Letter of leadership

The project explores the relationship between Jewish history and the evolution of the Hebrew script, based on a research-based survey I conducted on both subjects. Through the accompanying book, I constructed a visual timeline that traces the parallel transformations of the Jewish people and their script over the generations, grounded in the belief that the Hebrew script belongs to the Jewish people and is intrinsically intertwined with their historical narrative. Throughout the research, I focused on four key periods of Jewish leadership—moments in which the people chose to lead with national spirit and visionary determination: the Hasmonean period, the Bar Kokhba revolt, the spiritual and intellectual flourishing of the 11th century in exile, and the early Zionist movement, as represented by Shlomo Zalman Schocken. For each period, I created a digitized revival of typographic findings from that era of leadership, and used them to design a series of posters in the style of the pashkevil—a typographic protest medium rooted in ultra-Orthodox street culture. Through these historical letterforms, I seek to examine the nature of leadership in our time and raise questions about responsibility, national identity, and the essence of leadership. What does Jewish leadership look like today? And does it still carry the spirit that once guided us?