Jerusalem’s Many Faces

In honor of Jerusalem Day, the Israel Museum invited art students from 20 Israeli high schools to participate in an outdoor sculpture exhibition. “The exhibit included students from the religious and secular Jewish, Arab and Druze educational streams,” reports Yonat Lemberger (third from left), principal of OTS’s Oriya High School for Girls, one of the honored participants. “It was fascinating to see such a wide variety of art students from across the country articulating, through their respective installations, what Jerusalem means to them.”

Oriya students chose to investigate the relationship between Yerushalayim shel maalah – heavenly Jerusalem – and Yerushalayim shel mata, corporeal, earthly Jerusalem, explains Tali Farkash (pictured, far right), Director of the school’s Ann Belsky Moranis Program for the Arts. “Our Tenth Grade art majors gave expression to these two aspects of Jerusalem, using imagery from both the spiritual world and the physical city’s daily life in order to explore questions such as whether or not the two Jerusalem’s can exist simultaneously and whether or not the twain ever meets. Students used a combination of sculpting techniques and materials,” relates Farkash. “These unexpected combinations served as a metaphor for the synthesis that exists between the various groups and cultures and living in Jerusalem.”