Am Yisrael Chai Pendant

April 2025 Jerusalem stone, sterling silver, Eilat stone With the rise in global antisemitism and the efforts of some loud but erroneous voices trying to erase Jewish indigineity in the Judean homeland, it's been a tough couple of years to be Jewish. As an artist, I naturally turned to my craft as part of my coping strategy. The phrase עם ישראל חי (Am Yisrael Chai, "the People of Israel live") dates back to at least 1895 and was used as a message of hope and resolve by concentration camp prisoners during the Holocaust in the 1940s. It quickly became a slogan of Jewish solidarity after October 7, 2023. That phrase is emblazoned upon the silver band on the front of this piece, in the paleo-Hebrew style of the Siloam Inscription. This Hebrew inscription was found in a tunnel in the City of David in East Jerusalem in 1880 and has been dated by archeologists to the 8th century bce. This body of the pendant is a single ashler of Jerusalem stone with both rough and smooth surfaces secured in