Journal of Modern Jewish Studies

ISSN: 1472-5886 (Print) 1472-5894 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cmjs20

On the architecture of the ephemeral: The Eternal

Sukkah of the Jahalin tribe

Diego Rotman

To cite this article: Diego Rotman (2017): On the architecture of the ephemeral: The Eternal
Sukkah of the Jahalin tribe, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14725886.2017.1350336

Published online: 28 Jul 2017.

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JOURNAL OF MODERN JEWISH STUDIES, 2017
https://doi.org/10.1080/14725886.2017.1350336

On the architecture of the ephemeral: The Eternal Sukkah of

the Jahalin tribe
Diego Rotman
Department of Theater Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem, Israel

ABSTRACT
Leading up to the 2014 festival of Sukkot, the Sala-Manca Artists’
Group, directors of the Mamuta Art and Media Centre at Hansen
House, decided to create a public sukkah on the Hansen grounds
as a temporary dwelling for its activities during the holiday. Rather
than constructing an extravagant or innovatively designed sukkah,
Sala-Manca, together with Itamar Mendes-Flohr and Yeshayahu
Rabinowitz, chose to delve into the sukkah’s charged meaning in
the Israeli context and to highlight the temporary nature of the
structure and its associations with exile, thus evoking
connotations related not only to Jewish history but also to the
current Israeli context and proposing a contemporary reading of
the sukkah, both as a concrete object and as a symbol. A
structure from the Jahalin Bedouin community, refugees from the
Negev (Israel) on the Jerusalem-Jericho Road, is therefore
purchased, dismantled, and reassembled on the grounds of the
Hansen House. This article discusses The Eternal Sukkah project in
its historic, political, and cultural context, and in the context of the
history of Israeli art. I deal with the relations between the Jewish
festival of Sukkot, Bedouin architecture, and Israeli ethno-politics,
as expressed in this project in which I was also involved as artist.

This article deals with The Eternal Sukkah project, one of a series of critical artistic prac-
tices developed by the Museum of the Contemporary (MOFC), the Mamuta Art Center of
West Jerusalem, the Sala-Manca Group, and a group of artists working with these organ-
izations. This project deals with concepts of home, identity, and local history in relation to
the cultural and political tensions that dominate the charged local landscape and topogra-
phy of Israel/Palestine.
The MOFC opened its doors early in 2012 in the former Palestinian village of Ein
Karem, Jerusalem. Works shown in the first exhibition offered commentary on local
history, urban politics, and the architecture of the estate where the exhibition was held,
a former Arab house in Ein Karem, situated midway on the pilgrimage trail to the
Church of the Visitation. The estate, which belonged to the Palestinian scholar Issa
Manoun, was declared “absentee property” by the State of Israel in 1948 and purchased
by the Jewish-Israeli-Polish artist Daniela Passal in 1972. In her will, Passal requested
that the house serve as an art centre.

CONTACT Diego Rotman diego.rotman@mail.huji.ac.il Department of Theater Studies, Hebrew University of

Jerusalem, P.O. Box 328, Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem 9190501, Israel
© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 D. ROTMAN

The idea of an “abandoned” Palestinian house or village contained by a Jewish and Israeli
art institution was not new in Israel, where the most notable example is the entire “artists’
village” of Ein Hod,1 and in another way the Israel Museum itself, established in 1967 on the
former land of a Palestinian village, its design inspired by the Palestinian village of Malha.
The image of a Palestinian village became, according to Efrat (2014), the myth of origin that
authenticates the Israel Museum: “ … before it was a place, an object, a landscape, it was
already a landmark … a fake relic of a (missing) past and at once a brave new model pro-
jected onto a white future.” In the catalogue of the MOFC’s first show, a fictional writer
and heteronym of the Sala-manca group named Maure (2012) contextualized this situation:
If, according to Mansfeld’s architectural plan, the Israel Museum structure was inspired by an
Arab village and built on the ruins of the village of Sheik Bader, and the Museum of the Con-
temporary is in itself an Arab house located in a village that had turned into a memorial
museum of an Arab village, it follows that The Israel Museum is a souvenir of The
Museum of the Contemporary.

As the Museum of the Contemporary was established in a former Arab home, the residence
itself, the “home” of the museum – its history, identity, landscape – turned the MOFC into a
self-reflexive institution with a hybrid identity, a prisoner of its own structure.
In 2013, the Mamuta Art Center and the MOFC were relocated to the Hansen House for
Art and Technology in the former Lepers’ Home in Jerusalem. The Hansen House director
invited the Sala-Manca Group members to create a public and “innovative” sukkah for the
Jewish festival of Sukkot 2014. After a long process of research and discussion, the Sala-
Manca Group together with Itamar Mendes-Flohr and Yeshaiau Rabinowitz decided that:
… rather than constructing an extravagant or innovatively designed sukkah, they would
delve into the sukkah’s charged meaning in the Israeli context and would highlight the tem-
porary nature of the structure and its associations with exile, thus evoking associations not
only with Jewish history but also with the Israeli context, and proposing a contemporary
reading of the sukkah, both as a concrete object and as a symbol.2

The Jerusalem artists decided to focus on Sukkot as a festival commemorating refugee

camps. If refugees, according to the United Nations, are those who, for reasons of persecu-
tion, have been exiled and cannot return to their country, the artists argued, then the ancient
Hebrews in the desert could certainly be understood as early refugees, and their Sukkot, the
huts in the desert, as a refugee camp. The question then was, first, how to bring to the city of
Jerusalem an “authentic” and contemporary house from a refugee camp from today’s Israel/
Palestine, and more precisely from a Bedouin community, and, second, how to turn it into
an “authentic” sukkah adhering to the requirements of Jewish law.
This article discusses The Eternal Sukkah project in its historical, political and cultural
context and in the context of the history of Israeli art. I will deal with the connection
between the Jewish holiday, Bedouin architecture, and Israeli ethno-politics as expressed
in this specific project in which I was involved as an artist.

