In Reconciliation Ceremony, Chaya Ruckin goes back to the question of the community and the place of living at the moment of crisis in the Biblical story of Jonah. The Book of Jonah (chapter 4) describes how the prophet, having grown sick of the people of Nineveh and of the fate awaiting them, decides to leave that city. After Jonah builds a desert booth, God grows a gourd plant out of the ground to shade him. The next day God sends a worm who eats the gourd. As Jonah bemoans his destiny, God rebukes him for giving up on the people of Nineveh. In her work, Ruckin buys the usage rights for the shade of the gourd, which is widespread across a vast territory used by a green energy enterprise in Brazil. Returning to the gourd, Ruckin seeks a double amendment with respect to the question of the home or place of dwelling: both through a concern for transcending the private interest the single gourd offers Jonah, and through the concern for the active preservation of the gourd and its shade for as long as possible. The gourd offers a temporary place of living, and caring for it suggests the option of prolonging the period one can reside in a certain place through the use of external factors.
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