An installation related to the Sukkot holiday transforms the courtyard of the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles into an immersive, somber world.
The artist Jonathan York created a sukkah using more than a ton of reinforced steel and some 6,000 pounds of wood that he burnt, as well as charred pieces that he secured from homes that Hamas terrorists set ablaze during their Oct. 7, 2023 terror attack. A soundscape evokes 10,000 bees and a market near Tel Aviv beaches.
The entire installation, titled “Force Majeure,” which is on view until Nov. 3, “invites viewers into a space where nature, history and memory converge,” the artist and lawyer told JNS on a recent visit.
The title of the work, which is the sixth iteration of York’s Sukkah Project, is a nod to his job as an attorney. The concept refers to parties breaking an agreement due to unforeseen circumstances, such as an “act of God.”
The French term means “superior force,” York told JNS. “What is the force majeure of the last 12 months? I leave that up to you.”
York etched two Hebrew poems by the medieval Spanish thinker, physician and writer Judah Halevi inside the sukkah walls. The poet pined for the Holy Land, and traveled there at the end of his life, dying in Jerusalem in 1141.
“Zion, do you not ask about the wellbeing of your captives?” one of the quotes reads. “Those of your flock that ensue thy peace? And peace from him that in captivity longs for you, and cries tears like Hermon’s dew, and years to shed them on your hills.”
York told JNS that his transformation of the museum’s concrete courtyard is about centering the organic.
“At the end of the day, nature knows what to do,” he said. “We can learn from nature how to come back from tragedy just like a forest does.”

A garden flanks the sukkah with more than 8,000 pounds of mulch, which “symbolizes resilience and the enduring force of life,” the artist said, “even in the face of catastrophe.”
The museum, which commissions a sukkah each year from a different artist, has yet to do anything this ambitious, York told JNS. “I think even when I presented the idea, they still didn’t grasp how monumental this artwork would be,” he said. “I’m lucky to tell the story.”
‘Burnt wood because of its symbolism’
York, who has visited Israel many times, traveled to the Jewish state two months after the Oct. 7 attack, but even that felt like “getting there late,” he told JNS.
“I fully expected that within another month or another several weeks even, things would wind down, and we would find a way to bring the hostages home,” he said. “Unfortunately, not only did the story go on through my trip in May—and my trip again in July and August—but it continues to this date.”
It was no easy feat to acquire the burnt wood from Hamas’s destruction of Kibbutz Nirim and from Kibbutz Be’eri, which he piled in the center of the sukkah, he told JNS. It took “a year of friendship” to secure it, he said, noting the “tremendous honor” of bringing the artifacts to the Skirball.

“It was important to me because most people will never get this close to the ruins of Oct. 7 and to the physical testimony of what happened that day,” York said. “I wanted people to be within inches of those homes just for a few minutes even.”
York took a flamethrower to each of the other individual pieces of wood, which didn’t come from the Oct. 7 sites.
“I decided to work with burnt wood because of its symbolism,” he said. “It represents the destroyed homes in the kibbutzim, as well as the burnt forests in the north of Israel.” (Hezbollah rockets have burnt vast areas of forest in northern Israel.)
York noted that burnt wood becomes stronger and more resilient.
“It becomes able to resist the elements, and there’s a metaphor there,” he said, “that just as wood goes through the fire, when a nation goes through flames it can come out stronger on the other side.”

‘All the technical and critical components’
In addition to being “still a lawyer,” York makes films, including one that was screened at an exhibit in Los Angeles about the Nova festival, where terrorists murdered and kidnapped attendees on Oct. 7.
“In law school, I found myself always using my analytical brain, so I ran to take architecture courses and engineering classes and to study art,” York told JNS. “When I’m doing art, I’m thinking about all the technical and critical components, so they really go hand in hand for me.”
He also draws on his Persian heritage in his work, and the Jewish Federation Los Angeles young professionals program NuRoots hosted an event at the installation.
“The way Jonathan talks about his art and his activism is incredibly inspiring,” Sandy Irani, Program Manager of the Nuroots Community, Y&S Nazarian Family Foundation at the Jewish Federation Los Angeles told JNS. “I am always seeking spaces to bridge-build between our Persian and non-Persian Jewish Angelinos, especially ones that share a glimpse of the beauty of our Persian heritage.”
York told JNS that much of his inspiration for the sukkah installation came from his grandfathers. One was a prominent rabbi in Isfahan before Jews were expelled from Iran, and the other was “an engineer and military man,” who taught him to make things with “precision and discipline,” he told JNS.
Bahareh Aghajani, a lawyer and Persian Jew in Los Angeles, noted that the sukkah installation is not kosher due to an opening in the ceiling.

“Sukkahs are supposed to be a temporary structure, but this is sturdy,” she told JNS. “I think that’s indicative of the Jewish people. We’re sturdy. We’re not going anywhere.”
“Let’s see Hamas take this down,” quipped Michael Navi, another attendee.
Despite all of the hardships that the Jewish people have faced and continue to face, there is strength in community, according to York.
“As a people, if we all continue to look out for each other, to participate in the work that needs to be done, then we really don’t have anything to worry about,” he said. “We’ll be OK.”