Matzo and Modern Art

From a Jonathan Adler Seder plate to a mezuzah that evokes the parting of the Red Sea, high-design Passover tchotchkes for your home

By Stephanie Butnick for Tablet

It’s not very often you see a mezuzah that stops you in your tracks. But Tamara Connolly has done just that with the striking Paschal mezuzah, part of her Kli “neo-ancient Judaica” collection. Bright white with a blood-red line down the middle, it is the perfect mezuzah for Passover, at once recalling the blood smeared upon the doorposts of Jewish homes before the last of the 10 plagues, as well as the later parting of the Red Sea during the Exodus from Egypt.

“I’m interested in the idea that these practices came to be because of things our ancestors came across,” Connolly explained. “The act of marking the doorway to protect the home is a very poetic gesture, and we see where that impulse came from in the story of Passover.” Kli, translated literally from the Hebrew, means vessel, and Connolly’s mezuzahs are just that—sparsely adorned modern vessels through which Jewish narrative themes are explored.

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