Performing the Jewish Temporary House: Reflections on an Art-Research Project on Contemporary Sukkot

Abstract

The article discusses two projects involving the construction of two contemporary sukkot. These are the temporary shelters the Israelites erected in the desert during their wanderings (Exodus 33:6) and have ever since construct- ed to fulfill the commandment of dwelling in sukkot during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot to commemorate the exodus from Egypt. The Eternal Sukkah, a project developed in Jerusalem by the Sala-manca Group in collaboration with Itamar Mendes-Flohr and Yeshayahu Rabinowitz, is discussed in its historical, political, and cultural context. It deals with the relations between the Jewish festival of Sukkot, Bedouin architecture, and Israeli ethnopolitics, as expressed in this project, describes the transformation of the Bedouin hut into a Jewish sukkah, and examines the symbolic aspects arising from the politics and poetics of its display in the former Jerusalem Leprosarium and at the Israel Museum. The discussion outlines an unexpected output related to that transformation: the parallel development of an eco-tourism initiative carried out by the Bedouin community. This initiative led to a traditional Bedouin tent becoming an ethnographic object exhibited inside a Bedouin shack built in the exact place of the purchased hut. The second project discussed in this article is the Deller Sukkah replica, carried out by Sala-manca in collaboration with Ktura Manor and Nir Yahalom. This is an unauthorized replica of the Deller Sukkah (d. 1840, Bavaria) from the Judaica collection of the Israel Museum. The discussion deals with the wandering and smuggling of symbolic homes, the status of a “doubled” object as a new original, the performative transformation of the structure’s identity, the transformation of the structure’s status, and its market and cultural values. Both projects are treated not only as material reconstructions of the past but also as critical testimony of the present.