The Jewish-Bedouin identity

From the days of Hashomer to the Palmah—we were dying to be like them … to talk like
them, to walk like them; we imitated them in everything. We regarded them as the model
of the native. (Nativa Ben-Yehuda)
 JOURNAL OF MODERN JEWISH STUDIES 3

According to Yael Zerubavel, the “native Hebrew,” a kind of hybrid Jewish-Bedouin,

emerged as one of the major identity options for Jews settling in Palestine in the first
decades of the yishuv (1880–1948):3
Zionist immigrants left Europe for Palestine at the end of the nineteenth century and the
early decades of the twentieth century embracing their identity as “lost sons” of their
ancient homeland, but they were also Europeans who arrived at an unfamiliar environment
with an unfamiliar landscape, living conditions, and local population. This duality led them
to struggle with the challenge of locating their position between East and West and creating a
coherent national identity that would articulate Jews’ roots in both … Jews’ perception of the
Land of Israel drew on centuries of European reimaging of the Holy Land and the biblical
past. Early Zionist landscape imagery thus presented an exotic desert landscape with palm
trees, tents, herds, and camels, and Bedouin-like figures. (Zerubavel 2008, 317)

Arabs and Bedouins thus personified and signified the connection to nature and the land,
and offered a contrast to the image of the weak, passive, wandering diaspora Jew. The
Jews glorified the ancient Hebrews “as heroic figures” and a model to emulate, but
those figures lacked the concreteness of a real and living model. This tangible ideal
was found in the Arab farmers and in Bedouin shepherds (Zerubavel 2008, 318). Both
groups served as a source of cultural knowledge and as a workforce employed by the
early settlers, and both represented for the Jewish settlers a symbolic link to the
ancient Hebrew.
This approach to the “natives” is expressed, for example, by David Ben-Gurion in an
article published in 1917 and devoted to the origins of the fellahin (Arab farmers): “If
we investigate the origins of the fellahin there is no doubt that much Jewish blood runs
in their veins” (Ben-Gurion 1917). The educator and writer Rachel Yana’it Ben-Zvi4
described the excitement she felt upon learning about some Bedouin families who
believed that they were descendants of Jews. The archaeologist Pesah Bar-Adon, after
studying Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University, joined the Bed-
ouins as an apprentice to become a shepherd. He lived and dressed as a Bedouin and
identified himself by a new Arabic name, Aziz Effendi (Bar-Adon 1981). The Bedouins
became a model for the Jewish paramilitary underground organizations Bar-Giora,
established in 1907 and Hashomer, established in 1909. They provided a concrete
image for the biblical forefathers and their culture (see Bartal 2007 and Goldstein
1998). For the Jews performing the part of the native, putting on the kafiya, wearing
biblical sandals, and cultivating horseriding skills shaped and expressed a new “native
Hebrew” identity that was specific and local.
In Maurycy Gottlieb’s Self-Portrait in Arab Dress”, painted in 1887, we can appreciate
the fascination of a western Jewish artist with the Arab and Bedouin figure. In later
years, examples of this hybrid identity can also be found in early Zionist art and litera-
ture such as Boris Shatz’s utopian novel The Rebuilt Jerusalem (1924), in which he
describes a futuristic utopian Land of Israel as a biblical paradise where the inhabitants
wear Middle Eastern garb and have biblical names but lead a modern life; Lilien’s litho-
graphs of biblical prophets wearing Bedouin clothes; and Zeev Raban’s painting Haifa
where he shows the city as oriental and idyllic, without inhabitants, with a contemplative
figure of a Bedouin looking toward the city from Mt. Carmel, though this Bedouin is not
a Bedouin at all but, rather, the prophet Elijah himself (see Manor 2005 and Zalmona
and Manor-Friedman 1998). This orientalist approach also influenced literary works
4 D. ROTMAN

