Just to the left is a famous mosaic of Tel Aviv scenes that’s stood in the middle of town since the early 70s. We went with our friends Joel and Nurith to the Nahum Gutman Museum and saw photos of the work, which I loved. Naturally, Joel immediately decided that we had to go see it. And we did. It’s a dear. lovely, loving and evocative work of the three columns you see here, surrounded by a ring of more scenes that serves as a kind of frame — really lovely.
The museum currently features a retrospective of the work of Duda Geva, an Israeli cartoonist who died recently, quite young. His work was kind of disconcerting; much of it joking about the absence of God. He appeared prominently in Israeli newspapers — and the tiny museum was jammed. It’s so fascinating, in a Jewish country, that this very secular man had such a wide following. Typical of the enigmatic nature of Israel in the 21st century – battling between the disproportionately powerful 15% who are super-orthodox and the rest of the country and of the frightful battle for the soul of the country between militant, militaristic right and the progressives. There is such pain and despair — on both sides. I’m going to try to write about it some here in future posts — after two years in progressive and highly secular Tel Aviv we go to Jerusalem tomorrow where religion and more conservative politics rule.