Chad Gadya

120 × 180 cm

Oil on Linen

2026

Chad Gadya

Chad Gadya grew from my childhood memories of performing the traditional Passover song on mz kibbutz. As a child, I experienced it simply as joyful and playful; only as an adult did I recognise the repeated violence and death contained within its seemingly innocent narrative.

The painting inhabits the space between those two perspectives. The children remain absorbed in their play, while fragments of the song and its darker imagery emerge through layers of paint, text and erasure. The goat becomes a symbol of innocence and vulnerability within an escalating cycle of violence.

The work is about memory, childhood, belonging and war, but also about how the meaning of what we inherit changes with time. The darkness does not belong to the children, but to the adult consciousness looking back at something that once felt entirely harmless.