Shani lives in Tiberias and is a girl of multiple talents – she draws, dances and excels in everything she undertakes. The Raz-Ram Foundation decided to support her in her drawing, through a mentorship with Irena, an art teacher and immigrant from the former Soviet Union. Under this Tutorship, Shani’s artistic development has progressed in an amazing way, and her drawings of still lifes, animals and portraits express a depth of feeling that is unusual for an artist her age. Drawing has now taken a central role in her personal expression, and we are now waiting for her first exhibition.
Gilad is a young saxophone player from Haifa and Arik is a professional saxophone player from Tel Aviv. Arik, who is also one of the founders of the Raz-Ram Foundation, plays saxophone with a Jewish flavor, and appears around the world performing “Jewish Jazz”, has been tutoring Gilad in music for several years. A love of the saxophone is not the only thing they have in common – something else played a critical role in both of their lives – the airplane. Boaz and Arnon were their fathers – and both were pilots who were killed before the births of their sons.
At a very emotional event at the President’s Residence, a poem written by Boaz, Gilad’s father, was read, and Arik and Gilad played a saxophone jazz duet. Gilad continues to develop and fulfill his musical talent, and the sky is the limit ….
The connection with Kfir, a young musician from Beer Sheva, began while he was still a student at a boarding school in Haifa. Kfir applied to the Foundation, and told us that his dream was to be a singer and to study music. Arnon Friedman, a pianist and professional musician who is very active in the Israeli music scene, tutored Kfir in singing, composition and arrangement of his own works. The emotionally charged songs that Kfir composed and arranged, with the musical guidance of Arnon, inspired the Foundation to produce a disc which includes a number of his works, with the participation, on a volunteer basis, of some of Israel’s leading musicians. One of the outstanding pieces on the disc is a song expressing Kfir’s pain over the loss of his beloved father. Now, Kfir’s dream to be a musician is coming true, out of the Tutorship and special connection he developed with Arnon.
In the context of a Creation Project, Udi, a composer and violist, tutored Gilad, a classical singer, an immigrant from the former Soviet Union whose father was killed while was serving in the IDF. Gilad is a dedicated musician, who recently graduated from the Rubin Academy of Music in Tel-Aviv, specializing in composition. While he was a student, Gilad began the tutoring program with Udi, focusing on Solfeggio – a kind of vocal exercise. Gilad and Udi performed together in one of the Foundation’s musical events at the Enav Center in Tel-Aviv, and were enthusiastically received by the audience.
Today, with the tutoring program behind them, Udi and Gilad are leading a classical music project that is unique in Israel: establishment of a small chamber music group which will study and perform the music of Israeli classical music composers. The group is now preparing a musical tribute to the Israel Prize laureate composer Abel Ehrlich, who used music to express the ideas of memory and commemoration. For each composer, selected pieces will be recorded by the group, and a series of discs documenting the project will be issued.
This is the story of a musical connection which started out with individual notes, and has led to the development of an exciting musical and cultural activity.
Tamar Paikes, a plastic artist resides and creates in Jerusalem
These days, concluding several years of labor, Tamar has finished “Cardboard Squares”, a documentary film relating the way she coped with the complex experience of grief which befell on her family; a family who lost a father and two older brothers. Her father Michael Paikes was killed during the Six Day war, her eldest brother Yoni was killed in Ramat Ha’Golan during the Yom Kipur war, and Daniel, her second brother, fell while climbing the top of the Monte -Blanc. The movie tells the personal story of Tamar and her family, while simultaneously raising questions of memorialization and memory on an overall level as well, concerning our Israeli society, which has been exposed to grief throughout its existence and development.
During this film we accompany Tamar’s journey in the footsteps of her Father and two brothers, as she meets family members and friends from the past, while sharing with us her fears and misgivings through words and artistic creation.
Her mother Arnona acts as a central axis in this film, an extraordinary woman who held, with all her power, a family that grew smaller and smaller with each catastrophe throughout the years. After all the men in the family died, she was left with two daughters.
Tamar relates her story: “throughout the years, I lived an allegedly normal life, as if there is no grief. Only during the making of this film did I understand that every step I make stems from a ceaseless dialogue with the dead. Throughout the four years of working on this movie, I’ve been trying to unveil the atmosphere of mystery and vagueness surrounding the residence of death within the house I grew up in. After years of living in the shadow of a silence accompanying the grief in my house, in this movie I try to confront between the repression dictated by my mother and my basic existential need to talk and share my pain. The movie moves between two poles, on the one end is a widow and loving mother, bereaved, cynical, disillusioned, and angry, keeping at a distance any national symbols that appropriate grief and the dead into the heart of the nation. A woman who espouses the idea that life belongs to life, believing that there is no use to fiddle with the dead. I stand on the opposite pole, grappling, for the first time in my life, with the classical formula of memory formation: a visit to the cemetery, touring the location where the brother fell, and meeting friends of the death. The movie examines the two alternatives.
I’m constantly attempting to connect the disjoint fragments, and to find my own path, this is a necessary condition for my sanity. I lost my father before I took my first breath in this world. I never chose this or what happened later. I want to meet the world again on my own terms”.
Tamar participated in different projects of the ‘Raz-Ram’ foundation as a guiding artist. We look forward to the screening of the movie and the significant debate it will generate.
![Creativity project [Proyekt Yetsira]](https://i0.wp.com/raz-ram.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/BLOG28.jpg?resize=300%2C200)