“My heart is in the East and I am at the edge of the West” wrote the renowned poet, scholar and physician Yehudah Halevi when his heart was exiled in medieval Spain. “As for me,” said Judaism and Art member Hedvah Campeas-Cohen, commenting on the poem that had inspired her painting, “I was exiled here on the East End when my niece Sarah married her beloved Adam, last April, west of here in New Jersey.

“Like many, my heart had been pushed and pulled repeatedly during the Covid epidemic. But now, many people have returned to a new normal, but I am not one of them. The virus continues to mutate, and I am immunocompromised. When the wedding  invitation came, I made the heartbreaking decision not to attend. I felt angry, deprived and depressed. You are looking at an expression of my effort to cope with those feelings. The work is an 18” x 24” acrylic on paper.

“As the day of the wedding approached, I had a change of heart. I decided to go to the wedding, taking extreme precautions. Our car was packed. The phone rang. My brother informed us that everyone who had attended the aufruf (when the bride and groom are called to the Torah on the Shabbat before the wedding) had been exposed to the virus. We unpacked with heavy hearts.

“Following the wedding, my brother, the father of the bride, tested positive for Covid.”

 

Photo by Graham Diamond