The project is based on the images collected and published for the first time in volume by Giulio Busi in his book Qabbalah Visiva (Einaudi 2005). “This book attempts for the first time a history of mystical drawing in the Jewish tradition. It is an astonishing atlas of the Jewish imagination, an exploration in a territory still little or nothing touched by philological studies, yet fundamental for the creative confluence of religion, philosophy, mysticism and aesthetics […] With their diagrams, the Kabbalists fixed on paper the proportions of the divine architecture of the heavens. The harmony of the forms tries to capture the mystery of creation: the game of the sefirot, the cosmic war between good and evil, the outbreak of sin and the enigma of divine clemency are translated into spatial relationships, and often coagulate into word-places, in which the Hebrew script combines with acute formal inventions”. (Giulio Busi)

As the curator, Davide Quadrio, says, the harmony of forms tries to capture the mystery of creation: the game of sefirot, the cosmic war between good and evil, the bursting of sin and the enigma of divine clemency are translated into spatial relationships, and often they coagulate into places-word, in which Jewish writing is combined with acute formal inventions.
The installation consists of a carpet, one but multiple, which contains ten drawings of the Jewish Kabbalah, black chenille on a white cotton background. At the center of the path, the artist has placed a sort of Sukkah, a hut, a light metal construction from whose “roof” comes down a white cloth. A yad is suspended there, a sculpture/hand that in Jewish tradition serves to follow the sacred scriptures that cannot be touched directly by the hand of man. Dalò invites us to go “beyond”: just as the religious subjects of the paintings want to be viewed in an ascending way, from bottom to top, so the installation of Dalò accompanies the visitor along a path that extends horizontally for several meters.

Shul was born around a particular event for the city: the Jewish Congress of Forlì, an important gathering of delegates of Jewish communities from various cities of northern and central Italy that took place from May 16 to 18, 1418. The important congress, which saw the presence of the delegates of the Jewish communities of Padua, Ferrara, Bologna, the cities of Romagna and Tuscany, as well as Rome, was convened in Forlì, the seat of an ancient and flourishing Jewish community: there decisions were made on the behavior (ethical and social) that the Jews should keep and a delegation was sent to Pope Martin V for the confirmation of the old privileges and the granting of new ones. In particular, it was asked to abolish the anti-Jewish legislation wanted by the antipope Benedict XIII (Etsi doctoribus gentium). Martin accepted the requests of the congress.

As in the naos of the Greek temple – the sacred cell in which the iconic image of the god was kept – also in Shul, along the way, scattered with carpets, we can find a mysterious alcove. It is an ethereal and light construction, cleverly veiled to conceal and protect the secret of the Byzantine icon. This consists of a golden tablet that offers itself in all its pure simplicity of formal absence. It is pure abstractionism.The Absolute manifests itself by denying itself, as is proper to the divine.To touch the ineffable, in the path from human to divine, there is an incorporeal silver yad, suspended to indicate the way. The yad, literally “hand”, the pointer used to guide the public readings of the text of Sefer Torah, leads the investigation of transhumance, Dante would say.
As stated in the article by Elena Dolcini (Exibart.com): “This silver sculpture, as well as the exhibition, is simple and complex at the same time: at the ends of the yad, on the one hand you see a miniature musician and on the other the finger with which you can touch the book. It represents the same act of “touching” . The golden table below, which metonymically, through its color, symbolizes a Byzantine icon. Religions and their harmonious coexistence are, without rhetoric, at the center of Shul, a visual description of Jewish ritual elements, which also consists of references to the Islamic world (the carpet) and to the Christian Orthodox world (the golden icon).

On May 18, 2018 – after exactly 600 years – Roberto Paci Dalò presented in the Church of San Giacomo at the San Domenico Museums the performance Niggunim, built around a concert and stage setup. Niggun (plural niggunim) means in Hebrew: “air” or “melody” and is a form of Jewish religious song or melody sung by groups. It is a technique of singing, often with abstract repetitive sounds instead of formal lyricism. Sometimes verses from the Torah, or quotes from other classical Jewish texts, are sung repetitively so as to create a niggun. Some niggunim are sung as prayers of lamentation, while others may be joyful or victorious. The niggunim are especially important in the liturgy of Chassidic Judaism, which has developed its own spiritual forms structured to reflect the mystical joy of deep prayer, expressed in devekut (the mystical joy of intense prayer).