like Yaakov Rabinowitz’s (1929), whose hero in The Wandering of Amasai the Guard
wears Bedouin clothes, lives like a Bedouin, and argues that without the Bedouins
redemption will not come, as well as architectural projects like Bialik House, designed
by Joseph Minor and constructed in 1925, or the Herzliya Gymnasium designed by
Joseph Barsky and constructed in 1905.
The romantic approach to the Arabs and Bedouins began to weaken in the 1920s as a
consequence of the intensification of the conflict between Jews and Arabs, and tended to
disappear in the mid-1930s when the hostilities between both groups encouraged a separa-
tist orientation. Starting then, the Jews in Palestine began to see themselves as modern and
occidental in clear opposition to the Middle Eastern and rural characteristics of the Arabs
(see Zalmona and Manor-Friedman 1998). In the first decades after the creation of the
State of Israel, Israeli Jewish artists (with some exceptions)5 did not deal with the
Jewish-Arab conflict, the Arab refugee problem, or the military government to which
Israeli Arabs were subject until the mid-1960s. After the Six-Day War in 1967, the situ-
ation changed dramatically and the Arabs returned to Israeli society and discourse in a
clearly different position, as many former peasants were now an urban proletariat. In
the arts, some started to deal with the situation of the Arabs from a critical perspective.
In 1972, Avital Geva, Moshe Gershuni, and Micha Ulman began a series of projects
called Metzer-Messer in the area between Kibbutz Metzer and the Arab village of
Messer. With the help of youths from both the kibbutz and the village, Ullman dug a
hole in the ground of both communities and exchanged the soil between them. In an
area of contact between the two communities, Avital Geva created an improvised
library (see Ginton 1998). In the 1975 exhibition Summer Workshop–Open Workshop
curated by Yona Fisher at the Israel Museum, Gideon Gechtman exhibited Hebrew
Work, a clear reference to the negative term “Arab work,” meaning doing a shoddy job.
Hebrew Work was an installation and documentation project based on his work as a con-
struction worker: he had joined Arab workers in the construction of the museum’s youth
wing. Gechtman joined the Arab workers and documented their and his own everyday life
as labourers. In the same show, Gaby Klezmer and Sharon Keren invited Palestinian
workers to build a fence in the museum. Yigal Zalmona, curator of Israeli art at the
Israel Museum, argued that those projects reflect a stereotypical conception of Arabs in
the eyes of Israeli Jews: the Arab as refugee or as construction worker (Zalmona and
Manor-Friedman 1998). In 1974, Pinchas Cohen Gan went to a refugee camp in the
north of Jericho, built a temporary tent, and conducted a dialogue with two refugees
about the State of Israel in 2000 (see Fisher 1974). In 1982, Igal Tumarkin made the
sculpture The Bedouin Crucifixion, a sculpture dealing with the marginalization of the
Bedouins in the Negev. Using material culture of the Bedouins and material from their
environment, he organized his work as a sort of crucifix. The Bedouin Crucifixion,
argued Zalmona and Manor-Friedman (1998), embodies a classic orientalist approach,
where the West makes use of logic and knowledge while the East is a material world,
passive and sensual. The Bedouin became the victim of the western Jewish-Israeli policy.

Sukkot
In that day I will raise up the booth of David that is fallen and repair its breaches, and raise up
its ruins and rebuild it as in the days of old. (Amos 9:11)
 JOURNAL OF MODERN JEWISH STUDIES 5

The festival of Sukkot is one of the three biblical pilgrimage festivals during which the
ancient Jews customarily came to the First and Second Temples to worship. Sukkah is the
name given to the temporary cabins or huts the Israelites erected in the desert during their
exodus from Egypt (Exodus 33:6).
The festival commemorates the exodus from Egypt by means of the commandment to
build sukkot – temporary structures topped by a covering of branches or fronds, making a
roof that should be open to the sky. The light of the stars and the moon enters the inner
space that is the floor of the sukkah should not be completely shaded and the shade must
be recognizable as shade.
During the festival, one’s house becomes one’s temporary residence while the sukkah
becomes one’s permanent residence (Hasan-Rokem 2012). According to the command-
ment, Jews have to:
live in booths for seven days: All native-born Israelites are to live in booths, so your descen-
dants will know that I had the Israelites live in booths when I brought them out of Egypt.
(Lev. 23:42)

The construction of the sukkah varies according to different traditions, economic situ-
ations, and available materials. Its architecture, as well as the traditional decorations of
its interior, are often expressive of popular crafts and tastes of the place and the period,
as well as of the political or religious ideologies of the sukkah builders. “[The] ethical
teaching of Jewish sages,” argues Galit Hasan-Rokem (2012, 165), “refers to the simplicity
and austerity of a desert hut when suggesting that the sukkah may convey a social message
… The historical memory should … foster empathy with the contemporary poor and
encourage almsgiving and social justice.” Nonetheless, perhaps because the sukkah was
approached as a substitute temple, or through practices of hiddur mitzva (enhancement
of the mitzvah), or design competitions, or possibly as an expression of social status, a con-
trasting tradition of the well-decorated sukkah – called sukkat noy – evolved over time.
The festival’s symbolic link to Jerusalem was amplified when several of the prophets
referred to the Holy City using the term sukkah (referred to in English as tabernacle or
booth). Jeffrey Rubinstein’s The History of Sukkot offers a diachronic perspective on the
festival by highlighting the dialectics and tensions built into the sukkah: as a memorial
site for the desert wandering of the Exodus and as a corollary to the Temple worship in
decentred religious practice, stemming from the festival’s agricultural genealogy, namely
the ancient booths in the fields serving the reapers and pickers (Hasan-Rokem 2012, 159).

The Jahalin
Following the suggestion of Alon Cohen-Lifshitz, director of planning at the non-profit
organization Bimkom – Planners for Planning Rights working with the Jahalin commu-
nity, the artists travelled to the Judean Desert in the Palestinian territories to meet
members of the al-Korshan family of the Jahalin Bedouin tribe. They wanted to
propose purchasing one of their houses, dismantling it, and reassembling it as a sukkah
in the Jerusalem Center for Art and Technology. The artists met Mohammed (Abu) Sulei-
man, the Hebrew-speaking representative of the al-Korshan family, in the western area of
the Palestinian village of Anata in Area C of the Palestinian territories,6 an area located no
farther than 20 minutes from Jerusalem. The artists were hosted in the traditional Bedouin
6 D. ROTMAN

