Limited Edition Giclee Print

10 Units

22 1/8” x 30”

Original: Gouache on Paper

In Hebrew, the root R-CH-M is the same for both the word ‘Rechem’ (womb) and for ‘Rachamim’ (mercy, pity).

Why did the Hebrew language create these two different words from the same root?

To try answering this question, I used the image of an 8th-6th century BCE Phoenician figurine of a pregnant woman (found in Achziv, Israel), which I put inside a womblike space.  Surrounding this “womb” are the footsteps and remains of Lucy, or Eve, as anthropologists call the “first woman”, the mother of us all. 

On the “womb walls” I wrote in calligraphy some quotes (see below) from different cultures about the oneness of humanity, which is a very good reason for having mercy and love for one another. We are all born out of a mother’s womb. A mother of a newborn baby is a universal symbol of compassion, mercy, and love. We all have very similar experience being born and cared for by a mother, and in turn, bringing children to the world ourselves. In addition, we all came out of the same prehistoric womb (“Lucy”, “Eve”), therefore we are all not only similar but actually related to each other, and therefore it makes sense for us to have mercy and love for one another.

Background excerpts and quotes, partially written on the painting:

“And the man called his wife’s name Eve (chavah), for she was the mother of all living (em kol chay).”

— Genesis 3,20

“Footprints left on the sandy shore of a South African lagoon […] about 117,000 years ago […] have been identified as the oldest fossilized tracks of an anatomically modern human ever found […] the smallish individual […] was probably a woman about 5 foot 4 […] lived in roughly the same time and place as the hypothetical female known to paleoanthropologists as “Eve”, the common genetic ancestor of every person alive today […] The hypothetical Eve carried a particular type of mitochondrial DNA, genetic material that is passed only through females. Scientists who measured the range of variation in that genetic material in different populations have concluded that we all descend from a common ancestor of that period.”

— Kathy Sawyer, SF Chronicle, 1997

“Since the Creator Ohrmazd created creation, being of one substance, he caused man to be born of one father, so that creation, being of one substance, one thing should sustain, provide for and help another, and men, being born of one father should esteem each other as their own selves.  Like affectionate brothers they should do good to each other and ward off evil from each other.”

— ZDT – R.C. Zachner The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism NY 1961; The Iranian Component in the Bible p. 213 Appendix 1 

“Why was man created alone?  To teach you that if one destroys but one soul, it is as if he destroyed an entire world, and if one saves but one soul, it is as if he saved an entire world.”

— Mishnah, Sanhedrin 35, a bit modified to include all humanity rather than Jews only (Sefer Ha’agada, p. 14 in English; p.11 in Hebrew)

“For in every one there is actually one part of his fellow man, and when one man sins he injures not only himself but also that part of his fellow man which is in him […] and therefore a man should want his fellow man’s happiness and honor as much as his own, because he really is himself, and that is why we were commanded “love thy neighbor as thyself”.

— Moshe Cordovero, Tomer Dvorah, p. 4-5  (my translation based on Sholem’s)

“The quality of mercy is not strain’d

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath; it is twice blesst;

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes;

— Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, 5, 1.