An Israeli Painter’s Broad-Minded Brush
Ever since Hamas’s barbaric invasion of Israel on Oct. 7—a Shabbat morning that also happened to herald the end of the Jewish holiday of Succoth and fell one day after the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the 1973 Yom Kippur War (the symbolism runneth over)—I have been thinking of Tal Mazliach.
A gifted artist and magical woman, she lives in a two-room house in Kfar Aza, one of the southern kibbutzim close to Gaza that were attacked. As I watch the news, flinching at yet another report of bodies mutilated, babies murdered, soldiers shot asleep in their underwear, or helpless grandmothers taken hostage, it occurs to me that it is difficult, however much we try, to think of that many people’s deaths at once, especially those who were stabbed, shot, or, most horrifically, decapitated.
How to imagine body after body, face after face, consciousness after consciousness, all come to an abrupt and violent end? The tragedy isn’t lost on one so much as slightly blurred, like a gruesome video image that fails to come into precise view, perhaps because of the camera’s jerky movements or perhaps because of the carnival atmosphere, interrupted by shouts of “Allahu Akbar!" and yelps of joy. Among its first moves, Hamas ravaged Kfar Aza, gunning down many of the inhabitants and taking hostages.
That’s why I find myself thinking of Tal, who was born in Kfar Aza and once called it a “paradise" in an interview with Haaretz. I visited Tal, whose last name means leader or someone successful, there in February 2022 together with my sister, who has lived in Jerusalem since 1983 with an ever-growing family of four children and 12 grandchildren.
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