Jerusalem Theatre hosts moving exhibition imagining hostages’ loving hugs

For the past year, we’ve seen books, works of art, films, and some plays that have depicted the horrors, fears, and sorrow of Oct. 7 and its aftermath. 

We pray for the safe return of the hostages. Some of us wear yellow ribbons and/or pieces of masking tape on our clothing marking the number of days, or we protest, sing, or light an extra candle on Shabbat eve. Even those who do nothing outwardly experience the sadness piercing their hearts.

Artist Toby Woolf, in a deeply moving and exquisitely expressive exhibition at the Jerusalem Theatre, imagines not the horror or the pain but the haunting silence of the individuals and the loving hugs of the hostages looking out for one another. 

Woolf points out to me, as I peruse the collection, that when you walk through the exhibition from the beginning, you will notice that only toward the end do the works morph from charcoal to watercolor, symbolic of hope.

Hostage Dreams is an unusual exhibition, one that will have you entranced. It was hard for me to move on from it. I just wanted to stay and absorb the emotion.

From what depths of creativity and sensitivity did this exhibition spring? 

Woolf was born in 1957 in Brooklyn, New York. She grew up in a home where music, art, and literature were commonplace, and the family history included war and hardships. 

“My sister Judi, may she rest in peace, was an artist,” Woolf says. “I grew up going to museums. My father, may his memory be a blessing, led the prayers in the synagogue. My mom sewed and read voraciously, and both parents engaged in high-level conversations on politics and religion.”

She explains that her father “fled Poland to Russia and ended up in a labor camp in Archangel. They were released and went to Tashkent, where my Russian-born mom’s family had fled.” 

Woolf recounts how her parents married and made their way to a displaced persons (DP) camp in the American zone in Germany, where her two oldest siblings were born. They went to the United States in 1950, where first Judi and then Toby were born.

Woolf thinks about her father, “who was 15 when he fled Poland from the Nazis... before they returned, when the Red Army was in place, with his parents and one brother. He later learned that everyone – uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandparents – was murdered. Yet he went on, married, and had a family.” 

Today, she prays “for all the bereaved and wounded that they, like my parents, will find the strength to go on – and live.”

FOR EIGHT years, I taught creative writing at the senior center in Gush Etzion where Woolf’s late mother, Dora Bergstein, was a student, and that gave me a glimpse into the depth of feeling and creativity from which Woolf came. 

She also has children who are involved in the visual and performing arts, so it is a generational thing. 

I found something Dora wrote in 2008 in response to a creative writing assignment called Ten Measures of Wisdom: “Have patience for living. (Some good things can show up on your way through life.)” 

How fitting to read that now, when her daughter has had her first solo exhibition at this stage of life.

TOBY MARRIED Prof. Jeffrey Woolf in 1980, and they made aliyah in 1993 – first to Jerusalem, and then eventually settling in Efrat. Prof. Woolf lectured at Bar-Ilan University on the history of Jewish law and on Medieval and Renaissance Jewish history. He spoke at the opening of his wife’s exhibition.

Dr. Batsheva Ida, curator of the exhibit for the Jerusalem Theatre, describes Woolf’s methods and goals in the exhibit:

 “In this exhibition, the 2023-2024 works in charcoal and watercolor depict groups and families lined in soft contours, which suggest rescue and embrace, reassurance and escape, coupled with the tense reality of enclosed spaces. These elusive and suggestive works enable us to enter into our dreams, and join there with the inner world of the hostages, more than candid photographs of happier times allow.”

WOOLF SAYS that after making aliyah, she sought “appropriate teachers” so that she could continue her art and work in a related field. 

She worked in computer graphics but then focused on art therapy. 

“Working with children to express their emotions through art led me down artistic paths for myself,” she explains. 

When one examines an artist’s work, it is meaningful to know who their teachers and mentors were.

“I studied for a time in a group with Sasha Okun looking for the essence of expression, for ‘What do you want the painting to say?’” 

