REMEMBERED AS A BLESSING

In this nonfiction work, Leo, Mendelsohn, and Allen explore traditions of Jewish remembrance in photographs and prose.

You would be forgiven if, looking at Leo’s photographs in this volume, you mistook them for an abstract exercise in geometric form. Printed in black and white with rich contrast, the stones that are their subject have a tendency to morph: The smooth, mottled white of one rock emerges from darkness like an egg; another pebble, reflected in the granite on which it is sitting, smudges and blurs as if seen through water. With a close, insistent gaze trained upon knobbed surfaces, the camera turns crevices and bits of grit into mysterious landscapes, small rocks opening into expansive worlds. The framing essays remind us that these stones are elements in a human narrative. Placed on gravestones, the rocks participate in a long-standing Jewish tradition, marking an act of remembrance and serving as a point of connection to the memories of deceased loved ones. Offering biblical context and philosophical ruminations, the closing essay by Allen suggests that these stones are symbols of permanence, operating as “a material response to that which is no longer a tangible relationship, imprinting the memory of a loved one within us.” But, as Mendelsohn’s opening essay points out, stones can decay as well: “Our desire that the memory of who we once were should endure beyond the natural span of our lives,” the author writes, “is made more poignant by the fact that stone, as hard as it is, can stop ‘signifying’ in the way we had intended.” In this sense, the photographs are themselves an act of commemoration, not only of the human relationships that they represent, but also of these bits of matter at a single moment, not yet changed by wind and rain and time itself.

This compact volume offers an aesthetically robust and spiritually poignant reflection on Jewish visitation stones.