Sunday in the city: Luminous inside, hate outside

SIDRA KRANZ MOSHINSKY reflects on how the politics of Gaza is impacting the State Library of Victoria's Hebrew manuscripts exhibition.

Luminous: radiant, brilliant, emanating light, particularly from darkness. Luminous is the name of the exhibition at the State Library of Victoria (SLV), featuring 1000 years of illuminated Hebrew manuscripts on loan from the British Library.

Not that you would know. Signage is almost non-existent, publicity limited. Stand outside and the electronic pillars showing what’s on let you know that the cafe is open, the bookstore is open, and a special exhibition of photography is open, too.

Of the Hebrew manuscripts, not a word or a sign. Wander into the library last Sunday in a city busy with shoppers and a guard stands outside the Luminous exhibition space, doors are closed and signs carry a notice: "Exhibition temporarily closed. Apologies for any inconvenience".

Little wonder the SLV is shrinking away from its own exhibition and closing the doors today. The cause of the "inconvenience" is the crowd growing outside for the seventh consecutive week of the Free Palestine rallies that meet on the steps of the library at noon on Sundays. Thousands gather, chanting, donning merch and waving placards.

There’s a silent dialogue going on here, loud within me, as I move between literal and metaphorical inner and outer worlds. One look at the security guards and police gathered around and you know that they are conscious of it, too.

I spend some time on the perimeter of the rally as I wait for Luminous to open to a small, known private group. I am deeply disturbed by what I see and hear: placards of Netanyahu being visually equated to Hitler, with a white fuhrer moustache superimposed on his face; large stickers with the Magen David (Star of David) crossed out and boycott called for; recurring chants of "From the river to the sea" with its implied eradication of the Jewish state, and a blur of people with keffiyehs, many of whom have chosen to wrap it around their faces, in my mind a terrifying symbol of terrorism.