Okun is an Israeli artist, author, and educator who made aliyah from the Soviet Union in 1979. He was a senior lecturer at Bezalel Academy of Arts in Jerusalem for almost 40 years and has exhibited his artwork throughout the world. In 2014, Okun received the Mordechai Ish-Shalom Prize for Achievements in Art.

“Afterward,” says Woolf, “I studied silkscreen printing with Ellen Lefrak to find a way for the color to tell the story.”

She also studied under Yitzhak Greenfield, her closest mentor, who spoke at the exhibition’s reception. 

Greenfield made aliyah from Brooklyn in 1951. Since his move to Jerusalem in 1969, he says on his website, “Discovering this unique city and finding ways of expressing it in my work became my goal. Historic ruins and buildings, Hebrew letters, amulets, and the world of the Bible and the Kabbalah became the intrinsic content of my art.” 

His studio and gallery are located in Ein Kerem, and his work can be seen in museums, galleries, and private collections around the world.

“I have been in Yitzhak Greenfield’s studio for 13 years,” says Woolf, “challenging and struggling with reality and imagination. What does art mean to me? Is it copying nature? Is it the use of a particular medium? Is it carving the wood and simplifying the image in black and white? Is it trying to express the flight of a dancer or the feeling of the group at rest?

“And then,” she says, “the world went black. October 7 brought monstrosity to the fore, obscuring everything else. I felt that I had to respond artistically because words were meaningless.”

Looking for light in times of darkness 

But, says Woolf, she insisted on looking for the light in the darkness. “The desire to hold on to the crumbling wall to keep it standing up. To reach out heavenward for help. 

“I imagined hostages helping each other in the face of evil. Their humanity and love, surviving the onslaught of unspeakable evil. The sacrifice to protect others, to comfort them. To lie among the dead and live.” 

Woolf’s use of charcoal for many of the images, in addition to watercolor, is, she says, “in order to express the life force.”

She explains: “These images came to me from my imagination and my attempt to reveal the pain and the strength of those held in captivity.” 

At the exhibition’s opening, Woolf said, “I used to draw nature in Yitzhak Greenfield’s garden, and I drew dancers because I was inspired by my daughter Elisheva, who was studying dance... and then Oct. 7 happened.” 

She says she “felt this need to draw what was happening,” but didn’t want to draw or paint “what the enemy had done to us; rather, I wanted to imagine that people were helping each other.”

About the exhibition opening, which was well attended by friends and family, she says, “The evening was very exciting for me on the one hand, yet the subject is sad, and this even came up deciding what we should offer as refreshments. Normally, at an opening you’d have champagne, but that was certainly not appropriate.”

She also kept feeling and hoping that by the time the opening took place, “the hostages would be freed, and I’d be told to take down all the work; that it [would be] passé. Well, I hope it will be someday.”

Greenfield’s opinion is that “There is something wonderful when an artist takes upon herself a topic so heavy... the emphasis [in her work] is on the heart of the matter and not on the anatomy [of the subjects] ... She expresses her emotion and her connection to the people... It is an excellent exhibition that, in my opinion, should be shown in many additional locations.”

A number of years ago, Toby Woolf admired some paintings I had done at a retreat for cancer patients. She encouraged me to study painting more seriously. A few days later, she showed up at my door with the gift of two small canvases to get me started.

I relate that story because it illustrates how Toby Woolf the artist does not separate herself from Toby Woolf the art therapist. She sees potential in a piece of charcoal, the sweep of a brush on canvas, and in the clarity and magic of watercolors.

And in people.

It is not surprising that even in the horror of captivity, she sees glimmers of love and of hope.

“These are my Hostage Dreams,” says Woolf. “May they be rescued soon.”

Hostage Dreams will be on show in the Henry Crown Gallery until December 31, 2024. The free exhibition is open from Sun.-Thu., 4-9 p.m.; Fri., 10 a.m.-2 p.m.; Sat. until 9:30 p.m.The writer is an award-winning journalist, theater director, and editor-in-chief of WholeFamily.com.