Kindergarden

In the Chabad kindergarden, the children are tought that it is allright and fun to be jewish. Every friday the children bake special shabbes bread and a girl plays the shabbes mother, lights the candle and says prayers.


Family/Rodina

Family gives you the first social structure in your life, and it is where a great deal of your identity takes shape. The food you like, the colour of your eyes, the jokes you tell, the holidays you celebrate and the religion you practice.
If you are born in a jewish family you are also given something extra; a jewish identity. According to the jewish law you can only be jewish if you are born out of a jewish mother, so being jewish is not something you can become, but something you are.

Many of the jewish people I spoke with, are struggling with the difficulty of being jewish in Slovakia. Six year old Aron asking his mother “Mommy, what am I? Black, Slovak or jewish?”, Dominika is exploring her jewish identity alone, without her family. Her Palestinian muslim boyfriend jokes that if there were more Slovak jewish boys, she would not be in love with him. As a Dutch girl, I am shocked to see that many people are so afraid of being openly jewish here. It was very difficult to find people that wanted to be photographed for this project. But it was Chamie Meyers, the wife of the Rabbi, who gave me the inspiration to do this project. She said: The only way not to live in fear and get accepted is to be open. Teach your neighbours that it is a normal thing to be jewish!
And that is exactly what I try to do with these photographs: I show you normal families.