Sderot Memorial Site
Environmental Design: Monument, Memorial Path and elements of commemoration, Sderot, 2024
Client: City of Sderot, The Sderot Foundation and Sderot Tourism
Execution: The Sderot Economic Corporation Ltd.
Environmental graphic design: Kasher Design
Landscape architecture: Heli Ellul Tselniker Ltd.
Curators, content and visitor experience : Shlomit Atzaba Ltd.
Project Management: Dror Leibaקישור בעברית
The Jewish holidays of the Hebrew month of Tishrei normally afford us a respite from our usual routine. Not this year. We stood for moments of reverent silence, with the horrors of 7 October 2023 still fresh in our minds and hearts, and we are still fighting for our very existence, as individuals and as a nation. It was a great privilege to participate in the project, to honor the memory of Sderot residents murdered in the barbaric invasion, and the families they behind.
Our part in the project was a collaboration between environmental designer Cecilia Vitas and the environmental graphics firm of Kasher Design, which included planning the commemorative components on which the site is based. The towering monument, erected where the police station once stood, provides the conceptual foundation of the Memorial Path in the garden.
The Eternal Pillars Memorial monument stands on the site of the devastated police station. It consists of 18 elements; the numerical “value” of the two Hebrew letters that make 18 spells “life”. A group of columns, about 11 meters high, stand close together, soaring skyward as one structure. Its center is deliberately vacant: no go-between is needed to describe the wonderful people of Sderot, to relate the local spirit, the communal sense of mutual responsibility, and the ability to stand together, upright and protective, alongside each other, even at the harshest moments. The vacant space reminds us of the people of Sderot and their heroic defenders who were killed on October 7th. They will always be missed, yet they remain inseparable from the community. Their presence is still felt.
The open structure of the columns invites the visitor to wander among them. A look upwards reveals the letters of the Hebrew alphabet etched in sweeping lines on the tops of the columns. They symbolize the spirit and prayer inspired by a line in the Gemara – part of the Talmud, the sacred Jewish texts second only to the Bible itself – “parchment can burn, but the letters flourish.” Despite the terrible catastrophe we have endured (and this is the message), a Torah scroll may be destroyed, but the spirit, represented by the letters of the Torah, will not be broken: it will endure forever.
The columns are made of steel, covered by concrete panels etched with calligraphic Hebrew letters and quotations. The quotations were selected through a public engagement process with the residents of the city of Sderot, led by the curators. The purpose was to give the letters an appearance of permanence, to mark them in the public domain and thus in our memory, so that we will not forget what happened. It will remain as well in the memory of generations to come. Whoever wishes and is able can identify hidden words within the combination of letters on the columns, giving the space an additional level of significance as the source of resilience, consolation, hope, and prayer.
Calligraphic letters: David Goldstein
The idea behind the Memorial Path in memory of the residents of Sderot who fell in the so-called ‘Iron Swords War’ – was to create a landscape sliced in two, symbolizing rupture and revival. The ruined police station at the bottom of the garden provides the foundation, while above it flowers and plants flourish. The path is a thoroughfare through the lower garden, flanked by a unique “gabion,” an uninterrupted construction of steel rebars enclosing the rubble of the shattered police station. The visitor encounters plaques along the way that tell the stories of the fallen, other commemorative elements, and spaces on the upper part of the gabion dedicated to memorial candles, which allow visitors to add to the solemnity of the site with their own flames. The flourishing garden and greenery can be enjoyed from above.