tent made of natural materials, a tent that stood out in the local landscape of shanty
houses. The artists were served the traditional tea and listened to the story of the
Jahalin tribal and to their worries over the current threat of once again being relocated
against their will. The artists filmed and documented the meetings, which were also docu-
mented by Abu Suleiman’s son Tariq, so that the artists themselves became the object of
ethnographic research by the “natives.”7
In 1948, the Jahalin tribe was uprooted from its lands in the Tel Arad area of the Negev
in southern Israel and relocated to the West Bank as refugees (see Sharon 1975, 1977).
They settled in the area between East Jerusalem and Jericho, not as landowners but as sec-
ondary tenants on land owned by others, generally on the basis of unwritten agreements.
The Israeli political decisions to expand Jerusalem eastwards, especially after the establish-
ment and development of the Màale Adumim settlement, generated a harsh policy affect-
ing the Jahalin tribe, as describe on Bimkom’s website:
The State of Israel’s planning and settlement policy [related to the] area as an empty space,
consistently and continually ignoring the Bedouin presence there. This policy was first of
all manifested in the sweeping expropriation of some 3,000 hectares of private lands that
were under the ownership of Palestinian residents living in nearby localities, on the claim
that the expropriation was intended for the public good. Later, the development and build-
ing on these lands blatantly ignored the population already living on them, and were
intended for the sole benefit of the Jewish public, which is encouraged to settle there.
(Btselem 2014)

In 1948 the al-Korshan family settled in the Khan al-Ahmar area and pastured their
animals on neighbouring village lands in accordance with oral lease agreements with land-
owners from the villages of Abu Dis and al-’Izariyyeh. After Israel occupied the West Bank
in 1967, and as a consequence of the establishment and further development of the nearby
Ma`ale Adumim settlement, the Israeli army increasingly restricted tribe members’ access
to many of the grazing grounds. In the 1980s, Israeli authorities demolished tent encamp-
ments and at least two permanent structures inhabited by tribe members (Btselem 2014).
According to Oren Yiftachel and Chaim Yacobi, this kind of politics characterizes “a dis-
tinct regime type established to enhance the expansion and control of a dominant ethno-
nation in multi-ethnic territories” where “ethnicity, and not citizenship, forms the main
criterion for distributing power and resources” (Yiftachel and Yacobi quoted in Noy
and Hercbergs 2015). The Jahalin have lived in the same area for decades but Israel’s
Civil Administration in the West Bank has consistently refused to draft zoning plans,
and has thus made legal construction for them impossible. Tribal families live in tempor-
ary structures not connected to potable water or electricity. All their homes and other
structures are under continuous threat of demolition by Israel’s Civil Administration.
Today there is a master plan for building a Bedouin town near Jericho, Talet Nueima
(Ramat Nueima in Hebrew), intended to accommodate about 12,500 people from three
different tribes (Rashaida, Jahalin and Kaabneh). But the Bedouin families oppose “the
plan to cram members of different tribes and clans altogether [sic] in the same space
[that] runs counter to their tradition, their way of life and their livelihood,” as noted in
a Ha’aretz (2014) editorial, one of the few articles related to this conflict published by
the Israeli press (see also Hass 2014). Representatives of the Civil Administration visit reg-
ularly and prohibit any new building or additions to existing buildings.
 JOURNAL OF MODERN JEWISH STUDIES 7

Buying the Bedouin hut

In a performance of counter-tourism, the Jewish-Israeli artists talked about their artistic
background in the Bedouin tent and explained their project and the wish to connect
the long-past Jewish exile to the actual exile suffered by the Jahalin. They told the Bedouins
they wanted to transport a piece of one “hidden” reality to another location, where what
was hidden would be made visible. The artists wanted to purchase one of the family’s
shanties, and pay €1,300 for it,8 money the collective had received from the Jerusalem
Development Authority, “a statutory corporation that promotes, plans and encourages
the economic development of Jerusalem.”9 The purchase of the shanty was a clearcut
misuse of the budget and an act of counter-policy.
Abu Suleiman liked the proposal and suggested selling the artists the traditional
Bedouin tent made of lamb’s wool and open on the sides. But the artists clarified that
this was not the reality they wanted to show. They wanted to display one of the Bedouin’s
contemporary homes. These are huts built with found materials: iron, wood taken from
constructions sites, tin from water heaters or from advertisements signs. The roof is
made mostly of tin and is covered with sheets of plastic. The interior is decorated with
patterned fabrics bought by the women (Figure 1).
The Mukhtar (the head of the village) also gave his blessing to the sale; however, he
offered the artists not a tin shanty but one of the modern temporary structures the
Jahalin tribe had received from the European Union. But the artists did not like the
idea of relocating an EU sukkah either, and explained again that the aim was not to
reflect the “Bedouin’s life” but to expose their critical present in the centre of Jerusalem.

