Being-at-Home I

The world is full of light. The darkness that swells is but a shadow that scatters in the face of the light.

When the world gets dark, the lightness of being retreats inside. The doorway- the threshold between the outside and the inside- beckons us, calls us inwards. The cold, the noise, it stops at the doorway.

Inside, enveloped by the warmth of being-at-home. Of family, of connection. To arrive back at home, the days end embedded in its beginning. To return. Having turned outwards towards the world, we re/turn, roundabout, backwards now. Turning inwards we shut the door on the cold noise of exile.

In the absence of the “Home”, the Beit ha-Mikdash, we build a “home”, a miniature, the Mikdash Me’at, a copy of some unimaginable original whose memory is nothing but the endless hope towards its future restoration.

The kitchen, the pleasure of sustenance, where the exterior becomes the interior. Warmth and cold working in unison, cold sterile utensils turned vessels of the holy. The promise of satiation, and the murmuring of a future hunger. The table, elevating that which was degraded.

The playroom, the faithful ignorance of innocence. Meaningful meaninglessness. The space of imagination.

The hallway, transitional space, running-and-returning between the mindlessness of play, the doubling sha’a’shua and the seriousness of the study.

Each room with its own sense, the mood of the room…