Moshavat Sukkot

Moshavat Sukkot (The Sukkot Colony) was held October 5-6, 2023, Hoshana Rabbah Eve, on the hill known as Mitzpetel (Lupine Hill) in Jerusalem Moshevet Sukkot was an art event in the public space – an art dialogue between the Sala-Manca Group’s project during the Sukkot holiday, Michal Govrin’s book Snapshots (Eng. ed. 2007 of Hevzekim, 2002) and the struggle of the East Talpiot community of Mitzpetel to preserve the hill and prevent building a police station on it, in the wake of Rami Levy’s plans to build a tourist hotel at the location of the present police station.
The sukkah booth is the outcome of written instructions on how to perform the Biblical commandment of “You shall live in booths for seven days” as the Israelites lived in the desert following the Exodus from Egypt. The idea of establishing a “Sukkot Colony” on Lupine Hill resulted from the desire to realize the plan drawn up by Arch. Ilana Tzuriel, a fictional character in Govrin’s book. Tzuriel planned to establish a temporary monument to peace on the hill and a study of the laws of shmitta (the seventh year when the Land was to lie fallow), which was to be a space of encounter between Jews and Palestinians, between people and nations of different backgrounds to propose a different perception of land, locale, and concepts of ownership and transience as a possible alternative for a different kind of existence. However, the Gulf War put a stop to all of Tzuriel’s plans.
Twenty years after Govrin published her book, the Sala-Manca Group collaborated with the author and the Mitzpetel community to expand, update, and realize Tzuriel’s architectural design on the last day of the Sukkot festival. On the eve of Hoshana Rabbah, participants erected the Moshavat Sukkot monument to peace dreamed up by Tzuriel. The colony was comprised of a replica of the Deller Sukkah (a work of art that became a kosher sukkah at this event), the Kingston Sukkah, and the Mitzpetel Sukkah. Guided tours, workshops, and group sessions at the Moshavat Sukkot facilitated a discussion of timely issues, renewing the discourse on the concept of peace, and aroused thoughts on locale, permanence, preservation, and transience. On October 5, 2023, installation day, there were tours of the Hill, an artists’ meeting, and a writing workshop. Several of the artists slept in the sukkah overnight, and on the morning of October 6th, the temporary monument to peace was dismantled, twenty-four hours before…

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