Alles ist Windhauch

To mark the 100th anniversary of its inauguration, Berlin artist Simon Wachsmuth designed a symbolic gate curtain for the Former Synagogue in 2013. He called the installation "The Ninth Day", after the day commemorating the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in the year 70 on 9 Av (this year 13 August) and the National Socialist pogroms around 9 November 1938. On these two days, an invisible source of wind sets the curtain in motion. Inspired by the verses of the biblical book of Kohelet, that everything on earth is but the breath of the wind, Martha Keil speaks about the installation and its context. The St. Pölten musician Ronald Bergmayr makes the wind or spirit - the Hebrew word "ruach" means both - sound on his reed flute, the ney. It is one of the oldest musical instruments and symbolises the divine breath in Sufism and other mystical movements.