In mid October of 2023 Sophia Alhadeff and Sophia Munic met at a Jewish Voice for Peace meeting and began the process of making a community quilt. Together they brainstormed the idea to make a quilt as a landing site for grief and a memorial for the ongoing violence at the hands of the US and Israeli Empire.
Olam HaBa translates to “the world to come.” Drawing from the history and legacy of community activist quilts, this quilt acts as a communal practice of envisioning the world they wish to live in and create with their communities. They invited anyone who identified as anti-zionist to respond to the question: How is Jewish safety and Palestinian liberation inherently intertwined?
After putting out the call for quilt blocks at the end of November 2023, they received 36 blocks from the US and Canada. Quilts blocks were made at workshops in Minneapolis & Chicago, as well as independently. One by one they each arrived, an act of solidarity and a small piece of building the world to come.
Many hands made this quilt. Over the course of the spring and summer of 2024, a group of antizionist artists gathered at Spill Paint Not Oil in St. Paul, hosted by Donna Goodlaxson. Together, in community, they decided how the quilt would come to be – the arrangement of the blocks, the technique of assembling the pieces, the poem, the color of sashing and borders. It was then completed on Thursday, August 8th 2024. The Olam Haba Quilt received 4th place in the Minnesota State Fair Creative Arts Division group quilt category.
We regularly gathered over the assembly of this piece during on ongoing genocide, a recurring question emerged: What is the connection between urgency and steadfastness?
The group continues to meet for monthly HANDWORK hangs.