From Vol. 5, No. 40, October 6, 2024, the RAUH JEWISH HISTORY PROGRAM & ARCHIVES NEWSLETTER:
Vidui, the spiritual center of the Yom Kippur liturgy, is a confessional prayer at the boundary of personal and communal responsibility. It is an alphabetical inventory of misdeeds, recited in the first-person plural: We have sinned. We have transgressed. We have stolen. It describes a brokenhearted world, desperate for atonement. These words have become so essential to Jewish spiritual life that they are the basis for last rites.
Louise Silk’s new work “The Witness Quilt” subverts this experience. It borrows its form from a kittel, the all-white garment traditionally worn during Yom Kippur. The all-white underlayer of the Witness Quilt is embroidered with a “positive vidui” created by Rabbi Avi Weiss: We have love. We have blessed. We have grown. This version is not intended to replace the traditional vidui but rather to supplement it. If confessing misdeeds is a way to acknowledge failings, then confessing good deeds is a way of setting a path forward.
This underlayer is current hidden beneath hundreds of Bubbe Wisdoms, folk sayings hand stitched onto recycled fabric. It will slowly become revealed next year, starting in mid-February, when the Witness Quilt begins to be dismantled.
If you would like to watch a video about The Witness Quilt, you will find it at this QR Code:
“Louise Silk: A Patchwork Life” was on display in the Barensfeld Gallery on the fifth floor of the Heinz History Center through May 26, 2025.
BubbeWisdom 