Connecting family and tradition (my final bachelor degree project)

I believe in families, I also believe that our religion is our tradition and culture and if we deny the connection we will lose our way. That's why I decided to focus on bringing the essence of our tradition to secular people in the best way. I wanted to bring the family to the front, this is why we eat together on a Friday night. Because we love and respect one another.

This is why I came up with three products that will emphasis the uniqueness and difference between family members. I wanted us to celebrate family and not the rules. We are sitting together because of the human connection not because of the laws.

So I built a ceremony in such a way that each and every family can create and build its own rituals using religion. Religion isn't the most important thing, family is!

We are using the religion to connect the people, not the other way around.

So what am I innovating here. A religious person does things according to religious law and commandment, while I am not so attached to this sublime. I connect to the surrounding, myself and my family. And the change here is the focus on what is important to me, the family.

I'm not going against the religion, I'm just trying to make the Friday ceremony more family oriented and not law oriented.

In my project I gave focus on three key ingredients of a Friday ceremony in a Jews home: - According to rabbinic literature, God via the Torah commands Jews to observe (refrain from forbidden activity) and remember (with words, thoughts, and actions) Shabbat, and these two actions are symbolized by the customary two Shabbat candles. Candles are lit usually by the woman of the house (or else by a man who lives alone).

So I kept the two sides (to symbol the two actions) but gave the option to add more candles and go according to family members, friends and so on.

- Recitation of kiddush over a cup of wine at the beginning of Shabbat meals.

In some houses you spill a bit of wine in order to ask for wealth, so I gave that a place in the ceremony but still connected the circle (symbols a full house/full connection).

- Meals begin with a blessing over two loaves of bread (lechem mishneh, "double bread"), usually of braided challah, which is symbolic of the double portion of manna that fell for the Jewish people on the day before Sabbath during their 40 years in the desert after the Exodus from Egypt.

Every person around the table is a member and we are all connected. In the bread ceremony I tried to give everyone its own place but still keep the individual perspective, everyone has its own dish with a different texture.

As you can see every family can create its own ceremony and own interpretation. We all have the same base, but we can decide how to celebrate and with who to celebrate this amazing DAY.

"Family is not an important thing. It's everything." ~Michael J. Fox