Humanity and the Company of Strangers

By Freydi Mrocki

Freydi Mrocki is a popular Yiddish singer and teacher, and a pillar of the Melbourne Yiddishist community. She has worked with Sholem Aleichem College, SKIF, Kadimah, the Melbourne Jewish Labour Bund and Klezmania. This speech was written for the celebration of Mark Baker’s legacy with the congregation he helped found, Shira Hadasha, during the exhibition Mark Raphael Baker: The Things You Cannot See.

We weren’t exactly strangers, but neither were we friends…yet I see Mark every day. His image is in a photo that hangs near our front door. A photo taken at Shira during our daughter’s Bas Mitsve service, on Tanes Ester. It’s a photo that was part of a retrospective, hung in this very room, in 2011. An exhibition titled “Seen and Unseen”. An exhibition of photos taken by a former photographer for the Australian Jewish News…my brother, Lex Mrocki. An exhibition lovingly curated by Emanuel Santos and Hwa Goh, two years after Lex, aged 45, died of ill health.

The echoes are a bit unsettling…

The photos in Lex’s retrospective included collages of his day job: photos of the community and front pages of the Jewish News. But there were also tender portraits and shots of families, as well as fabulous photos taken on the streets of St Kilda, Jerusalem and New York- ordinary people, buildings, fire hydrants. These were part of his unseen folio.

But who knew that Mark Baker also had unseen photos?

I had no idea, that “photographer”, was yet another string in the already extraordinary bow of the accomplished, Mark Baker. Like I said, I saw him daily, but we didn’t know each other that well. I’m not an authority or collector of visual art, but Lex’s photos evoke in me a feeling of recording or noting something- Mark’s, quite something else.

It is not lost on me that every photo hanging on the walls in front of me, is of humanity. Be it Cuba, Cambodia, Carlisle St or the Occupied Territories, there is at least one person in each photo. Mark’s photos bear witness to humans- mentshhayt– at home, at work. People going about their daily lives, mundane or at play, pensive or active, in prayer, contemplation and soft repose, solo or in communion with others. Be they together or alone- every person, even one merely sitting in wait of a customer, is of interest to him.

Did he enter their personal space when he took each of these shots, or were they taken at a distance, with a lens? It matters not… for to see someone from afar, is still to see them. And indeed Mark saw the things others cannot see. In these photos he sees hope, loneliness, resignation, beauty, pain and loss. He records joy, need, simplicity, horror and endurance, and the spirit of human beings. He captures their ‘being’, elevates their ordinary and through his photos- like his words and teachings- Mark shines a light, in the dark places of our world.

I wonder, if there is a demarcation line for every photographer, a line between ‘bearing witness with dispassionate observation’ and ‘zealous recording’, with an agenda to effect change? How much grey is there, between the black and white?

I wonder how Mark photographed. Did his eyes dart quickly, as they did when he was in a crowded room? Did he snap incessantly hoping that at least one shot in a series, would capture the feel, the mood, the light and the artistry he was after? Or was he considered and purposeful? A silent, patient observer, able to ascertain the right second to press the shutter button, just the once, to catch an intimate, visually gratifying moment? Was he present to his subjects or were they unaware? And what drew him to them? What piqued his interest?

We weren’t companions, but my impression is that the intellectual side of Mark has always been curious about ‘the stranger, about ‘the other’.

This was evident when as a teenager and ardent Zionist, while steadfast and vocal, Mark would listen to SKIFistn who espoused the ideology of the Bund. An ideology that other Zionist youth found contemptuous. As a SKIFist, I experienced this animosity first hand. I didn’t know Mark in those days but I’d heard of him and the fiery exchanges. And when we first crossed paths, I never felt contempt from him.

I was to discover with time, that this particular Zionist had a soft spot for Yiddish- a mishpokhe feler, a family affliction. I was also to learn that his humanity and thirst for knowledge led Mark to engage in and respect difference. Generation Journal, the stimulating periodical he co-produced, provided a vehicle for him to reach out to all manner people in order to include a vast array of Jewish thought and ideas.

