Eternity Pillars

The city of Sderot (also spelled Sederot) sits within the Gaza envelope, less than a mile from the Gaza Strip. This makes it a prime target for rocket attacks. Every bus stop and business is equipped with bomb shelters. Given this location, during the massacre of October 7th, 2023 the city faced heavy losses as Hamas militants stormed the streets. After a grueling and horrific 18-hour battle, the IDF blew up the police station building along with the terrorists who were besieging it. All told, 71 lives were lost in Sderot that day.

On October 7th 2024, exactly one year since the original massacre that devastated the city, a memorial monument was opened on the site of the former police station. A collaboration between environmental designer Cecilia Vitas, Kasher Design, and input from the city's residents themselves, the Eternity Pillars features 18 steel and concrete pillars, each stretching skywards at 11 meters high.

Carefully curated quotes representing resilience, selected by the city's residents, are inscribed in the columns. An open and vacant space fills the middle, representing a piece of the community that now sits empty where those who were lost once stood. Etched in the tops of the columns, Hebrew letters symbolize a prayer and story from the Talmud of a Rabbi who was captured and burned by the Romans while wrapped in a Torah scroll: ‘the scroll is burning, but the letters rise towards heaven.’

The path of the fallen, located just next to the pillars themselves, and built from the actual ruins of the old police station, is dedicated to the 32 residents of the city who were murdered in the October 7th attacks.