Figure 1. The Bedouin hut at Khan al-Ahmar, July 2014. Credit: Itamar Mendes-Flohr.
8 D. ROTMAN

Eventually, three different wintertime cabins from their village in Khan al-Ahmar, unin-
habited in the fall when the project was carried out, were offered: the artists selected the
biggest because of its size and design. Together with the al-Korshan family, they agreed to
dismantle the cabin in the dead of night to avoid the gaze of the Civil Administration:10 By
the time the artists would start reassembling the dismantled house as a sukkah in the
Hansen House, the al-Korshan family – using the money they received – would start
building a new and stronger cabin exactly in the same spot occupied by the former one,
so as to avoid a Civil Administration injunction.
The al-Korshan family was taking quite a risk, as being discovered would have cost
them both the old and the new cabins. The artists saw the family’s willingness to take
such a risk as an expression of powerful economic necessity, on the one hand, and of
the relevance of this project to their political agenda, on the other.
The legal economic transaction affected the shanty’s illegal status, making the illegal
shanty legal goods. The carefully executed dismantling provided a strong contrast to
the demolishing process as carried out by the Civil Administration. The de-constructed
structure of the Bedouin home was transported to the centre of Jerusalem as “construction
waste,” thus temporarily reverting back from the status of a “home” into raw materials;
this journey also materialized the ironic and tragic fact that the “home,” at least as
waste, can easily make its way to Jerusalem, a pilgrimage that cannot freely be undertaken
by most of the Jahalin.

Sukkot in the Bedouin sukkah

During Sukkot 2014, Jewish visitors had the opportunity at the Hansen House to enter the
“almost real” home of a Bedouin refugee family and to read and hear part of their story.
Concurrently, they could experience their “own” history as refugees, the Jewish holiday in
a “real” refuge hut. It was possible to experience the past through the present, to translate
the experience of refugee life from one people to another. The experience was defined by
Rabbi Jeremy Milgrom, an activist in Rabbis for Human Rights, with the following words:
“It’s a kosher sukkah, and dwelling in it during Sukkot totally transforms the mitzvah –
emotionally, socially, politically – into a more religious act than I’ve ever felt.”11 (Figure 2).
During Sukkot, a series of events was organized in the sukkah. Among them was a talk
about the situation of the Bedouin with the architect and theoretician Haim Yaacovi and
Rabbi Milgrom, and a panel on Israeli housing politics conducted by the journalist Niv
Hachlili. A third event, organized by the magazine Erev-Rav, was a discussion about
what artists had done during Operation Protective Edge.
The Eternal Sukkah was very well received by the press, the public and art curators, and
was included among the most important projects of the year by the Israeli internet art
magazine Erev-Rav. The Sala-Manca Group was nominated for the prestigious inter-
national Visible Award for socially engaged art projects. However, the project was not
well received by those who had commissioned the work. The Eternal Sukkah represented
an oppositional agenda to that carried out by the JDA, whose strategy, like that of the real
estate and tourist industries described by Noy and Hercbergs (2015, 2), “use[s] a variety of
media to promote an imaginary of Jerusalem that is resonant with national policy
directives.”
 JOURNAL OF MODERN JEWISH STUDIES 9

Figure 2. The Eternal Sukkah at the Hansen House, Jerusalem. September 2014. Photo: Diego Rotman.

From an ethnographic object to piece of fine art

The illegal Bedouin “home,” with its original destiny of demolition, changed its status and
became a legal Israeli sukkah. The next step in the project as decided by the artists was
merchandising the sukkah as an art piece. An object, argues Azoulay (1999, 19–21),
“can become an art piece only if it’s first of all museological.” The attribution of “art
object” to any piece of art is a consequence of the invention of the museum. In that
sense, the transformation of the sukkah from an ethnographic object into a contemporary
art piece was a new challenge for the artists. Driven by a critical approach to the western
colonialist history of art and by the idea of artist ownership as economic added value to an
object, the artists decided to sell The Eternal Sukkah to an art museum, charging it ten
times the price paid for the original dwelling.
The artists’ aim was to complete the translocation process of the ephemeral and illegal
refugee Bedouin house by rebuilding it inside the sacred centre of the Israeli art discourse.
To this effect, they contacted their dream client for this piece: the curators of The Israel
Museum. Amitai Mendelsohn, curator of Israeli art, and Rita Kersting, curator of contem-
porary art, accepted the artists’ invitation and came to see the work in situ. Both curators,
together with Mira Lapidot, the museum’s chief art curator, later watched the film and the
documentation of the project and accepted the artists’ proposal to involve the museum in
the process, adding new layers and meanings to the history of the piece.
It was perhaps thanks to the influence of this critical discourse about the museum’s
politics, or possibly thanks to the pressure of curator Amitai Mendelsohn, aided by Ker-
sting and Lapidot, that the artists finally succeeded in getting James Snyder, The Israel
Museum’s general director, to support the acquisition. The Eternal Sukkah was included
on the wish list of art pieces presented by the museum’s curators to the Here and Now
10 D. ROTMAN

acquisition committee of The Israel Museum,12 and finally acquired, a year later, for the
museum’s permanent collection.
The acquisition generated many opposing reactions regarding the meaning of such an
action. Some understood this action as a clear challenge to the Israeli art field, while others
stressed the dangers of cultural colonialism, western manipulation, and exploitation of a
“weakened” community.13 The artists, who were aware of those contradictory layers in
such an action, decided that in any sale of the work half of the revenue would be
turned over to the al-Korshan family as “copyright fee” for the design. The artists dis-
cussed the idea with the al-Korshan before taking any decision about the sale of the
sukkah in order to understand their position on a possible acquisition.14 After the oral
agreement with the museum, the artists decided to present the project not only to the
representatives of the community as previously but also to a larger group of the tribe
members. To a group of 25 young men of the al-Korshan family (women were not
present), they screened the documentary film about the project in order to discuss the
project and present the possible developments and meanings of the acquisition and
further exhibition of the sukkah at the Israel Museum. The artists answered the young
men’s questions and argued that this acquisition may not bring direct changes to the
tribe which some of the members present in the screening expected, other than the repla-
cement of the original house with better materials through the payment they received for
it. The artists stressed that they would receive another payment, half of the amount of the
sale of the sukkah to the museum, and that the acquisition in their eyes may represent in a
way a type of Israeli semi-official recognition of the Bedouins’ situation. It would become a
way to let many others know about their situation through the exhibition and possible
media covering. The al-Korshan agreed to the idea of selling the hut to the museum
and accepted, on condition that every exhibition of the sukkah would come with an expla-
natory text on the context of the project, its origin, and the history and situation of the
Jahalin.

