Fluid Futures Melting Lands at the Hyams Museum

The Hyams Museum at Temple Beth Sholom, with the Jewish Art Salon and Abraham’s Table of Long Island, presents Fluid Futures / Melting Lands, a two-person exhibition by Yona Verwer and Ellen Alt exploring ocean pollution and melting glaciers.

Opening Sunday, October 18, 2026, 3–5 p.m.

Rabbi Ario S. and Tess Hyams Judaica Museum

Temple Beth Sholom, 401 Roslyn Road, Roslyn Heights, NY

Verwer’s Fluid Futures series depicts marine life entangled in, or navigating through, plastic debris. Raised near the North Sea in the Netherlands, she draws on Tikkun Olam and Tikkun HaYam—repairing the world and the seas. Alt’s ten-part White Series treats glaciers as vaults of planetary memory, asking what is lost as ice recedes and what land, history, and possibility emerge. Both practices rest on Jewish environmental ethics: “to till and tend” the Earth (Genesis 2:15) and Bal Tashchit (“do not destroy”). As Pirkei Avot 2:16 teaches: “You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.”

The opening on Sunday, October 18, 3–5 p.m., includes an interfaith clergy and artists’ panel, Reflection on Treasuring Our Common Home: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Teachings on Stewardship of the Earth; a gallery walk with the artists; and refreshments.

Registration here