by Melissa Shiff

Excitement is rising in Montreal over matzo as an art construction team prepares for Passover like never before: stocking up on three thousand pieces of matzo, they are set to build a multimedia installation that lets visitors journey out of Egypt and crush oppression.

Matzo Mitzaryim Tunnel. Click on the picture above to see more photos from the art exhibit.

“The Medium is the Matzo” project functions like a three-dimensional Haggadah and brings some of the religious holiday’s central themes into the context of contemporary social action. After viewing the installation at the Bronfman Center at New York University, media scholar Douglas Rushkoff wrote, “It’s a provocative and playful exploration of the real values underlying Pesach, transmitted to its audience through a series of experiential installations that hit all the senses.”

Visitors to the installation depart from Egypt by following a path through a Ten Plagues space and a Matzo Mitzrayim Tunnel to the Passover Projections part of the installation. Through the wonders of video technology, visitors become actors as they are inserted in real time into Cecil B. DeMille’s iconic film The Ten Commandments at the very point where the runaway slaves are crossing the Red Sea. In this way the installation invites them to obey the injunction to “Remember that you were slaves in Egypt.” After the visitors leave Egypt, they enter the liberation spaces of the installation: at the Miriam Bar, they quench their thirst with a fresh glass of water (or a cup of white wine) and in the Elijah Lounge they recline in a sea of four hundred pillows which all have the words “Crush Oppression” silkscreened on top of an image of a piece of Matzo. At the end of the installation (and online at japshopper.com), these pillows are sold to raise money for an organization that fights hunger.

“The Medium Is the Matzo,” which is being created with support from the Jewish Community Foundation of Montreal, is meant to start conversations about social action and the need to crush the plagues of oppression today. Consequently, academic and cultural events concerning hunger, human trafficking, and other modes of modern-day slavery will be held inside the installation this April at the library of Concordia University in Montreal. The exhibition thus seeks to demonstrate the continuing relevance of the symbols and rituals of Passover and their ability to motivate both Jews and non-Jews to fight for liberation and for repairing the world.

See more photos from “The Medium is the Matzo” on Tikkun Daily’s Art Gallery.