Acquisition as a process between cultural recognition and colonialism

Such a collaboration between independent artists and an established institution is not
common in the art field in Israel. In a way, it challenged the well established and much
criticized politics of institutionalized Israeli art in general and the Israel Museum in par-
ticular. The journalist Littman (2015a) argues that the Israel Museum does not deal with
the “here and now” anymore and quotes in her article James Snyder, the museum’s general
director, as saying, “I’m an art historian. I’m the last person to deal with politics. We are
here to exhibit excellent and relevant art” (Littman 2015a). According to the art historian
Gideon Ofrat, during Snyder’s tenure the museum has become a more “honourable and
national” institution, abandoning its role as a platform for art creation and experimen-
tation (Littman 2015a).15 For these and other reasons, the role of the Israel Museum in
the process of creating further meaning to The Eternal Sukkah project may be considered
a surprising and challenging one.
The very act of acquisition added a new and important layer to the history of the object.
The new translocation of the piece raised new questions about the relationship between art
and cultural colonialism, and between art and real estate, and between the Israel Museum
and the community of the independent Jerusalem art scene. Not only was the piece shown
 JOURNAL OF MODERN JEWISH STUDIES 11

two months after the acquisition was realized, but a symposium was held with the partici-
pation of scholars, activists, and Abu Suleiman himself, who entered Israel only after
obtaining a special permit. A day tour to the Israel Museum was organized for 40
Jahalin children as well.
The acquisition of The Eternal Sukkah generated much response in the Israel media. On
the nationwide Israeli army radio network Galey tzahal, veteran journalist Rino Tsror,
interviewing Mira Lapidot, defined the acquisition of the sukkah as a historical act, as
“the first official recognition of the [Bedouin] diaspora.” Many other positive reactions
by artists and the general public were expressed in social media as well. But there were
also some critical and negative reactions. Some of the reader responses to an article in
the Hebrew online version of Ha’aretz about the acquisition related to it as follows
(Littman 2015b):16

I wonder who was bribed to buy this wreck from the Negev car thieves.
Some f**king culture. This is what they spend money on? Unbelievable.
Leftist shit bought with public funds.
A person buys a sukkah for 100 shekels, installs it at the Hansen House, and sells it as ‘art’
for thousands. Something is rotten and corrupt.

These comments were submitted anonymously, but some people went on the record.
Aryeh Eldad, a physician, politician, and former Member of Knesset for Ha’ihud Ha-
leumi (National Union) and Otzma Le’yisrael (Power to Israel), stated his views on a
radio programme aired on 103FM, one of the most important radio stations in the
greater Tel Aviv area. He described the Bedouins in the Jerusalem-Jericho area as living
in illegal settlements and enjoying the support of European non-profit organizations.
He commented on the illegal construction in the area aided by Israeli leftist NGOs.
After this description, he said that lately a new institution had been collaborating with
these “law-breakers and land thieves” of national lands, and accused the Israel Museum
of collaborating with “criminals” and of using art as a cover for these illegal actions.17
Another critical review was written by the Ha’aretz critic Galia Yahav (2015) who
argued that the artists had “appropriated” the Bedouin voice. In a response to this
review in the same newspaper, the Sala-Manca Group (2015) quoted the reaction of the
Jahalin to this article. Abu Suleiman asked the artists why Yahav had said that, as the
Jahalin had actually collaborated in the project since the very beginning. In fact, it was
Yahav herself who spoke in their names without talking with them first, thus appropriat-
ing the Jahalin’s voice (Figure 3).
The many reactions in the media and the polarized reactions to an art-work reflect this
project’s potential to deal with a major tension in Israeli discourse, namely that of cultural
borders and the “offence” of crossing them, the anxiety related to any attempt to construct
a “hybrid” historiography, house, land, or identity.
At the very moment that the ephemeral architecture of the Bedouin shack changed its
roof from recycled tin to fresh palm fronds, the exile of the Jahalin tribe was materialized
as a Jewish sukkah. The Eternal Sukkah can be seen as an ambivalent heterotopian dwell-
ing that represents both Bedouin and Jewish wandering, an unrecognized home with cul-
tural associations to the ritual centre of Jerusalem, the Jewish Temple.18 The Eternal
Sukkah stands for the “hybrid concept of places of belonging, which overcomes the
12 D. ROTMAN

Figure 3. (a) The Eternal Sukkah at the Israel Museum, October 2015. Credit: Diego Rotman. (b) The
interior of the Eternal Sukkah at the Israel Museum, October 2015. Photo: Diego Rotman.

