“Kaleh Meydel” is a term of endearment in Yiddish for a girl who has reached the age where she is worthy and required to find her mate and get married. This expression exists in Ashkenazi-orthodox Jewish society and appears in other cultures in Asia and Africa as marking a transition point from childhood to girlhood.

The work is based on prayer rituals and mating virtues (*Alma Datksia-Alma Datgalia) anchored in the Book of Zohar- a foundational work in the literature of Jewish mystical thought known as Kabbalah.  For moments, the new ceremony becomes  a circus-theatrical performance, held in two venues in the space. The audience location is not marked, and the order of actions moves from one venue to another, through (and with) the  audience. The decorative tablecloth looks like a bride covered in front of her canopy, swaying with her hands muttering red threads. She steps on golden eggs, breaks and shatters glass plates, dividing their fragments as in a mating virtue.

The performance was held in Jerusalem Theater during Jerusalem Design Week 2018.

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*Alma Datkashia-Alma Datgalia are Kabbalistic terms that mean "the visible world and the covered world", and refer to different ways of receiving vitality. In the covered world the creatures are covered and “swallowed” inside their vitality source- the water, and in the visible world the creatures are visible above the earth and exist separately from it. According to the Zohar (Part I, page 152), the story f Rachel and Leah mating embodies the connection between the worlds, from which specific texts and interpretations of matings virtues were written.

 

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