I sensed there was something special about the good-looking, white-haired man sitting behind me in the synagogue where we both pray daily.
We never really engaged in much conversation besides a smile and a “good morning.” It was on Remembrance Day a few years ago, the day the nation mourns its fallen heroes, when I saw him standing over one of the many graves on Mount Herzl.
Our eyes met, and I went over to acknowledge his presence and say a polite hello. He was there to pay respects to a friend who had been killed in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. They had been in the same unit, and he comes every year on Remembrance Day to mourn this loss. So began my friendship with Avner Bar Hama.
At the time, I was preparing for my photography exhibition at the Jewish museum at Heichal Shlomo. Avner told me he is a curator and has done many exhibitions, with many of his works in galleries and museums. He said if he had known about my exhibition, he would have been glad to assist me.
Since I already had a curator, I thanked him for his kind offer. He then said that if I wanted to see his artwork, I could go to the entrance of Malha Mall. I took his advice, and there, in front of the mall entrance, were two magnificent abstract sculptures that I was immediately drawn to.
It was then that I realized this man, who sat behind me in synagogue, was no ordinary artist. Avner gave me a copy of his first book, Mountain-Field-Home, about his personal journey into Jewish-Israeli discourse as a multidisciplinary artist. I knew he was special and his story had to be told.
In the past, I have written articles for The Jerusalem Post about a street performer who was “A man with a mission”; and “The kosher sausage king” who graced the streets of Jerusalem with his dapper appearance and his huge Saint Bernard dog.
I also had the pleasure of writing about a man who found sacred documents in the binding of books, “Ezra Gorodesky: An unruly passion,” and I was privileged to write about Prof. Mervyn Gotsman, a leading cardiologist who helped perform the first human heart transplant with Dr. Christian Barnard in South Africa. The article was titled “Affairs of the heart.”
Now, how fortunate I am to have come to know Avner Bar Hama, an artist with a soul. Reading some of the comments on his book’s inside cover, I began to realize how singular a man he is. Some of those commenting were Israel Prize winners, famous art critics, and personal friends.
One revealing comment: “Proudly declaring his identity as a religious Jew, he enters the art studio, a realm long perceived as the holy of holies of Israeli secular culture, and stands at its center, [acting] as an emissary of the congregation in the presence of the community of God.”
From whence did he come?
Born in Morocco in 1946, at age three Avner was kidnapped by a Muslim man, but later was found by his father and safely returned. Until age 10, he studied at a French Jewish school and Talmud Torah. As antisemitism grew fiercer in Morocco, his family fled to France.
It was then, at an early age, that he discovered what it meant to be persecuted and to be a refugee. The trauma of his childhood experiences had a profound influence not only on his art but on who he was as an individual and how he would lead his life. At the tender age of 10, in August 1956, he and his family arrived in Israel, where they lived in a transit camp in Kiryat Gat for three years.
Avner was educated in a yeshiva. When asked about those years, he said they were highly significant in his development as a Jewish and Zionist artist. However, his family found adjusting to life in Israel in those early years of the state’s formation very challenging, and they moved back to France. Avner knew that Israel was his place, managing to remain here by himself.
On his Israeli journey
Avner’s talent for art was recognized by his teachers at a young age, and he was sent to Jerusalem’s Bezalel Academy of Art and Design. He then went to a hesder yeshiva, rapidly assimilating into Israeli society and culture.
Breaking away from his parents and deciding to study and live in Israel influenced his art in many ways. Avner became an art teacher and consolidated his artistic identity through his studies of Jewish sources, knowing that he wanted to be an artist who created Jewish, Israeli, Zionist art.
In 1978, he left for Brussels for a three-year Zionist mission that he felt strengthened his Jewish and Israeli identity. Upon his return to Israel, he presented The Menorah Returns to Jerusalem exhibition at Tel Aviv’s Artists House.
Along the way, Avner went to Montreal as a shaliach (emissary) for four years, where he was personally responsible for more than 400 people making aliyah. He hopes to one day write a book about this achievement and the families and individuals whom he helped make Israel their home.
Avner is clearly a man of humility and unassuming nature, despite his many talents. He did let me in on a “secret”: Within a few years, he might be a candidate for the Israel Prize in art. He has sat many times on the committee that selects the prize winner – an honor in itself.
Emotions, opinions expressed through art
A theme running through Avner’s artwork is his concern that there is a gap between the promise given by God to the Jewish people and existing realities.
The first time a clear political statement was made on this theme was in an exhibition at the Jerusalem Artists’ House, following the 1982 evacuation of Yamit, an Israeli settlement in the Sinai desert, as part of the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty. In Avner’s words, “This was a trigger for a direct artistic examination of questions concerning our people’s fate and identity as both Jews and Zionists returning to their land.”
This concern recurs in many of his installations, such as the one at the Trade Tower in Tel Aviv, which houses the Italian Embassy. Avner’s work dominates the entire wall of the lobby. The theme of “return” is represented beautifully by the abstract sculptures of birds returning to their nesting places. Best known for such abstract sculptures, more than 30 others dot the landscape he loves, such as Haifa, Beersheba, Givat Ze’ev, Ma’aleh Adumim, Kiryat Gat, Beit She’an, Ashdod, and Bat Yam.
His next major exhibition, Struggle, also at the Jerusalem Artists’ House, again dealt with the crucial question: “Do we indeed inhabit the land or are we still struggling to assert our place in this country and our right to it?”
Avner spends one day a week studying at Yeshivat Kerem B’Yavne and learns the works of Rabbi Avraham Isaac Kook and Rabbi Dov Soloveitchik, whose thoughts he incorporates into his art. Examples include his installations Mountain-Field-Home (touching upon various periods of Jewish history prior to the 1995 assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin) and Altar of Earth (in response to the First Lebanon War).
He has been labeled by some as a right-wing artist due to his installation on Yamit, and his later work that deals with the 2005 Gush Katif evacuation. This installation, in particular, is among his most famous: Exhibited in Tel Aviv in 2006, it displayed a map of Israel composed of brightly colored oranges, the protest color against the evacuation. Visitors entering the gallery were impressed by the map’s size, color, and very realistic scent of oranges. In 2008, the work was displayed in a gallery in Washington, DC, for six months.
Regardless of politics, Avner notes that every work undergoes an exacting process of self-examination before he presents it to the public. He also feels that his commitment to being a religious Jew places no restrictions on his artistic expression.
The land and people of Israel, in their ongoing struggle for survival, remain central in his work. After Hamas’s mega-atrocities in Israel on Oct. 7, Avner and I visited the Supernova music festival site, as well as some of the kibbutzim affected by the horrendous events of that day. In response, Avner created several bold paintings featuring many shades of red.
He is now finishing his second book, Your Sculpture. The title is based on the Torah verse detailing what Moses is told after smashing the first set of tablets given to him by God: “Now go and sculpt for yourself the second set of tablets.”
We all have the ability to sculpt out our destinies and make for ourselves the life that God intended for us, Avner tells me.
Is it any wonder I now make sure to save a seat for Avner Bar Hama in shul?