dichotomy of having or not having a place of belonging, by superimposing … real and

imagined places,” to quote Miriam Lipis (2008, 31).
The Eternal Sukkah project, its dismantling and reconstructions, serve as counter-per-
formances to the demolitions regularly executed by the Israeli government at Khan al-
Akhmar and other unrecognized Bedouin villages. If buildings, as argued by Fregonese
and Ramadan (2015) in their study of the geopolitics of hotels, are part of the state’s appar-
atus of power, as much as legal and bureaucratic practices and discourses, the Bedouin hut
and The Eternal Sukkah may be interpreted as physical and symbolic buildings that subvert
the state’s power and law. In its illegal building in Khan al-Akhmar, as a hybrid icon of the
Jewish holiday in the Hansen House Gardens, or as an art piece in the Israel Museum – each
rebuilding of this structure can be interpreted as an attempt to “dismantle” a hidden struc-
ture, that of the state’s politics of not recognizing Bedouin villages and demolishing houses
in those villages. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Jahalin’s temporary home
can no longer serve as an object of longing for contemporary Israeli Jews, much less as a
model for a native Hebrew-Bedouin identity or a myth of origin (Zerubavel 2008). The
beautiful Land of Israel, that is, the traditional concept of Eretz Israel, the romanticized
lore of the Hebrew-Bedouin, canonized as part of Israel’s pioneering past, revealed itself
through The Eternal Sukkah with all the ironic splendour of an illegal, improvised shanty.
While the al-Korshan family was paid, and managed to bring the story of their exile
from the periphery to the centre of Jerusalem, many questions remain: how would they
interpret the venture if their “home” were shown in a kind of cross-ethnic exhibition dis-
guised as a sukkah at the Israel Museum? How would such an outcome have affected their
feelings regarding the project, their house, their exile? What is the stance of the artists, the
museum and the al-Korshan family regarding this act of cultural colonialism, contempor-
ary or critical post-modern orientalism or real-state activism?
“Till now,” said Abu Suleiman to the artists, “we used legal tools and the help of non-profit
organizations for our struggle, but this creative approach is new and very positive and we may
adopt it.”

Despite there being an open dialogue and a sense of collaboration in the project between
artists and Bedouins, there is a clear difference in power status between them. The artists
make use of the art system for social and political aims, while also using the Jahalin hut to
challenge the limits of the art institution in Israel. The Israel Museum acquired the
 JOURNAL OF MODERN JEWISH STUDIES 13

Bedouin sukkah. Along with the acquisition, the museum drew a precise map of instruc-
tions for the dismantling and reassembling this emblematic puzzle. What was formerly
construction waste became the object of a process of cataloguing and conservation
meant to prevent the deterioration of this object of cultural heritage. Such preservation
efforts would be among the most obsessive and meticulous processes of conservation
and canonization of an illegal building ever undertaken; the sukkah, further eternalized
by the museum, would stand as an iconic symbol of Israeli ethnic politics, a parody of
the Israeli claim to native status, a canonization process of the ephemeral.
In order to enter the museum, the sukkah passed “a process of purification, canoniza-
tion, and recontextualization,”19 as defined by the artists on their Facebook page. The
sukkah was exhibited for the first time in a collective exhibition indoors, We the People,
curated by Rita Kersting, from September 2015 till February 2016. The museum
showed the sukkah in a totally different approach, contrasting the approach presented
by the artists: although the exhibition opened only a few days before Sukkot, the
sukkah that became an art piece was going to be shown indoors, thus rendering it
useless as a ritual space. Inside it, the project film documented the process. The
museum disconnected the object from its context. No longer functional, the object
became symbolic, aesthetic and political, a referent to an action in which the museum
played a major role. The power of the museum lies not in its ability to exhibit the everyday
life of a refugee camp, which is already a strong act, but in the canonization of the ephem-
eral and illegal house, the recognition of the unrecognized Bedouin community. The con-
struction waste that became a Bedouin home that became a Jewish sukkah passed a
metaphorical process of “embalming,” a process of restoration and reconstruction of
this “strange creature” in order to get access to eternity.

Figure 4. The new hut built at the same spot of the former one in Khan al-Akhmar, November 2014.
Photo: Diego Rotman.
14 D. ROTMAN

The project influenced village in other ways: the dismantled Bedouin hut in the desert
left an empty space to be filled the same night with a new and stronger cabin. After a few
months, the al-Korshan decided to intervene in this cabin by dismantling its walls, leaving
only the roof, and covering the exposed sides with a shade cloth. The interior was arranged
with typical Bedouin carpets, mattresses, and other “folkloric” items. A large piece of new
cloth was used to hide the ceiling, creating the feeling of being outdoors in a typical
Bedouin tent. The new cabin became a focal point for displaying Bedouin culture and
hosting tourists visiting the Bawadi eco-tourism project, developed with the payment
they received from the museum acquisition. This new hut functions as a “typical”
Bedouin tent for tourists in parallel to the museum exhibition of the Bedouin sukkah
(see Rotman 2017) (Figure 4).
The day of the symposium devoted to the project and the Jahalin situation at the Israel
Museum, Mira Lapidot, the museum’s chief curator, came to welcome Abu Suleiman half
an hour before the beginning of the event. She entered the sukkah where Abu Suleiman
was in conversation with other speakers and approached him. Having anticipated her
he greeted her with a warm “Welcome (home).” For a moment, the museum became a
desert, The Eternal Sukkah the Bedouin shanty in Khan al-Akhmar, and the museum
staff and public Abu Suleiman’s guests.

