Alumni of Western Negev high school reunite via art to support October 7 survivors
Now far-flung, graduates of Maale Habesor near the Gaza border team up to fight for hostages, help evacuees and create a group exhibit in Tel Aviv
Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center
Reut Nechushtan is living with her husband and teenage children in a tiny two-bedroom apartment in a Tel Aviv high-rise, 76 kilometers (around 42 miles) from their home in Kibbutz Re’im.
It’s only a two-hour drive, but since October 7, when they left in the wake of the Hamas attacks, it feels like the other side of the world.
And yet, this artist evacuee is feeling centered right now. With her kids back in school and national service she has returned to her art; a work she calls “Seam Line” is in “Suddenly,” a small, personal group show of works by graduates from the Maale Habesor regional high school, which both she and her kids attended in the western Negev.
“This works because it’s been another place where it’s good for me to be, where I don’t have to explain myself too much,” said Nechushtan, class of ’85.
The exhibit is small, intimate and situated in the Writer’s House Gallery, just a short walk from Hostages Square in Tel Aviv. There are 15 works by Habesor alumni, both active artists and others who only returned to art for the purpose of this exhibit. It’s open until April 30.
After the Hamas attack of October 7, when some 1,200 people were killed and 253 taken hostage, the Maale Habesor alumni, people now in their 30s, 40s and 50s, including many who haven’t lived in the region for decades, struggled to find a way to help.
“We understood that all the captives were either friends of ours, the children of our friends, or their parents, or teachers,” said Meirav Ganelevin, who curated the exhibit with Mor Frank, a fellow Habesor alumnus. “We have personal connections with so many of them, and we had to do something.”
As alumni who grew up in the south but no longer live in the region, “we have the head space to think about the bigger picture and do something,” said Ganelevin. “We’re not survivors. We’re not evacuees.”
More than 700 Habesor graduates are working together in this group, and their first action was to erect a tent on Kaplan Street in Tel Aviv, across from the Defense Ministry compound, where they take shifts during the daylight hours and offer a space to hear stories, take a rest or have a drink.
Several weeks after October 7, Ganelevin and Frank asked their fellow alumni for artworks that relate to October 7.
Those works are on display in “Suddenly.”
Nechushtan’s video art shows the artist twisting holes in the knee of a stocking, an examination of the connection between pain and life that she’s related to in previous works and that was magnified during the hours she spent in her safe room on October 7, shown by the sounds she added and changed in the video.
One of the centerpieces of the exhibit is industrial designer Yotam Shifroni‘s carved acrylic glass fixture featuring a scene from his hometown of Kibbutz Nirim. It’s a piece he worked on several years ago, showing familiar landmarks, such as the cowshed, the houses, the skyline of minarets in Gaza.
Shifroni left the kibbutz, which his paternal grandparents helped establish, in his early 20s. His grandfather was killed defending the cowshed during the early years of the community. Many years later, his parents were at home in Nirim on October 7.
“They survived in body, but their hearts and minds are another question,” said Shifroni of his parents. He, his wife and work partner, Adi Azar and their small daughter, Nina, were supposed to be at the kibbutz for that holiday weekend, but weren’t.
One of Shifroni’s friends, a reservist soldier who served in Nirim, described to them how Zaka, the rescue and recovery organization, developed symbols to spray paint on kibbutz buildings to show which had been checked and what had been found inside.
Shifroni added some of those symbols to his original Nirim piece, for the exhibit.
“We felt emotional about doing this, but we knew immediately what we wanted to do,” said Shifroni. “It felt very intuitive,” added Azar.
Another video work is a digital memory of a work that was burned in the destruction of Kibbutz Re’im, telling the story of the artist’s brother’s army boots.
Small watercolors by Adi Tzahor, class of ’83, an artist and animator who grew up in Kibbutz Gvulot, show scenes in Tel Aviv before and after October 7 — the plaza outside the Tel Aviv Museum of Art before October 7 and after, when it became Hostages Square; people hanging out at Habima and nearby Rothschild Boulevard, before October 7, when it was a place to stroll and relax and since, as a place of protests and rallies.
There is a wall of poems as well, and in the back, unrolled skeins of yellow yarn reach toward the opposite wall, a group installation that contemplates the hostages and the ever-present hope that they will come home soon.
“We haven’t all been in touch for years, but it feels natural to be here together,” said Ganelevin.
The exhibit echoes the high school’s current class of 12th graders, who were evacuated from their homes after October 7 and then created their own boarding school at the Ein Gedi youth hostel, with their teachers coming to teach them.
“They wanted to be together,” said Ganelevin.
It’s much like Nechushtan’s fellow Re’im kibbutzniks, currently living in two Tel Aviv towers, “where we look at each other through the windows,” she said. “This community that sometimes makes you crazy also allows you to feel like you can go on. Seeing familiar faces gives the feeling that everything is okay.”
Some of the kibbutz members drive to the kibbutz every day for work, or spend a few nights each week at their kibbutz house and weekends back in Tel Aviv, said Nechushtan.
“We don’t know when we’ll be home. We’re talking about July, but there’s a total lack of knowledge and planning,” said Nechushtan.
But Tel Aviv feels like home right now, with her temporary home in an apartment tower and the Habesor tent on the corner near the gallery.
“I have my places,” said Nechushtan. “I went to say hi at the tent on the way here; we have our own corner, and that feels fitting to us and who we are.”
