recur throughout the Jewish history repeatedly, there appeared people whose devotion of the heart is of Esther’s kind. 

The rose, which is our tradition associated with Esther, is steady and determinedly shows its real colour amidst the bleakest clouds on the Jewish horizon. Its transpiring does-not-matter-what colour, its strength and meaning very often do guide us towards the way out. Towards the light. 

The Power of Colour 

One of the works from the Inner Lights collection belongs to the private collection in Finland. Its co-owner described her understanding of the work which spoke with her at the first glance. 

“ I fell in love with Inna’s beautiful Presence work due to its colors and the special emotional effects that it has created.  As soon as I saw the work for the first time at Inna and Michael’s home and studio, I felt quite an unexpected sensation . 

These colours had been so deep and  so bright at the same time. Such a combination creates a powerful outcome, and the one which one rarely meets in the works of contemporary art. Importantly, the tangible mood of the painting  conveys a clear message to me. It tells me that we are safe,  and that the Creator of the universe knows the state of the world. ” –  Paula Hovav, an art collector from Helsinki, shared her reflections. 

Pesach is one of the most meaningful landmarks in our annual calendar, if not the most meaningful one, thinking about the self-determination of a human being and his or her choice for freedom, an ultimate choice for life, not a mere existence in a given circumstances. 

It is not without reason that the new biblical and religious Jewish year starts in Nissan, the month when the Pesach occurred, when the Jewish people, at least part of them, decided to break out for freedom, despite all and many obstacles, difficulties, and huge unknown they were facing, and such a long , full of hurdles of all sorts way towards it. 

What was the most essential element during the Pesach events? – I was asking myself while working on the collection. There were so many elements that were special and characteristic. But the one without which the Pesach would not happen, was the Presence of the Creator at the pivotal episode of the Jewish history and the very moment of the formation of the conglomeration of people into the nation. 

This Presence has been perceived and felt in a different way by different people at the moment and ever since, as it goes, and with different degrees of conviction. But without this Presence, the Pesach events, cardinal in Jewish history, simply would not happen, nor would our main break-through succeed. 

From a traditional narrative of Shavuot we know that at this special holiday, the Heaven’s window opens at the Shavuot’s midnight for our innermost prayers and thoughts to be heard directly in the rarest communication with the High, the second time in a year after the Neila prayer at the end of the Yom Kippur. 

This unique possibility to address the High Power personally at the certain hour of night at Shavuot has its own tonality, different from the one addressed during Neila. Shavuot is a climax of the 49-day process starting annually from the beginning of Pesach, when an observant person supposed to grow , or at least to reminiscent the essence of the Omer-counting period that symbolises the transformation of an observant Jewish person’s inner world from a physical liberation happened on Pesach to the spiritual emboldening expected to come on Shavuot. 

That’s why the High Power helps those who are striving to make this way or those who are conscious of it and would like to pay the tribute to this beautiful and actually very logical tradition, to make it meaningful and to reward us with the Heaven’s open window at the certain hour of the certain night, once a year, to support our individual effort. 

Everything is different in this unique place. Its air, its space, its light. Its spirit, its memory, its history. Its promise which never fails anyone. Its magnetism and its charm. Its beauty and its attraction. Its ancient stones and its modern bridges.

I always was in solidarity with the concept of Jerusalem as a centre of the world in the medieval mappa mundi, ancient geography maps, and with the metaphorical way of this concept as well. It is just a state of things . 

And yet,  Jerusalem is quite different and very specific for each of those who love it, because the perception of Jerusalem is absolutely individual and highly personified, perhaps, more than for many other outstanding places in the world. 

It was like that for any writer, poet, and artist who featured these many images of Jerusalem in their creations. When we annually celebrate Yom Jerushalaim, we celebrate our love for the light of our origin and the humanist purpose of it, both of which have been concentrated on every metre of Jerusalem in a high proportion. The highest on the planet, actually. 

Tu B’Av comes to us annually just six days after the saddest day in the Jewish annual calendar, Tisha b’Av, Av 9th. It is also important that the Day of Love occurs on the 15th of the month of Av, and 15th is the day when at least six major holidays fall in the annual Jewish calendar. What can be more consoling after the calamities of which we are thinking annually on Tisha b’Av than love? What can be more comforting, beautiful and promising? Full of smiles and joy and happiness? Being a special symbol of fertility and livelihood in Judaism, fish being in love in my work sends us all the smiling greetings of a winning character of the people who believe in love as a moving force of life and its hopes. The belief that has proved to be correct for over three thousand years, without interruptions. 

The new Inner Lights art collection is planned to start its international exhibition tour from 2027 onward. 

Among the other art collections on the various Jewish themes, can be mentioned Horizon Beyond Horizon  referring to the Jewish talent in arts, culture and literature, several various editions of the Shining Souls: Champions of Humanity  featuring outstanding Jewish personalities and those non-Jewish people whose humanity directed their righteous path, this collection which has been presented at the European Parliament and several other European national parliaments,  artistic reflections on the Holocaust in the Holocaust Album,  Night – Day – Night: the Elie Wiesel Special Collection dedicated to the 10th anniversary of the great writer’s passing, as well as Hatikvah in Blue and White collection dedicated to the victims and families of the October 7th massacre. 

Part 1 can be read here. 

Part II can be read here. 

Inna Rogatchi ©

October 2026