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(New York Jewish Week) — On Friday night, a number of dozen individuals huddled beneath umbrellas and raincoats in a brand new sukkah in Brooklyn that had survived the day’s record-setting rainstorm.
The sukkah, created by queer textile artist Hilla Shapira, was unhurt: Its mild purple partitions have been made from ripstop, a light-weight and water resistant material. Its gentle and pillowy decorations — which included Jewish symbols like hamsas in addition to depictions of the 4 species — have been made from dacron, a sturdy, polyester batting that held up within the deluge as effectively.
Shapira stated the undertaking — titled Lavender Diaspora — was meant to channel her identities as a queer one who grew up in a spiritual family in Israel, and likewise as an immigrant in america, the place she studied artwork in Michigan earlier than transferring to Brooklyn.
“I attempt to discover parallel relationships between what it’s to be queer and Jewish, and to be an individual from Israel,” Shapira, 33, advised the New York Jewish Week. “It’s particularly related once we’re speaking about Sukkot, which is a vacation that the Jewish individuals have been celebrating within the in-between house, between Egypt and Israel — they have been on the way in which someplace, however in one thing that’s short-term and caught in this sort of eternally nomadism.”
Shapira holding one in every of her hamsas as she builds Lavender Diaspora in Prospect Heights. (Courtesy The Neighborhood.)
Talking at a Shabbat dinner hosted by The Neighborhood: An City Heart for Jewish Life, the Brooklyn-based group that commissioned the sukkah, Shapira stated she had designed her construction to rejoice communities that discover themselves on the outskirts of society.
She was talking on the primary night time of Sukkot, the weeklong vacation during which Jews construct a brief construction known as a sukkah, meant to commemorate partly the constructions that the Israelites lived in as they wandered by way of the desert from Egypt to Israel. All through the vacation, which ends at sunset on Saturday, Jews eat, pray and even sleep within the sukkah.
The Neighborhood has partnered with 12 different Jewish communities and organizations to rejoice and host occasions within the distinctive sukkah, together with Romemu Brooklyn, Lab/Shul, Jews of Coloration Initiative and the Prospect Heights Shul.
“We have been actually excited to consider not only a sukkah as an artwork object, however actually additionally as a spot to convey totally different communities and teams of individuals collectively on this short-term construction,” Rebecca Guber, the founding director of The Neighborhood, advised the New York Jewish Week.
“We additionally thought of what have been some totally different views that we might convey into these things,” she added. “We needed one thing that brings in younger households, that may be snug when you’re a extra observant Jew and that additionally feels sort of wild.”
Positioned within the courtyard of Luria Academy, a Jewish day college in Prospect Heights, college students will use the sukkah for his or her meals and programming through the day. Within the evenings and on the weekend, The Neighborhood will use the sukkah for its personal programming, which incorporates the launch of a Sukkot zine in partnership with Ayin Press, a family-friendly music jam, a dance occasion and extra.
As a queer lady who grew up in an Orthodox residence in Israel — in addition to an immigrant to america — Shapira stated she’s usually looked for a way of belonging. “The sukkah I attempted to create is an area that’s providing an alternate, or making a suggestion for a communal house for all of the ‘shoulders’ of society,” she stated.
Lavender, the colour of the partitions of the sukkah, is a logo of LGBTQ resistance and activism. The opposite half of the title, Diaspora, refers to each the dispersion of the Jewish individuals in addition to the sensation of marginalization skilled by Jews, LBGTQ individuals and different minorities — the sukkah is supposed to be a brief house that alleviates that feeling.
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The Neighborhood is a group hub that primarily companions with different Jewish organizations to create progressive Jewish cultural and non secular occasions for Jewish life. The Lavender Diaspora sukkah was funded by UJA-Federation New York. (UJA-Federation can also be a funder of 70 Faces Media, the mum or dad firm of the New York Jewish Week.)
“What actually resonates for us is the way in which that this sukkah welcomes everybody in — no matter place you’re feeling you occupy within the Jewish group — possibly some individuals really feel like insiders, different really feel like outsiders, we actually hope this generally is a place the place many alternative individuals can really feel welcomed, and that their views and identities are being honored,” Guber stated.
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