NACHI WEISS

A unique exhibition is currently appearing in Jerusalem and presents the world and lives of former ultra-Orthodox sector graduates who are becoming a growing community that formulates a new worldview in the heart of Israeli society.

 

Over the past two years, I have documented dozens of teenagers, young men and women graduates of the former ultra-Orthodox sector, who work and create mostly in Yoda's yard in Jerusalem. I enjoyed documenting a story of conception, of a period, a trend, and what will become history: their crystallization into a Purim community life of their own, and their development from the margins to the center of action in Israeli society.

In the hat the photographer's role is to see. Behind the camera and while writing I felt that the characters and mirrors - overt and covert - longed to be reborn. As I stared intently and watched the elusive happenings and my characters I said: in their days in the shtetl, they must have had some great instinct, a distant dream, some comforting thought that takes place beyond the walls or at least one thing to love and two to hate. If so, what today?

Embarking on revelations and reality

Yoda's yard in Jerusalem also provides for the creators: golden moments, reflections, inspiration and ideas are born in it at every passing hour. The visiting and active population in the complex is made up of the best graduates of the ultra-Orthodox communities who have set out on an independent path of discovery and discovery. They are endowed with grace, personal charm, talent, deep cultural baggage, a curious personality - and most of all, endless longing. There will be no man or woman in the yard who is not worth a story, and how not - documentation.

The yard serves as the mother base of hundreds of young men and women and is for them an incubator for development, doing, shared brotherhood and personal growth. A sequence of events, experiences, mental conversations, workshops, playing together, handicrafts, moments of grace and contentment pass through it every day. Those who enter its gates, are reborn in it in light of the opportunity to break free and express themselves with the best in them.

Among the young characters there is great ambition and stubborn movement. The dreams burn among them and guide them to grow, each with his own ambition: it wants to be an original screenwriter and it is a director overseas, it is to formulate a philosophical theory and it is to formulate an interface between Torah Yisrael and Zen Buddhism, it is to be a famous singer and it is a renowned poet, it is an urban architect It's a businessman and it's a startupist, it's a school principal and it's founding a cooperative farm, it's striving to be a leading public woman and it's working to formulate a groundbreaking economic platform. And at the same time - everyone has the same language, the same nuances, the same cultural baggage that they can share mostly among themselves.

All this diversity as a kind of collection and a concentrated mixture of human matter that at this point in time thus produces what is yet to come here. Perhaps the 'Baby Boomers' bunch of post-postmodernist generation is growing here, towards a rewording of a generation, ideas and essences.

The collection on display in the Bnei Horin / Surrounded Wall exhibition consists of a combination of various still photographs, some taken with a film camera and some digitally. In the moments of documentation, there were times when I was faced with opportunities in good conditions, at a sufficient time interval to produce the image, and there were fewer. On some occasions, the emotional aspect speaks for itself, and on others - even the daily routine itself.

I am proud to present to you the documentation of the period and the characters that walk through it. It is the fruit of cooperation with those photographed and the trust they have placed in me.

 

Nachi Weiss, Jerusalem, Winter 2020