The liturgical poem Unetaneh Tokef (Let Us Affirm), which is recited during the Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur prayers and is sung on Israeli radio during the High-Holiday period, describes what happens in the Heavenly Tribunal during the ten Days of Awe between the New Year and the Day of Atonement: “How many will pass and how many will be created? Who will live and who will die? Who in their time, and who not in their time?” The poet describes three ways of changing one’s destiny: “But teshuvah and tefillah and tzedakah (repentance, prayer, and righteous acts) deflect the evil of the decree.”  One can interpret these three words as follows: Teshuva is man’s relationship with himself; tefila is man’s relationship with God or a spiritual, sublime force; and tzedakah is the relationship between man and his fellow men, as well as between man and society.

During the Yom Kippur ritual at the Temple in Jerusalem, the High Priest chose two goats fated to metaphorically atone for the people’s sins: “And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats; one lot for the Lord, and the other lot for the scapegoat” (Leviticus 16: 8). The Hebrew word goral, which originally referred to a lot or fragment, is a cognate of the Arabic word garal (small stone). Later on, in both the Bible and in early rabbinic literature, its etymology acquired a metaphorical meaning related to human fortune. In the morning prayer, these two meanings – lot and destiny – are mentioned together: “We are happy, how goodly is our lot, and how pleasant is our destiny.

In the Ethics of the Fathers (Masechet Avot), Rabbi Akiva discusses the eternal philosophical question of a preordained fate versus free will, summing up the debate with the following paradox: “All is predetermined, and there is free will.” This paradox addresses fatalist and deterministic philosophical views that negate the possibility of free will, describing man as subject to the influence of external factors: destiny, God, and the laws of nature.

The current exhibition opened in the month of Tishrei, in anticipation of the Days of Awe – a time when the concern with destiny and free will is highly present in everyday Israeli life. The works featured in this exhibition explore different aspects of destiny – personal destiny and collective Israeli destiny, existential-philosophical destiny, gendered destiny (both masculine and feminine), and familial destiny.

Yehuda Amichai poignantly captures the feelings and situations that these works touch upon: 
I’m the chimp of chance, the champ of chance, I’m a chum
of chance
and a chump of chance…
I am the dice in a game of chance, my face up or
My face down. By the way I fall I determine
My own fate and the fate of others.

The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai, ed. Robert Alter) Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2015), 452.

© Hana Amichai