New Versions Are No Less Holy

New Versions Are No Less Holy –

Shoshana Rosenberg

What happens in the process of sacred slaughter?

How can we understand acts of immolation and destruction through a lens of the divine?

Where do we draw the line between appropriation, innovation, transformation, and
abnegation in modern experiences of ancient rites?

Throughout Isabella Hone-Saunders’ exhibition, these questions are raised again and again. Over a four-year period of intensive research into the history of their family and the communities they helped to construct, Hone-Saunders has constructed a sub-archive, revealing an artery running deep within the flesh of contemporary South Australia. The documents included in this exhibition are equal parts officially archived records, personal footage, and sculptures touching on the part-hidden, part-spotlighted impacts of Jewish people in the artist’s hometown. Tracing their lineage back to the life of Solomon Saunders, the artist’s great, great grandfather, who migrated to Australia in the 1850’s, Ritual Slaughterer uses one person’s lineage to explore the symbolism, rituals, and mystical parallels that inform Jewish lives, as well as expanding understandings of the private and collective rituals which we all take part in.

Considering the centrality of the Holocaust in the archetypical narrative of Jewishness, you may find yourself unsure of how to connect with the narratives of Jews whose families were spared these horrors. Ritual Slaughterer provides insight into this experience, specifically in its display of the complexity of Jewish life even without the presence of this specific intergenerational trauma. The archival materials used in the exhibition, which have been undoubtedly stolen or otherwise obtained through unethical means and sealed behind paywalls and locked doors, were meticulously rescued and documented by the artist. Other materials have had to be recovered or recreated in a transgressive manner, their original forms lost to the ravages of time and the ever-diminishing allowance of Judaism in public spaces. Ephemeral, degradable symbols of Jewish faith and labour have been preserved to ward off their natural deterioration, an attempt to outlive those forces of destruction which Jewishness continues to face. One conversation that this exhibition serves to highlight are the ways that white, Christian, Australian culture has operated to diminish, insulate, and reject all “other” forms of spirituality and cultural practices, including not only Judaism but First Nations practices, Islam, and others.

These works also engage with other aspects of both Hone-Saunders’ life and those of many other Jews who have grown up in Australia: queerness, madness, assimilation, and what it means to survive, escape, and perhaps re-comprehend or embrace slaughter. The positioning of Jewish influence as a historical curiosity (which can be viewed for a price), the gated and guarded places of worship, the threadbare nature of many Australian-born Jews’ connection to community and culture – these are all markers of the impact of Australian assimilation, hatred of the Other, and the colossal weight of Christian hegemony. These experiences ripple across generations, sending epigenetic signals that each new generation of Jews must contend with. In here lies pain, sickness, and rejection, but like those who come before us, we are still able to choose our responses. Where there is pain, we can focus on pleasure, where there is sickness there can be healing, and where there is rejection, we can embrace ourselves and others like us. You need look no further than the mikveh, the process of immersion so important to our experiences of renewal, to understand how one might wash away suffering or a former self.

Jewishness, in all its glory and interconnectivity with many aspects of life, survives in the city of Adelaide to this day. You may no longer be able to hear the sound of the cantor’s voice resonate through the walls of the building on Synagogue Place, but other songs of protest and life-affirmation can still be heard through the speakers ofMary’s Poppin, the queer club, which now resides within those walls. We may have to recreate our own rituals, language, and artefacts, but through immersion in the emotions these experiences generate we can come to understand that these new versions are no less holy. We can witness the divinity of even the most grim of circumstances – the divinity of survival, of holding onto every drop even as we are being bled, of knowing that we have gone through it all and will again, of the divinity of knowing that מירװעלןזײאיבערלעבן (mir veln zey iberlebn) – we will outlive them.

Shoshana Rosenberg (MSexol) is an independent researcher based in Naarm/ Melbourne. Their writing focuses on queer and trans experiences and the ways these intersect with faith, class, and our bodyminds.