Background
“// held //” is a meditation on intimacy and longing, wrapping and unwrapping, and finding a constant relationship in uncertain times. Through the ancient Jewish ritual of tefillin (a morning practice of binding sacred text to one’s body with leather), I ask the questions: how do we access intimacy in times of isolation? Can intimacy with Gd be fully realized without human or more-than-human contact? What are the marks left on us by relationships or experiences, and what happens when they fade? As a genderqueer person who grew up without access to this ritual, I hope my expression will inspire and empower others who have been kept out explicitly or implicitly to explore the power for connection that this embodied ritual holds.
Produced by Riv Shapiro
Directed by Riv Shapiro, Francesco Passalacqua, Kristen Rulifson
Dancers: Riv Shapiro, Kristen Rulifson
Filmed by Francesco Passalacqua
Edited by Riv Shapiro
Music: "Karov" by Batya Levine, batyalevine.bandcamp.com
kristenrulifson.com, escolacqua.com
Special thanks to: Shirah Rubin, R. Ariel Mayse, Adina Polen, Arielle Tonkin, Naama Sadan, the Atiq Makers Kollel Cohort Three, Mariyama Scott, All Genders Wrap, Yonim Schweig z"l, R. Zalman Schachter-Shalomi z"l, Ibrahim Baba z"l, 'Grandpa Louie' z"l, Anna Halprin z"l
As I entered the Atiq program I knew I wanted to work with tefillin, having begun wrapping during the pandemic after the death of my friend who had first invited me into the ritual. I originally imagined I’d make an alternative set that perhaps others could make at home, but after taking the photos below in Chesed week, I became enamored with the imagery and layering possible in film (a medium I’m more experienced in than handcrafts). I started to see a performance ritual that would help me process what it meant to me to wrap tefillin in a time of minimal human contact, and ritualize the moment of reemergence post-vaccination.
Some foundational questions that led to this work:
What is the dance between being held and being constricted?
How do we find access to rituals of holding that have been held rigidly, that we may have been kept out of?
What freedom can we claim within them?
Prompts for Interaction
What rituals from your lineage have been difficult to access? How have you created access for yourself, or wanted to?
How did you find a sense of holding/contact during the pandemic? How did you feel the imprint of relationships that you couldn’t access physically? What are the marks left on you by the pandemic - how do you want it to change you?
Future Iterations
I hope to project the film in a space where participants can feel immersed in it and give them a piece of leather to play/wrap with and have a set of tefillin there for folks (especially those who haven’t ever touched one) to interact with and, if desired, learn to wrap with. I’d also like to collect interviews of people traditionally excluded from the ritual sharing their stories of relationship with tefillin.