Notes
1. Note that because Jews, most of them artists, came to live in the Palestinian Houses of Ein
Hod, the former Palestinian inhabitants of Ein Hod relocated to a new village named Ein
Chud on a nearby mountaintop from which their former village and homes are visible.
See: Yacobi (2008) and Jabareen (2008).
2. From the text published for the exhibition. See Sala-Manca (2015).
3. Yishuv means “settlement” and the term refers to the body of Jewish residents in Palestine
before the establishment of the State of Israel.
4. Rachel Yana’it was a very active figure in the Labour Movement, an educator, a writer and the
wife of the second President of Israel, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi. See Zerubavel (2008, 321).
5. There were few exceptions, such as Jakob Steinhardt, who through his work identified with
the Arab refugees problem probably as early as 1948, and Mordechai Ardon, who also dealt
with the issue.
6. The Interim Agreements between Israel and the PLO divided the West Bank into three
categories: Area A, currently comprising about 18 percent of the land in the West Bank
… ; the Palestinian Authority (PA) is endowed with most governmental powers in this
area. Area B comprises approximately 22 percent of the West Bank and encompasses
large rural areas; Israel retained security control of the area and transferred control
of civil matters to the PA. Area C covers 60 percent of the West Bank … Israel has
retained almost complete control of this area, including security matters and all
land-related civil matters, including land allocation, planning, construction and infra-
structure. The PA is responsible for providing education and medical services to the
Palestinian population in Area C … Civil matters remained under Israeli control in
Area C and are the responsibility of the Civil Administration. (http://www.btselem.
org/area_c/what_is_area_c, Accessed July 15, 2015)
7. About the inversion of roles or power relations between researcher and informant see Bilu
(1998).
8. NIS 6000. The rest of the original budget (NIS 4000) was used for transportation, the con-
structor/engineer permit needed to allow public to enter this public sukkah and symbolic
fees for the participant artists, and for the future storage of the sukkah.
 JOURNAL OF MODERN JEWISH STUDIES 15

9. “Jerusalem Development Authority”. Accessed July 13, 2015, http://www.jda.gov.il/template/

default_e.aspx?Cid=21.
10. Abu Suleiman offered to dismantle the booth, but the artists refused, arguing that they
wanted to do it themselves, and that they had to make marks in the house in order to recon-
struct it correctly.
11. Jeremy Milgrom’s Facebook page, posted October 8, 2014, https://www.facebook.com/
jeremy.milgrom.
12. Here and Now is a group composed of 40 members, supporters of the museum. They do not
need to have any specific knowledge of art but have to be willing to donate an annual amount
of $5,000 to be part of this group.
13. Most of those reactions were expressed in the opening panel of The Eternal Sukkah project as
reactions to the artists’ expression of their desire to sell the sukkah to a museum. The entire
session was videotaped and is part of the artists’ archive.
14. Since the acquisition of the sukkah, the Sala-Manca Group, in the context of the Mamuta Art
Center, has organized a screening of a film for children and a performance of the clown duo
Yuval and Tal as part of the Puppet’s Van Theater project, in addition to the screening of the
documentary about the sukkah.
15. Critical, political and engaged art has indeed been created and performed in Israel through
different independent platforms, art collectives, artists, and art centres, such as the collective
Artists Without Walls, the Digital Art Centre in Holon, He`arat shulayim Art Journal and
He`arat Art Events, and through the works of artists like Yael Bartana and Public Movement.
See Eilat et al. (2009); Eidelman, Mauas, and Rotman (2014).
16. Online version: http://www.haaretz.co.il/gallery/art/.premium-1.2682035.
17. Eldad (2015).
18. “The complex spatio-temporalities encoded in the sukkah resemble what […] Foucault has
termed a heterotopia,” argues Hasan-Rokem,

an inverted reflection of a social situation replete with condensed meanings […]

Thus, for a week every year, this object […] is constructed carrying within it the
cultural associations of both a utopian religious center in Jerusalem as the goal of
pilgrimage and the heterotopian huts of the wanderers in the desert. (Hasan-Rokem
2012, 164)
19. Sala-manca Group’s Facebook page, posted July 13, 2015, https://www.facebook.com/
salamancagroup.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
Diego Rotman is a lecturer at the Arts School, Theatre Studies Department at the Hebrew Univer-
sity of Jerusalem, and at the Bezalel Art Academy. His current research deals with narratives of
reconstruction and deconstruction of the Jewish house in Eastern Europe as reflected in post-Holo-
caust Yiddish Theatre and in Israeli Contemporary Art. Rotman is also an interdisciplinary artist,
and a curator and member of the Sala-manca artists group in Jerusalem and co-director of the
Mamuta Art and Research Center at the Hansen House. His publications include papers in
Studies in Contemporary Jewry (2017), Yerushalaymer almanakh (2008), Zmanim – rivon lehistoria
(2007) and in the books Bridges of Knowledge: Campus-Community Partnerships in Israel, edited by
Daphna Golan, Jona Rosenfeld, Zvika Orr; Do Not Banish Me. A New Study of The Dybbuk, edited
by Dorit Yerushalmy and Shimon Levy (2009, Hebrew). He co-edited with Lea Mauas The Ethno-
graphy Department of the Museum of the Contemporary (2017). He has co-edited with Ronen Eidel-
man and Lea Mauas Heara – Independent Art in Jerusalem at the Beginning of the 21st Century
16 D. ROTMAN

(2014). His book The Stage as a Temporary Home: On Dzigan and Shumacher Theater (1921–1980)
will be published in 2017 in Hebrew by Magnes University Press.

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