Eser HaMakot / Ten Plagues

Moriah Ella Mason

An installation and duration performance “Eser HaMakot / Ten Plagues” is inspired by a ritual from the Passover Seder.  During the ceremonial meal, Jews recount the Ten Plagues God visited upon Egypt in order to turn Pharaoh’s heart and set free the Jewish slaves.  As each Plague is named, we use a finger to remove a drop of wine from our cup and place it on the edge of our plate.  It’s a way of marking that our joy in freedom is diminished by the suffering of the Egyptians under the Ten Plagues.  

Over the past few years I’ve been learning more about the conflict in Israel/Palestine.  What I’ve discovered is a story of suffering that was hidden from me - a story that is not often told by the U.S. media and that challenges some comfortable notions I have had about my identity as an American Jew.  I have grown up being encouraged to see Israel as my homeland, a homeland that a few generations before me was reclaimed and renewed.  But the reclamation of this spiritual homeland was not without consequence.  In this installation I seek to understand the ways in which my joy in Israel is necessarily diminished by the suffering of the Palestinian people under what I have identified as the Ten Plagues of the Occupation.  

For each Plague identified I have researched a numerical estimate of the destruction.  Then I have put a drop of wine on a paper plate for each number.  Some of the numbers were too large, they were beyond my reach and I will be unable to complete them during this performance.  In front of those Plagues you will see many empty plates waiting to be filled.

I have been asked why I have not included numbers for Israelis killed in the conflict.  I decided not to do so because the intention of this project is not to compare suffering to suffering, but rather to recognize through a ritual of prayerful empathy the suffering of a group of people I have been implicitly encouraged to ignore by the absence of reporting.