Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art

About this Work

After emigrating from Poland, Jennings Tofel forged a successful artistic career in New York. Many of his paintings from the 1940s and 1950s obliquely address the trauma of the Holocaust. The Red Hand, depicting a tangled group of anguished figures, contains a probable reference to the Zohar, a work of medieval Jewish mysticism. The Zohar defines ten manifestations of God, known as Sefirot. The sefirah of gevurah (power or judgment) is associated with the color red, which dominates this composition. Jewish mysticism contends that while gevurah is necessary to ensure a just society, too much power can lead to evil. With this work, Tofel may have had the evil of the Holocaust, but also the justice survivors deserved, in mind.