2016 / This piece grew out of the gift of a very old beaded purse, from which only the enameled frame was salvageable. I had a vision of a golden purse that stretched down to the floor, once shiny but now tarnished and riddled with holes. What could this be, I wondered? Only after I had finished research for another project Blood Libel did I recognize what the vision represented.

This spiraling timeline of violence against Jews begins with the Babylonian destruction of the first temple in Jerusalem in 586 BCE, and ends with the 2015 French terrorist attack in a kosher market in Paris. Although violent acts inflict damage—sometimes terrible damage—on the Jewish people, they cannot unravel their history.