My project is titled Shalom, meaning hello, goodbye, and peace in Hebrew. In this eight-week period I produced work that broadened my understanding of Judaism and helped me redefine my faith on my own terms. Through the image-making and research skills I have learned on foundation, I was able to go back to my community and look at it through a different lens of information gathering. From doing this I learned more about the people around me, how they feel about being Jewish and what it means for them to be a Jew. This helped me start to understand my own opinions and evaluate the reasons why I felt such a pullback to it after pushing Judaism away all my life. This project drove me to engage with people I wouldn’t have otherwise, it also made me go back to Synagogue voluntarily which is something I never thought I would do. For my final outcome, I created three components that together communicate my definition of Judaism. The first component is a personalised Siddur (Prayer book) conveying my Jewish journey that’s carried in a hand-embroidered blue velvet case that borrows from the visual language of Tallit bags. The second component is a series of cyanotypes that represent the universal and timeless objects of Judaism. The final is a short film that displays my friend’s and family’s definitions of Judaism in the places they associate with Judaism.
