Tel Aviv Diary: Karen Alkalay-Gut

I’m sure the paper sculptor didn’t mean to insult me. Nevertheless, Pietro Ruffo, whose German tank made out of xeroxed pages from the siddor, tore my heart in two. To see the words of prayer cut and folded into some form of origami insulted my senses to the point that I wanted to jump on it and crush it. Perhaps the implication that prayer leads to racism may have some basis to it, but the use of Jewish prayer is contemptuous. Another piece with the psalms in English didn’t have the same effect. It had an entirely different purpose and did not use prayer. The apologetic explanation of the respect of the artist for the religious nature of the materials meants nothing to me except that he understood the implications and chose to chance it. Worse yet, the exhibit at the Museum of Art and Design was in part sponsored by the Israeli consulate. The title of the installation, “Youth of the Hills,” makes sense to someone in the know about Israeli politics, because it refers to the religious extremists who have gained strength in the past few years, but work against the government, against Israel, and there is no explanation about that. A blurb about the title would have slowed down my beating heart.