Introduction to the Shtetl Stories & Memories Art Catalogue (C). 2024.
By MICHAEL ROGATCHI ©
Full Shtetl Stories collection ( 2010 – 2024) can be seen here.
There is a big joy for me that my works, Shtetl Song series, will be present at the permanent art collection of the Grigory Kanovich Public Library of Jonava, in memory of a wonderful, special writer, and a very good man, whom we have had an honour and privilege to know for many years, Grigory Kanovich, who always was and still is a role model for a Jewish caring and talented man to us, my wife and myself.
Grigory Kanovich’s input into the surviving and living heritage of Jewish people as a writer should not be under-estimated. There are not that many writers who did narrate the life of our people, and those in a shtetl , to that degree and that detail, and with such care, love and gentleness, as Grigory Kanovich did, having a special qualities for that, including his open heart and his unobtrusive wisdom.
For me, Grigory Kanovich lives in two dimensions, at least: as an older and caring wise and kind friend, and as a great writer who is a pride of Jewish cultural heritage world-wise, but also at micro-level for every single person who ever read his special, breathing, alive books, full of love and memory.
There is more to me in Grigory Kanovich’s literature. I can hear there also a specific music, specific melodies, our Yiddish lullabies and nigguns, I can recognise there our joys peppered with sadness, and our sorrows enlightened from inside, with that indescribable light, which kept and is still keeps us all going: Kanovich’s own family, my family, and any other Jewish family with similar origin, history and circumstances of life.
When creating the works for this series, Shtetl Songs, which is intimately close to me, I was thinking of nothing else, but my family. About my beloved grandmother Sofia Litowska, and her family, with their all so dramatic and so difficult life, which never ever has made them angry or depressed, but yet more helpful towards the others and focused on the good always instead, being determined to live faithfully, decently, and to help anyone they could. And they did.
This goodness in veins which I know and learned from my family, is also lives in every work created by Grigory Kanovich, in all those many intricate details, and all those encompassing feelings which all together weaved in these great books which can be called a prose mirror of the history of shtetl in the period before that history’s ultimate and so tragic closure. The more precious and special for me is that steady light which comes from Grigory Kanovich’s books, always, and which has left all our loving memories about our all families from the shtetl to live on for generations to come.
To me, the Grigory Kanovich Public Library of Jonava is the best possible place for those of my works which are dedicated to this memory and are speaking about the shtetl and our families.
Michael Rogatchi ©
June 2024