Creators: Neta Shpigelman, Meital Raz, Sara Siegel, Netta Spiegel and The Jerusalem Vocal Consort, Talya Danzig
Video Design: Yaara Nirel
Light Design: Matan Preminger
Production: Yael Kalif

The Thinking Heart is a project of correspondence and active dialogue with the words, sharp thoughts, and rare spirit of Etty Hillesum, who became a canonical figure thanks to her writing. Writing that looks fearlessly at war, sexuality, cruelty, and God, all in the pursuit of maintaining humanity among catastrophe.

The Thinking Heart places Hillesum's diaries within a first-person, contemporary piece. On stage, six performance artists transform her life into an artistic format, and encounter her story not as a historical text, but as living, personal partner in creativity. Each of the artists chose a line of thought, an "Etty Hillesum-esque" quality, question, or contradiction arising from the diaries, and created a personal response or action. A multi-participant dialogue unfolds between the living ideas, passions, and tragedies, between Hillesum and the artists. Six diaries demand to tell us something about this very moment.

Etty Hillesum's diaries document her story: a stormy young woman with a deep intellectual world who set out on an internal journey, intersecting with the historical events that eventually enveloped her life. She began writing in 1941, and documented persecution, alongside her self-transformation. As the external world closed in around her, her internal world expanded. She refused to hate, and retained clarity while recognizing cruelty. Even though her rights, her freedom of movement, and eventually her life were taken from her, she formulated an internal liberty that could not be stolen. Her pages brim with vulnerability, sorrow, and fear, but again and again they return to gratitude - for a patch of sky, a moment of calm, and for writing.