The Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies is proud to share an article published in the Globe and Mail on Friday, November 15, 2024 on "Jewish and Palestinian stories intersect within the walls of a historic sukkah" wtitten by Sarmishta Subramanian:
"Those 30-odd panels assembled into a temporary dwelling, a sukkah, that for nearly a century had been an annual fixture outside Naftali and Zili Deller’s homestead in Fischach, Germany. For the seven days of Sukkot, the Jewish harvest festival, it hosted guests and family meals.
Many observant Jews erect sukkahs for Sukkot. The Dellers’ had paintings commissioned from an artist in 1826. Among few to survive the Holocaust intact, it is now in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. A group of Torontonians, though, recently had the chance to interact with it, when a faithful replica created seven years earlier was erected in an east Toronto backyard, at the home of artists Diego Rotman and Lea Mauas. The pair arrived in the city in August from Jerusalem; Rotman is a visiting professor at the University of Toronto’s Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies, and Mauas is studying for a PhD at Queen’s University.
On a late October weekend, a handful of artists, scholars and local Torontonians gathered at their sukkah, which, per custom, has an open roof festooned with branches and leaves. Guests sipped lentil soup or took a seat inside, enjoying the odd array of paintings: Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, a hunting party in Fischach, the Dellers’ house and the Dome of the Rock set in a Bavarian landscape. A short film played inside the couple’s home; a slideshow presentation told the story of the installation’s creation."
You can read the full aritcle on the Globe and Mail's website.