Shabbat Table / Provence

Shadows of a Shabbat dinner spill across a wall, marking the absent presence of a family ritual. The Shabbat meal is an effective means of articulating an experience of familial togetherness—but what gaps lie hidden within the folds of the festive tablecloth? In Shabbat Table / Provence, Chefetz explores the Jewish custom of Hafrashat Challah—the tradition of separating a portion of dough. After forty days in the Land of Canaan, the biblical spies proclaimed it "a land flowing with milk and honey," yet also "a land that devours its inhabitants." As punishment for defaming the land, the Israelites wandered the desert for forty years. The commandment of Hafrashat Challah was given as a means of atonement for this sin. The act of separation embodies a deeper metaphor of disconnection: from land, from faith, from God.

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The Shabbat dinner is a memory rooted in Chefetz's grandmother’s home, who became religious later in life through her second marriage. Yet the notion of separation also echoes through the family’s story, which embodies a journey of migration, or rather a journey of wandering, from Algeria to Morocco to France, then from France to Israel, from Israel to New York, and finally back to Israel again. The family has been repeatedly scattered and reunited. Today, with only the immediate family living in Israel and the rest still in France, the sense of togetherness stretches across broad geographical lines.

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In the painting, the shadows of the Shabbat dinner face a framed image on the wall—perhaps a window, perhaps a painting—depicting a dreamlike house in Provence. Chefetz, who often paints houses across Israel, now turns inward, imagining a version of his own work in which the house stands in France, and the family remains whole.