p 23 Sefer ´Evronot, (ספר עברונות), Ms. Heb. 325, New York Public Library, Dorot Jewish Division
to visit the exhibition contact office@beki.org
For our 2026 / 5787 High Holidays Exhibition in the BEKI Galleries, we are featuring artwork and treasures that bring us into dialogue with the circles and cycles of our lives. We include roundness represented in art loaned from the homes of our members produced in a variety of formats and media, and artwork created by our members responding to the theme of circles and cycles.
Roundness and images of cycles permeate Jewish thought and Jewish art. Long before philosophers and scientists agreed that the Earth is round, they saw that the moon was round, and that the moon passed through cycles. Thus the changes in the moon became the basis for our Hebrew calendar, defining the cycles of our annual observances of holidays and providing a cultural link to the natural changes in our world.
This exhibition invited us to consider the cycles of our calendar and our lives. The Jewish New Year celebrated at the time of Rosh Hashannah is one of four New Years in the Hebrew calendar.* Every new start to the year is simultaneously the middle of the year — sometimes also the end. Jewish time is far from linear, and at every renewal there is a hint of a cycle, of the roundness of the year.
Woven throughout this exhibition are calendars from a Hebrew manuscript from 1668, produced in Fuldah Germany. Sefer ´Evronot, (ספר עברונות), Ms. Heb. 325, New York Public Library, Dorot Jewish Division, is a Treatise providing information and rules for fixing the Jewish calendar including intercalation of leap years. It includes charts of the Christian ecclesiastical year and important trade fairs.
* The others are: the first of Nisan (when the Exodus began), the first of Elul, and Tu BiShvat (the fifteenth of Shevat). See this excellent text by our own Noam Benson-Tilsen, written 6 years ago when he was still in high school.
Price list of original artworks included in the exhibition (click)
