Mirrors
Introduction
Initially, I'd been led to investigate mirrors primarily through my printmaking, however, recently, I've started to look at mirrors in relation to Jewish traditions at times of mourning.
At such times, it's traditional in Jewish households, for mirrors to be covered. One website, www.aish.com, describes this in detail:
It is proper to cover the mirrors (with sheets, or fogged spray provided by the funeral home) in the shiva house for the following reasons:
1. During shiva, a mourner is striving to ignore his/her own physicality and vanity in order to concentrate on the reality of being a soul.
2. A mirror represents social acceptance through the enhancement of one's appearance. Jewish mourning is supposed to be lonely, silent; dwelling on one's personal loss. Covering the mirrors symbolizes this withdrawal from society's gaze.
3. Prayer services, commonly held in the shiva house, cannot take place in front of a mirror. When we pray, we focus on God and not on ourselves.
4. Physical relations between a husband and wife are suspended during the week of shiva, and thus the need for physical beauty is removed.
For a full account of the practices of Jewish Mourning, please click here.
Other reasons for this practice, grown out of folk superstitions, include the idea that by covering the mirror, the soul cannot see other family members and take them with him or her, or that due to the supposed presence of the angel of death, those seeing their reflections might place their own lives in jeopardy.
Needless to say, given my work on the Holocaust, I find these traditions both interesting and emotionally arresting.