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Notes and explanations about my work - Exhibition at the Masada National Park 2007
We said that:
The difference between people is the greatest blessing that a person can have,
and that because of this difference we are exposed to a vast range of infinite realities.
Spinoza speaks about three levels of knowledge:
1. Individual awareness which is passive, subjective and sensual.
This is because it is a basic inherent knowledge.
2. Cognitive knowledge, this is an attained knowledge, the outcome of learning
and therefore it is active and analytic. This is scientific knowledge that deals with
understanding eternal rules.
3. Intuitive knowledge [awareness], this is the individual?s knowledge of his
purpose in the infinite scheme of things. This is a direct understanding, a sort of inner
insight that not only does everything depend on the whole but that a specific individual
depends on the whole and the whole depends on the specific individual.
Your understanding is correct; the whole depends on the specific individual.
And each one of us, just like every other individual, is a specific individual. An individual
without whom the infinite is not whole.
And in all cultures, the female viewpoint is not expressed.
Women served, and still serve in too many places, as a tool used by men for their own
needs and in the most extreme forms of expression.
And since the female viewpoint has not found appropriate expression, a never-ending
cycle of pain is born, generation after generation.
Cultures which do not have a feminist movement are either cultures in which true
equality already exists and therefore there is not need for such a movement (I have
yet to find such a culture), or cultures in which the female circumstances are so
severe that women are not even aware that such options exist.
To best describe this cultural choice of suffering, the Italian poet, Cesare Pavese
said: ?To choose a hardship for ourselves is our only defense against that hardship.
This is what is meant by accepting suffering. Those who, by their very nature, can
suffer completely, utterly, have an advantage. That is how we can disarm the power
of suffering, make it our own creation, our own choice; submit to it. A justification
for suicide?.
There is strong link between the position of women in a society and the extent of
violence in that society. Many studies have shown the link between the pressures
placed on a woman and the level of violence expressed by her children.
Here we can quote many studies and statistics. For those who may be interested,
you can find more in two books: The Emotional Brain by Joseph LeDoux and The
New Primal Scream by Arthur Janov.
Here I will only add what the Rambam said: The magnitude of love is as the extent
of knowledge. And in other words, the level of our attitude towards reality depends
on the level of our perspective and/or the tools we use for this attitude.
Each one of us has our own special knowledge, each one of us commands to
understand the whole that is where perfection is hidden. And this we can do by:
Respecting and nurturing our world, while at the same time, respecting, nurturing and
learning the world of others.
And I wonder, what is this emotional baggage, hidden from view, that is borne by the
children of the women whose special inner voice may not be heard? What exactly
do these children absorb in the womb and from the milk of the women whose lives
they see and are dependent on the sole desires of the men around them? And what
is passed on as inheritance to those children whose mothers are given to their
fathers, not out of love, attraction or free will, but through rape?
And we are not talking about just a few, we are talking about large communities and
how does this affect all of us? And aren't these simply processes for preserving
entire communities as an emotional post traumatic condition passed down through
generations and which are formed by the fetus while still in the womb?
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