Kol HaOt

Opening Events

Address: Artists Colony

Friday 15.03.2024 at 11:30

Closing Date: Tuesday 30.04.2024 (time will be announced)

The Song of Seeds

Curators:  Carson Wos & Anne-Marie Helwaser

Artist:  Brian Michael Reed

Kol HaOt is pleased to host American artist Brian Michael Reed for a collaborative artist-in-residence program that exhibits the artist’s multimedia project, The Song of Seeds. Inspired during a pilgrimage on foot from the Old Port of Jaffa (נמל יפו) to the Jaffa Gate of Jerusalem (שער יפו), Reed memorializes the connection between the native landscape along his journey and centuries of spiritual practice by focusing on the pomegranate.

Through his unique practice of pictorial anthropology, Reed crafted glass pomegranate seeds that range in size and color. Kol HaOt’s Co-Founder and Executive Director Elyssa Moss Rabinowitz collaborated with Reed to infuse spiritual significance and cultural relevance by embedding religious themes and texts into his work. Kol HaOt’s emphasis on educational and community outreach augments Reed’s desire to enhance the spiritual nature of his work through healing and reflective dialogue. Pomegranate seeds, a bridge between the natural world and religious practices, are a common symbol of righteousness, their innumerous seeds emulating the copious good deeds one can perform.

Reed invites the audience to interact with his glass pomegranate seeds and reflect on righteousness and beauty amidst the darkness by meaningfully arranging them within acrylics and styrofoam. Dreaming of pomegranates, according to the Talmud, is a sign of impending abundance, that one will soon flourish (Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Brachot 57). Reed expects that just as he found meaning in the pomegranate trees punctuating his journey from the Mediterranean coast to the holy city of Jerusalem, his audience will resonate with his work as a symbol of hope, progress, and triumph.

As the People of Israel wandered in the desert, they lamented their time in slavery and reminisced about having enough food, specifically mentioning their yearning for pomegranates (Numbers 20:5). As their lack of pomegranates symbolized their suffering, Reed’s pomegranate seeds urge the viewer to reflect and question: How can we repair what is broken and emerge from a period of despair, both on individual and societal levels? Amidst the turmoil and tragedy of war, Reed’s pomegranate seeds and their eternal message of righteousness, hope, and transformation are relevant and provocative, encouraging reflection, appreciation, and healing.

Between the Lines: Questions, Responsa, and the Space Between 

Curator: Hila Zeira Weinstein

Artists: Orna Hazor, Yigal Yossian, Yehudit Shlomo, Yarel Yair, Lior Maayan, Michal Greenboim, Mati Lang, Ruth Eliav, Rena Bannett, Shachar-Mario Mordechai, Shlomo Blazer, Sara Malul, Tchelet Miriam Zohar 

Between the Lines brings together works of a collaborative journey of shared learning and independent creation. A group of artists in diverse fields joined to study selected texts from the Halakhic responsa: a vast and rich literature that offers a glimpse into the lives of the Jews in Israel and the Diaspora over a period of thousands of years; an inalienable asset of historical Jewish law and culture.

The works are influenced by the responsa examined in the group, with each artist connecting to a question or element that touched him or her. The works deal with timeless issues of trust, relationships, marriage, women’s rights, purity and sanctity,  the spirit of the Sabbath, and the spirit and sanctity of man and of the land. The artists examine the issues through different techniques and from diverse points of view, renewing ancient explorations of the meeting place between the Halakhic and human worlds, bridging the distant and ancient with the here and now.

The learning and creation took place within the framework of a collaboration between Schocken Institute for Jewish Research’s Responsa and Renewal fellowship program and Kol HaOt, an organization for Judaism and art in Hutzot HaYotzer Artists’ Colony in Jerusalem..