I think this was the first time I got a tap on the shoulder from Mark- an invitation to contribute to the journal. “My goodness. He really doesn’t know me,” I thought. “I’m neither an intellectual nor a wordsmith.” But Mark insisted that I write a piece about how I express my Jewish identity.

“I want an honest piece informed by your Bundist values. And if it’s challenging and makes others feel uncomfortable, I don’t care.” So it was. And I felt validated and seen!

I remember a few years later – a chance encounter at night in Acland St. He asked where I’d been performing. “I haven’t,” I answered. He looked at what I was wearing and said: “What? You wear this shit out on a Saturday night? Do you live the shtetl?” What can I say? I loved boho and he didn’t really ‘get’ me.  But he called it as he saw it.

Some years later, we had an interchange about various Yiddish activities in the community. He made a few pointed observations then added, “But on the other hand…you know, I think it’s amazing that the Kadimah runs lecture series…all credit to them. Remarkable that they can regularly get a hundred people to turn up to hear scholars and notables lecture on all sorts of topics, in Yiddish.”

In the coming years at ACJC, Mark instituted his own lecture series where hundreds would turn up. Some speakers were controversial, the topics were varied, and some were about Yiddish. As he evolved, Mark kept pushing the boundaries and his empathy, his compassion for the suffering of others, for complete strangers (not just that of his own people), saw him expand his offerings at the university and lead tours to conflict zones like Rwanda. This, on top of the funds he had already raised for Rwanda, through Keshet.

Mark modelled empathic dialogue and broke bread with those strangers which ‘others’, would label ‘the enemy’. He rated their truth and lived experience, even if it meant being critical of ‘his own’. We know his empathy and sense of justice informed the drive to be one of the founders of Shira Hadasha, our treasured egalitarian space. The space, this atheist dared to enter, in 2007.

I was a stranger in a strange land. And the look on Mark’s face – was a mix of shock and delight.

‘The Bundist has entered my domain!’ Thus began our bond with Shira, as my daughter Ely, began to study for her bas mitsve. A month or so before the day, Mark invited the three of us to his home, the walls heaving with art. He wanted to curate her ceremony and informed Les that as the father, he would be playing a minor role. “This is going to be a woman’s day, that would focus on Ely, her mother and grandmother and there must be Yiddish.”

“Freydi,” he added, “I know that you’ve never had an aliye, but you too shall have that opportunity.” The whole experience was uplifting. We marked Ely’s coming of age in the inclusive space Mark had created. And we celebrated with family, in the company of strangers.

Our attendance was sporadic after that, but one Saturday I turned up to Shira well into the service. I sat alone, up the back. Mark saw me through the mekhitse. Once again, he was taken aback. It was a week or so after the unexpected passing of my brother Lex. Saying Kaddish, was not for me, or for us. I didn’t understand why, but I had felt the need to sit in the pure musical space of ‘the voice’, and in a place of contemplation and separation. Mark came over at some point and with softness in his eyes said, “I’m surprised to see you here…but I’m glad you felt you could come.” Humanity, in the company of strangers.

In the lead up to Ely’s bas mitsve when we used to attend weekly, Mark told me he’d like to include a Yiddish song somewhere in the service and to, “please think about what might be suitable.” Some weeks later, I reported that I had thought of a wonderful Yiddish song but suggested that it was only really suitable for Yom Kiper. I turned to walk away because who’s going to mess with a Yom Kiper service, right?

Mark called me back and asked that I send him the words and translation. The response? “There’s a perfect spot, right before Yizkor.” Who’s going to mess with a Yom Kiper service? Well, Mark is.

And that’s how a Yiddish song and it’s author, Itsik Manger- folk balladeer, womaniser and drunkard- were both welcomed into the unlikely setting of a Yom Kiper service.

And after so many years now, they are no longer strangers. In fact, we three feel quite at home.

But I miss Mark deeply.

How wonderful that he has left us with these photos so we can see humanity and the world he loved, as he saw them.