About

CHESHVAN- SCORPIO

Cheshvan is a wet month, a time of year when the earth is preparing for a winter of rest after the harvest. It is also the month of the big flood when only Noah, his family, and the animals on his ark survived. Represented by the Scorpio, it is also is a time of recalling the deadliest of poisons, of thinking of the snakes and insects that inhabit the water and the land with venom. The turtle, which moves between water and land, is also used to represent Cheshvan. This Hebrew month roughly corresponds to October in the Gregorian/secular calendar.

Scorpio and Aquarius are inevitably linked through their connection to water. The left video shows live fish, dissolving into an image of the Stanton Street Shul zodiac for Aquarius. Set over a painted reinvention of a medieval drawing of the symbol for Aquarius.
electronic music: contemporary composer Bob Gluck, vocals by Zoe Zak

The Central video takes us from apartment buildings on the Lower East Side of New York City to memories of rural life in Eastern Europe. The Yiddish song in the background makes fun of the czar, who was not a friend of the Jewish population. Leaving their homeland because of unwanted military service, or because of raids on their villages (pogroms), the immigrants on the LES sometimes for the impossible: a peaceful life. music: traditional Yiddish song, performed by Sylvia Rubin Tepperman
(1911-1996)

Turtles are frequently used as a symbol of Cheshvan - Scorpio. The video on the right moves between the representation of a turtle from an Astrological Medical Text, produced in Southern Germany, 1480 - 1500, and a photograph of preserved shell of a turtle.
electronic music: contemporary composer Bob Gluck, vocals by Zoe Zak