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Opening of New Israeli Art Gallery Provides Hope in a Troubled Time
On the last night of Hanukkah, in a world that responded to a 21st century pogrom by toppling menorahs and stabbing Jews, a new candle was lit when the first Israeli art gallery in New York City opened in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The light was magnified by the fact that the art world has historically been quite hostile to Israel.
Gordon Gallery, a prominent contemporary art gallery founded in Tel Aviv in 1966, opened its New York City space with a group show featuring such leading Israeli artists as Gilad Efrat, Moshe Kupferman, Yaacov Dorchin, and Rita Alima. The new space marks the gallery’s sixth location, with two galleries and a sculpture garden in Tel Aviv, and two galleries in Jerusalem.
In 1977, Gordon also became the first auction house in Israel. Representing 40 Israeli artists and ten art estates, Gordon “aspires to deepen understanding and celebrate the cultural heritage embedded in Israeli art,” according to the gallery.
The opening exhibition is meant to serve as an introduction of contemporary Israeli art to a wide New York City audience — long overdue and desperately needed. The new space was supposed to open in November, but was pushed back for obvious reasons.
Moshe Kupferman: “Untitled” 1972
“After the opening last week, the feeling is truly fantastic,” founder and director Amon Yariv told me. “We received amazing responses and a huge crowd of art lovers, many of which we didn’t know before.” Yariv also curated the opening exhibition. “For our NYC gallery, it comes at the right time to open and natural evolution after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.”
I asked him what he hoped to accomplish by opening the first Israeli art gallery in New York City. “We felt the new gallery could be wonderful for the Jewish community in the city, and an important addition to the local art scene … For a Jewish person it’s the most challenging time, but it’s also the best time to bring people to support Israeli art and culture, and we’ve been getting a lot of support in that context.” Part of the exhibition’s proceeds will be donated to the victims of the Oct. 7 attack.
Opening night was indeed magical. The space was packed and included an age group rarely seen in NYC galleries: Kids. Hebrew flowed through the conversations, and I don’t think it was lost on anyone that we were on the Lower East Side, where many of our families landed after fleeing Eastern Europe.
After more than two months of hell, we allowed ourselves to feel joy. Throughout the evening, a children’s song kept running through my head: “This little light o’ mine; I’m goin’ let it shine.”
My favorite piece was an oil on canvas by Moshe Kupferman (1926–2003), “Unttled.” Kupferman moved to Israel in 1948 and helped establish a kibbutz in the Galilee. While living and working in relative isolation, Kupferman developed an artistic style heavily informed by both religious discipline and the rigor of kibbutz life. According to the gallery: “Through a subtle interplay of line and color, the work reflects a tension between what is seen and what is concealed.”
Precisely the tension that Jews have always had to live with.
And yet, for a small, persecuted people, we do in fact create a lot of light. Yes, we are commanded to do so, but I also think that creativity is one of the ways we have survived. And the truth is, one cannot create art — or anything — if one’s soul is full of hate. It is something our enemies have yet to learn.
Walking out of the gallery, past the security guard on the sidewalk, I tensed up as I have every day since Oct. 7th, not knowing if I would be accosted by the seemingly endless haters. But this time I felt protected by an aura, an iron dome, of not just light but resilience, something our immigrant families had to develop walking those same streets.
“Lights will guide you home” goes the line from Coldplay’s “Fix You.” Until they guide us to our real home, the exquisite light of Israeli art will be brightening New York City, day and night. The haters, especially those in the art world, are just going to have to get used to it.
The author is the editor in chief of White Rose Magazine. A version of this article was originally published in The Jewish Journal.
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Incoming US Senate Majority Leader Threatens ICC With Sanctions Over Arrest Warrant for Netanyahu
An exterior view of the International Criminal Court in the Hague, Netherlands, March 31, 2021. Photo: REUTERS/Piroschka van de Wouw
Incoming US Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has threatened to push legislation imposing sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) if it does not halt its efforts to pursue arrest warrants against Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Thune, who was picked last week to be the next Senate majority leader once the Republicans take control of the legislative chamber in January, wrote Sunday on X/Twitter that he will make it a “top priority” to punish the ICC if it refuses to walk back its arrest warrant application issued against Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The US lawmaker also indicated he would take action if Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the current Senate majority leader, does not do so against the intergovernmental organization.
“If the ICC and its prosecutor do not reverse their outrageous and unlawful actions to pursue arrest warrants against Israeli officials, the Senate should immediately pass sanctions legislation, as the House has already done on a bipartisan basis,” he wrote. “If Majority Leader Schumer does not act, the Senate Republican majority will stand with our key ally Israel and make this — and other supportive legislation ‚ a top priority in the next Congress.”
In May, the ICC chief prosecutor officially requested arrest warrants for the Israeli premier, Gallant, and three Hamas terrorist leaders — Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Al-Masri, and Ismail Haniyeh — accusing all five men of “bearing criminal responsibility” for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Israel or the Gaza Strip. The three Hamas leaders have since been killed, and Gallant was recently fired as Israel’s defense minister.
US and Israeli officials subsequently issued blistering condemnations of the ICC move, decrying the court for drawing a moral equivalence between Israel’s democratically elected leaders and the heads of Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that launched the ongoing war in Gaza with its massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7.
ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan has come under fire for making his surprise demand for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant on the same day in May that he suddenly canceled a long-planned visit to both Gaza and Israel to collect evidence of alleged war crimes. The last-second cancellation infuriated US and British leaders, according to Reuters, which reported that the trip would have offered Israeli leaders a first opportunity to present their position and outline any action they were taking to respond to the war crime allegations.
Thune’s Republican colleagues praised his threat to the ICC, suggesting that the Senate should target the international organization.
“Well done Senator Thune. The ICC’s actions against Israel have been outrageous, and an independent review into the prosecutor’s actions is more than called for,” wrote Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). :The Senate should take up the ICC sanctions bill that passed the House in a bipartisan manner. Standing up for Israel today protects America tomorrow.”
“The Senate must immediately pass legislation to sanction the International Criminal Court,” stated Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY.), chair of the Senate Republican Conference. “Senate Republicans stands with Israel.”
“The Senate Foreign Relations Committee can and should act ASAP to pass ICC sanctions legislation. We waited for months for the majority to schedule the vote only to have them postpone it before the election. We will not fail to act when Republicans are in the majority,” wrote Sen. John Risch (R-ID), the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) wrote that the Senate “should immediately consider the bipartisan legislation passed by the House to sanction the ICC.”
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) added that Thune is “right” and that “Chuck Schumer should do his job” by advancing legislation to sanction the ICC.
The US has said it does not recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction and rejects the implied equivalence drawn between Israel and Hamas.
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Concordia closes its Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, citing ‘budgetary constraints’
It was announced quietly, wit a small, two-paragraph notice replacing the web page for Concordia University’s Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS), along with an unrelated stock […]
The post Concordia closes its Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, citing ‘budgetary constraints’ appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Jamaal Bowman Continues Diatribes Against Israel, AIPAC; Expresses Pride in Not Condemning Oct. 7 Massacre
US Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) speaks during the National Action Network National Convention in New York City, US, April 7, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
In his final weeks as a US federal lawmaker, Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) has continued his persistent condemnation of Israel, accusing the Jewish state of perpetrating “apartheid” against Palestinians, expressing pride in not supporting a resolution condemning Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, and arguing against the funding of Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system.
During a newly released interview with left-wing pundit Rania Khalek, Bowman reflected on his unsuccessful reelection bid earlier this year. The lawmaker blamed the “pro-Israel lobby” for his loss in the Democratic primary, claiming that his outspokenness about the ongoing Israel-Hamas war made him a target for “Zionists.”
Bowman, one of the staunchest critics of Israel in the US Congress, argued that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a prominent pro-Israel lobbying group, overwhelmed his campaign by spending roughly $15 million to aid his opponent, Westchester County Executive George Latimer. He added that his constituents were stunned that a “special interest” group such as AIPAC “can remove a congressman” by submerging a primary race in a torrent of money.
“Now the world has seen AIPAC for who they are,” Bowman stated.
The stated mission of AIPAC is to seek bipartisan support to strengthen the US-Israel relationship.
Bowman admitted that he did not know much about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when he initially ran for office, opting to parrot talking points such as Israel “has a right to exist” and a “right to defend itself.”
Bowman said that his opinion on Israel was transformed after he visited the country on a trip sponsored by J Street, a progressive Zionist organization that recently called for the US to impose an arms embargo against the Jewish state. The left-wing firebrand said that the trip — which consisted of a series of discussions with peace activists, scholars, and former Israel Defense Force (IDF) officers — soured his view of the Jewish state, comparing the security checkpoints and barrier wall that separate Israel and the West Bank to protect against terrorism with the Jim Crow laws in the US south segregating black Americans.
Khalek asked Bomwan if his view on Iron Dome has shifted, citing that the missile interception system “shields Israel from the consequences for bombing all of its neighbors, for constantly stealing land.”
The congressman claimed that his view on Israel’s air defense system has changed, arguing that it represents “a weapon to use and continue apartheid, oppression, open-air prison, occupation, and now the genocide” of Palestinians. He said that he regrets voting in favor of Iron Dome funding, and that the missile defense system should only be replenished if the Palestinians are given a fully-funded army on Israel’s borders.
Bowman also criticized a congressional resolution condemning the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, suggesting that AIPAC authored the document. He dismissed the notion that the mass murder, rape, and kidnapping of Israelis on Oct. 7 was “unprovoked,” claiming that Israel initiated the aggression by enacting “apartheid” on Palestinians. He then lambasted American governors, senators, and President Joe Biden for immediately showing empathy to Israelis, saying that legislators were being “dishonest” and not having a “full conversation” about the Jewish state.
In the year following the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, Bowman intensified his rhetoric against Israel and pro-Israel organizations. Over the summer, he condemned AIPAC as a “Zionist regime.” In a desperate attempt to salvage his ill-fated primary effort, he promise the Democratic Socialists of America — a prominent far-left organization that has made anti-Israel activism a top priority — that he would vote against future Iron Dome funding in exchange for financial backing of his campaign. Bowman infamously dismissed the widely reported and corroborated allegations of Hamas terrorists raping Israeli women during the Oct. 7 onslaught as “propaganda” before being forced to walk back his remarks.
In June, Latimer cruised to a commanding victory over Bowman, winning by a margin of 58 percent to 41 percent.
The post Jamaal Bowman Continues Diatribes Against Israel, AIPAC; Expresses Pride in Not Condemning Oct. 7 Massacre first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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