Pillow Talk at the Israel Museum
David Polonsky?s illustration for Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen?s ?A Moonless Night.? Image by Courtesy of the Israel Museum
Crossposted from Haaretz
David Polonsky?s illustration for Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen?s ?A Moonless Night.? Image by Courtesy of the Israel Museum
When Kobi Ben Meir was working on the Israel Museum’s new “Good Night” exhibition, he constantly had the song “Layla, Layla” playing in his head. In the end, the curator chose to sing the song on camera, in a hesitant voice and with a very embarrassed expression. It’s now part of the video artwork “Lullaby” and displayed as part of the exhibition.
In this marvelous video work, artists Hadassa Goldvicht and Anat Vovnoboy filmed visitors and the museum staff — from the director and the curators to the security guards and the sanitation workers — singing their own private lullaby: The one that their mother sang to them in childhood. The two artists set up a small room in the museum, and for months invited people to enter and be filmed. The enclosed space gave the participants a sense of privacy and allowed them to surrender to both the camera and their feelings while singing.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Dive In
Most Popular
- 1
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 2
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 3
Fast Forward Cory Booker proclaims, ‘Hineni’ — I am here — 19 hours into anti-Trump Senate speech
- 4
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Texas bakery reportedly becomes first bagel shop to be named James Beard Award finalist
-
Fast Forward ‘That’s Simchas Torah’: The Jewish Val Kilmer moment you might have missed
-
Opinion I co-wrote Biden’s antisemitism strategy. Trump is making the threat worse
-
Fast Forward From ‘October 8’ to ‘The Encampments,’ these new documentaries illuminate the post-Oct. 7 American experience
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.