About the Project | Missing Mezzuzot

For our children, so they may know from where they came

The Missing Mezzuzot of Zdunska Wola celebrates and brings to life the vibrancy of the Jewish community of Zdunska Wola, Poland before 1939

The Missing Mezzuzot of Zdunska Wola

Bringing memory into the future

-a living history project-

Estelle Rozinski
missingmezzuzot@gmail.com
+61 413 557 133

What is ‘The Missing Mezzuzot of Zdunska Wola’?

The Missing Mezzuzot of Zdunska Wola is an interactive exhibition/installation of 3,000 ‘mezzuzot’ created as a metaphor and a celebration of each of the Jewish families living in Zdunska Wola, Poland before 1939.

A mezzuzah (plural: ‘mezzuzot’) is a small decorative box affixed to the doorpost of a Jewish home that encases the Shema, the most important prayer in Judaism. This holy prayer is inscribed on parchment in Hebrew, serving as a reminder to enter and leave the home in peace and to maintain the sanctity of the home.

Zdunska Wola, Poland is the birthplace of my mother’s family.

The First Hundred

Opening in Zdunska Wola (ZW), on 27 August 2017 at 12:00 pm

An exhibition featuring 100 mezzuzot from the complete installation of 3,000 will open on the 75th anniversary of the liquidation of the ZW ghetto at the

Muzeum Historii Miasta Zduńska Wola ul. Złotnickiego 7ile size

This exhibition will be on loan to the Museum for three months. It is anticipated that the exhibition will then travel throughout Poland and then to select international museums.

The Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw, has scheduled a series of lectures on the Jews of ZW as part of their Three Culture Summer Workshop Program 2017.

The Project’s Purpose

To celebrate and bring to life the vibrant energy and diversity of Jewish life in the Polish town of Zdunska Wola before 1939
To celebrate all facets of the diverse lives of the ZW Jewish Community: family, home, work, cultural life, religion and politics
To provide the next generations with a sense of their history alongside the knowledge of the Holocaust
To challenge Jewish stereotypes
To acknowledge the contributions of this small Jewish community of approximately 12,000 people within the wider community of ZW
To inform and to educate the wider public
To provide a stimulus for intergenerational discussion
To encourage and promote intercultural dialogue and understanding
To give a sense of the physical magnitude of the profound loss
To preserve the names of those who disappeared without a trace
To create an engaging and interactive work of enduring beauty
To heal
To provide a template for other communities fractured and traumatised by war and hatred

How?

A unique questionnaire has been designed to evoke meaningful, moving and historical vignettes from the participating families. For example:
What colour do you see when you think of ZW? Red
Why red? You know that my grandfather’s beard was red. I can still feel him tickling me with the bristles of his beard.

Each response has been recorded in some way, then digitally archived by using text, video, sound, music and/or photographs, and then digitally linked to the family mezzuzah.

The mezzuzot will be wall mounted as an installation and the family’s stories accessed by an interactive map and/or iPad (tablet) in the room of the exhibition.

info

The Design

Each mezzuzah is housed in 2 glass test tubes. The outer test tube has a glass stopper with a vertical disc. The disc is imprinted with a spiral resembling a fingerprint.

The inner test tube contains the parchment of the Shema prayer, wound in such a way to show its text. This inner tube is sealed. It is surrounded, and partially hidden, by light coloured soil from Jerusalem and a thin layer of dark soil from ZW.

Where there are no Jewish descendants from ZW the inner tube will remain visible, as the soil will reach the half way mark of the inner tube.

Where there are descendants, the inner tube will be entirely surrounded by the soil(s) of the ZW descendants’ international diaspora(s).

Design choices and considerations

Glass was chosen for the mezzuzah casing because of its transparency, its illuminating qualities and its ability to reflect light. Light functions as a metaphor for integrity, clarity of thought, education and having an open mind.

The uniformity of the design is deliberate so as not to differentiate between rich or poor, religious or secular, educated or otherwise, in the same way that

all Jews are buried in a uniform pine box or wrapped in a prayer shawl.

The soil from Jerusalem at the base of each mezzuzah unites every Jewish person, as Jerusalem is the ancestral land of our forebears; every Jewish grave is sprinkled with soil from Jerusalem.

The soil from ZW creates the divide.

For some families it represents a tragic discontinuation. For others, where the ZW soil meets soil from elsewhere, it represents survival and the continuity of future generations.

The design of the mezzuzah is deliberately cylindrical so that it cannot easily be affixed to the doorpost of a house. This is because one cannot so easily replace what was destroyed. This project is not in any way related to the reclamation of Polish Jewish property (please see the disclaimer at the end of these project notes).

The Website

The Website www.missingmezzuzot.com, currently under construction, forms the heart of the project.
It is the hub for all of our documents, stories, anecdotes, music and pictures.
The installation directs the audience to information stored on the website, creating an interactive and dynamic exchange.

The Installation

Each mezzuzah will be mounted on a sheet of Perspex (20 cm x 30 cm)
The name of the family will be engraved on a small brass plaque that will sit below each mezzuzah
The Perspex sheets will line 4 wall panels
The mezzuzot will be organised in a configuration (to be finalised) of 5 across x 5 down

display

An iPad or tablet will mirror the installation, with an onscreen icon corresponding to each mezzuzah.
A tablet will be placed beside or at the base of each of the four mezzuzah panels.

When an icon on the tablet is touched, the corresponding mezzuzah on the installation board will illuminate, showing a particular family’s current location or tragic fate. Simultaneously, vignettes, video clips, stories, music, anecdotes and/or photographs of each chosen family will open on the tablet, enabling the audience to access a family’s story.

An accompanying catalogue, entitled ‘Looking for Zdunska Wola’ will feature a foreword by curator Estelle Rozinski, curatorial essays, family images, archival documents, stories and statements.

Please note this is not a religious project, nor is it a project related to restitution or the reclamation of property.