Participants: András Böröcz, Judit Fischer, Margit Koller, Gergely Kósa, Orsolya Láng, Ágoston Nagy, Sándor Rácmolnár, Bea Roskó, Gábor Roskó, Ágnes Szabó Eszter, Kata Szalai, Zsófi Szemző, Gábor Tóth, Ákos Wechter, Mária Flóra Zoltán
The summer of 2022 brought terrible heat and drought to Europe. For months we waited in vain for rain, the drought caused the unimaginable destruction of cultivated and wild plants, lakes and rivers evaporated into nothingness.
There are, of course, parts of the world where this barely tolerable weather is part of everyday life, and the peoples who settled there thousands of years ago have learned to live with it. Such a landscape is the Middle East and this is where Israel is located.
The cycle of most Jewish holidays follows the cycle of agricultural activity of the ancient Jews. Passover is the celebration of spring, the springing of barley into barley malting, alongside the deliverance from Egypt. And water has always been essential in Israel, which is why on the morning of the first day of the holiday, the prayers for dew are recited in synagogues, by the 7th century poet Eleazar ben Kalir:
Send dew on a thirsty land
Thy rich blessing to pour out in abundance
And when the fullness of thy blessing shall flow
Rebuild thy ruined fortress
With thy dew.
(extract, translation by József Patai)
In our series of Pesach exhibitions, launched seven years ago, we always choose a part of the feast and invite artists to create a work of art in connection with it. Our latest theme, a prayer asking for dew on the parched earth, was written in the desert Middle East, but we will need the blessing of heaven here too, in the very near future.