Broken By The Names of Flowers

As a Jewish person, I have inherited intergenerational trauma and Zionist myths that shape how I understand myself, my family, and my community. Today, Israel’s genocide in Gaza produces a profound moral dissonance between the values I was raised with and the realities I now confront. This project reckons with both what has been done to my people and what has been done in our name. Cycles of violence harm everyone; historical pain has been transferred onto others. We are not only victims of oppression, but perpetrators of carnage as well. Spiritual and psychological healing requires confronting this rupture and returning to values such as Tikkun Olam, the obligation to repair a broken world. In domestic interiors, I photograph my family, often centering on their hands and feet. I explore how suffering is carried in the body and transmitted through the intimacy of home. Objects appear throughout the work bearing symbolic markers of identity. I view these items with both veneration and condemnation, interrogating the beliefs I absorbed from an early age. This project challenges not only my own perspectives, but those embedded within the broader Jewish community. Questioning power is central to religious tradition. This work holds open the possibility of repair.