LIFE IN ISRAEL
From Yonina
Lamdan's safari
series of acrylic
paintings.
Kibbutz Art
800 Israeli artists take time off
from work . . . to work.
NECHAMIA MEYERS
Special to The Jewish. News
A
rt apparently takes
priority over food at
Urim, a kibbutz in the
western Negev.
This is the only possible ex-
planation for the fact that the
settlement allows a half-
dozen of its members time off
from work to do painting and
sculpture — as well as paying
for their raw materials — at
a time when dire economic
problems have forced it to cut
back meat meals from once a
day to twice a week.
Cultural activity is not
limited to the plastic arts.
The kibbutz also gives free
time to another dozen
creative people, among them
poets, musicians, actors and
dancers.
Yet this generous policy has
its limits; not every kibbutz-
nik who wants to devote part
of his work week to cultural
ventures is permitted to do so.
The applicants must meet
certain criteria.
Where the plastic arts are
concerned, for example, a
committee of recognized ar-
tists from the United Kibbutz
Movement decides whether
these criteria are met. Its
members come to individual
settlements — Urim in this
instance — to meet with ap-
plicants and evaluate their
work. If they are positively
impressed, they recommend
that the artist be given
anywhere between one and
three days a week to paint or
sculpt. The secretariat of the
settlement then weighs the
recommendation; generally
speaking it is accepted, but
the secretariat is apt to be
less generous than the corn-
mittee where days off are
concerned.
Whatever the artist earns
from the sale of his works —
usually not very much — goes
to the kibbutz. If however, he
becomes commercially suc-
cessful, he can become a ful-
ly recognized "economic
branch" of the settlement and
devote all his time to art.
Artists can be
given one to three
days a week to
paint or sculpt.
One of Urim's two-days-a-
week artists is Yonina Lam-
dan (a former Clevelander
who, before she came to Israel
in 1952, was known as
Joanne Heller). Though
Yonina's brother Ya'acov is an
established Jerusalem
sculptor, she herself came to
art only at the age of 40,
when the youngest of her five
children entered school.
She began her training at
an art education class in the
Urim area, then enrolled at
the Visual Arts Center in
Beersheba and spent two
years as a full-time student at
the Ramat Hasharon School
for Art Teachers, north of Tel
Aviv.
Yonina has explored a wide
variety of art forms, including
photography, painting and
sculpture. Last year she even
created a sculpture garden at
the entrance to the settle-
ment's industrial zone, where
passersby see and sometimes
purchase her works.
While exhibitions on the
kibbutzim themselves are
relatively frequent, Yonina
and the 800 other recognized
kibbutz movement artists
find it difficult to obtain ex-
posure elsewhere. The Kib-
butz Gallery in Tel Aviv has
room to exhibit only a tiny
fraction of their work, and
space in private galleries is
scarce as well. Thus, Yonina
has had just one individual
exhibition in an urban
gallery, though she has also
participated in group shows
in Beersheba and Tel Aviv.
Yonina's political art has
another audience. An active
member of "Women in
Black," an organization call-
ing for an Israeli withdrawal
from the Gaza Strip and West
Bank, she displays her
painted pleas for peace at its
meetings.
Not all Urim residents
agree with Yonina's politics.
But all feel that kibbutz
members should have the
maximum opportunity to ex-
press themselves, be it in
politics or in art.
❑
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
39