Broken By The Names of Flowers

In Judaism, Tikkun Olam is understood as an ethical obligation to repair a broken world. Intergenerational trauma and Zionist myths shape my understanding of self, family, and community. Israel's genocide in Gaza has created a cognitive dissonance between the values I was raised with and the reality I now confront. Spiritual and psychological healing demands facing this rupture and reclaiming the moral principles that now feel increasingly distant. This project reckons with what has been done to my people and what is being done in our name. We are not only victims of oppression, but perpetrators of carnage. I photograph my family's hands and feet, the parts of the body that carry and endure. Suffering is not abstract; it's baked into my lineage, passing through touch into the intimacy of home. Objects appear throughout the images as symbols of identity, but their meaning does not feel fixed. I sit with them, caught between reverence and doubt. These pictures challenge my own perspective as much as the ideological frameworks of the broader Jewish community. Questioning power is central to religious tradition. Though contemplation does not resolve the rupture it exposes, it keeps open the possibility of repair.