רוח ruach

ruach רוח is a space for gathering with community, ancestors, and kin belonging within the Jewish diaspora. This performance-based installation explores transcendence through intuitive vocalization and responsive sound in harmony and dissonance across temporal, spacial, and spiritual realms.

Voice and sound carry potential for connections that transcend linear time and feelings of distance, permeating separations between temporal and spiritual realms. When immersed in sound, we find ourselves in shared wavelengths with our communities, ancestors, and future kin. ruach רוח is a Jewish diasporic gathering space spanning across generations, communities, lands, and ways of being.

ruach רוח is born of the shared and distinct experiences the artists, Tamar Jungreis and Sof Kreidstein, hold in memory, Diaspora, queerness, and neurodivergence. Accessing interconnection and memory through affect, they reposition lack and loss as an abundance of feeling. Their intersectionality, their relationships to immigration and assimilation (as first and fourth generation canadian citizens), and the legacies of their ancestors are embodied in the timbres of their voices. This performance explores the ways voice can harness, reveal, and share the power of ruach רוח (pronounced roo-uh-ch), an ancient Hebrew word describing the sacred breath/spirit shared by all that lives.

Drawing upon Jewish folk and liturgical techniques, Tamar and Sof intuitively vocalize in wordless and meaningful expression. In this collaboration, they respond to each other, the legacies they carry, and a soundscape of Jewish belonging composed of community members’ and ancestors’ contributions. Sound guides ruach רוח as a ritual of passage over imposed barriers in time and space, while light illuminates the connections formed through it. Candles have an integral role in Jewish remembrance and mourning, though they carry hope - just as a candle shares its flame without growing dimmer, community care and ancestral guidance light the way for the future. ruach רוח reflects on this light and casts its shadows, visually echoing into a convergent space of past, present, and future.

The spirit of legacy lives in our bodies, breathing through sound and light. It resonates in resistance to silencing and erasure, echoing through community and future kin. ruach רוח is a vessel for complicated, vulnerable, and seldom represented elements of intersectional Jewishness. Nurturing intergenerational connection, ruach רוח holds memory, healing, and resilience in harmony.