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(c) Atia Trofimoff

Ariel Ashbel and friends

(Berlin)

Rosh HaShanah 5782: on a politics of love

Location: Neuer Börneplatz

Performance

Rosh HaShanah is the Jewish new year. It’s literally the “head” (“Rosh” is Hebrew for head) of the year, giving the year a visceral existence. If it has a head, it must have a body as well. What kind of ethics does this physicality entail?

Starting the new year is the period of the high holidays – also called “the terrible days”; a period of meditation, reflection and forgiveness. Vows are nullified, agreements reevaluated, decisions questioned, worlds torn apart and built anew, to reveal a profound sense of responsibility. Unraveling and reinventing, this movement toward commitment in the strictest sense of the word, goes through the body; the singular body and the social one. And when bodies are entangled in a responsible, responsive bond, the question of love appears.

 

In the performative event constructed around the new year 5782, Ashbel and collaborator Ethan Braun will touch on the exciting and intimidating idea of love, and discuss how it is processed in the Jewish tradition. We will congregate around food, action and ideas from different trajectories: philosophical texts from the European tradition, the cycles of Rosh Hashanah prayers, and some beautiful Yemenite music.

Browsing through these ideas, and tailoring the critical questions that will arise to the charged site at Börneplatz, we will problematize the entanglement moments of destruction and renewal. Acknowledging its risk, we wish to enable a spiritual and social endeavor which invites us to consider what’s the work of allyship and hospitality needed these days. Through responsible affect and thoughts on solidarity and kin, the mechanics of love bear the potential to enable letting things, habits and beliefs Rest In Peace, making spears into hooks and exclamation points into open ended questions.

Duration: 90 Min
Language: Englisch
Location: Temporärer Bau, Neuer Börneplatz
So. 12.09. 18 Uhr: Podiumsgespräch u.a. mit Rachel Heuberger & Ariel Ashbel
This performance partly takes place in a poorly lit environment and the audience moves on uneven, loose ground.

Please register metahub@stadt-frankfurt.de
Information on the hygiene concept after registration.

Information also on metahubfrankfurt.de/mapping-memories-event