gallery wrap stretched on wooden frame
Canvas wrap premium limited edition copy of original oil painting, circa 1972, by Robert's father, Jack B. Weinger, currently 94 years old. Though he was not aware of it at the time, Jack created the prophetic foundation for Shofar So Great that was birthed some thirty-six years later. The painting was completed prior to the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the day of "The Great Shofar."
The hands represent the Five Books of Moses (the Torah, Judaism's foundation) and the generations of Jews rising up from the ashes of the Holocaust to the rebirth of the State of Israel. It symbolizes the strength and victory of "Am Yisrael," NEW life, and the cry of the Shofar calling the Children of Israel home from the Diaspora. The Shofar of the Ge'ulah.
Jack B. and Alyce L. Weinger, age 94 and 91, pose with check payment for the sale of one of his oil paintings.
Chief Rabbi of The State of Israel, Rabbi Yonah Metzger and "The Great Shofar" painting in his Jerusalem office on November 15, 2011
"The story was when I was a soldier in the army during Yom Kippur war, I was a tankish…And, we had a order to run away from the Syrian in the Golan Mountain in the beginning of the war until another group of soldiers came and helped us. And then we enter inside and we won. And we stood in the front near Syria was more than half a year. During this half a year the commanders allowed us to go back to that place...because it was on Yom Kippur, I was the Chazan; I made the prayer there, and a soldier, I wasn’t a Rabbi then.
And I had a kittel, the white kittel and I prepare the Shofar for Moetzeheh, for the finish of the Yom Kippur that we blow shofar. I prepared it in the corner, and in the middle of Yom Kippur the war started in two o’clock noon. …then we had to leave quickly ... there were some private things that we left there.
I enter this place after three months and when I arrived I looked after the shofar. So the shofar was belonged to my grandfather from Poland; and my father gave me it before Yom Kippur; we didn’t know that it will start the war and he said to me, “look, keep it with the kittel because its not belong to you, it not belong to me, it belong from Poland some generations ago. So please keep it.” So I kept as I could be able to do, but when the war start we ran away. And, when I arrived back, I saw immediately the kittel because they thought it was the clothing of a doctor, so they have it you know. The shofar I looked after and I didn’t find.
So two soldiers that came with me, they said, “look, it’s very late and we have to go back to our place in the front,” so the last minute when we left the bunker, I saw something yellow from the sand. It was the mouthpiece from the shofar and it was buried in the sand. So I took it out and it was full with sand; I put water inside and I took it out all the sand. And I began to blow. It was one of the nicest blowing shofar that I did in my life. It was so clear that all of us began to cry and remember all of our friends that didn’t come back with us. It was the tear of victory for Am Yisrael chai.
And then I said the following idea. I said look, how we are similar to the shofar, Am Yisrael, why? The shofar is something that comes from a behemoth, how do you say, a ram! And Gentiles were at that time, they thought that we are like rams, we are nothing; we are not human beings. They killed us; they bury us like the shofar was buried in the sand... But, the HaShem in the heaven took us out from the Holocaust from all the generations and build our country; and blow the shofar to go out from the Diaspora out back to the U.S. The Shofar of the Ge'ulah. Like this shofar we were in all our history. It was buried and now its go up and went out to, to new life. So this is a story that I connected with all my soul to this shofar."
