Toby Woolf Exhibit In Jerusalem
By Toby Klein Greenwald
If you will be in Jerusalem for Chanukah, don’t miss this.
For the past year we’ve seen books and works of art and films and even some plays that have portrayed the horrors and the fears and the sorrow of October 7th and its aftermath.
We pray for the safe return of the hostages. Some of us wear yellow ribbons and pieces of masking tape on our clothing marking the number of days, or we demonstrate or sing or light an extra candle erev Shabbat. Even those who do nothing outwardly, experience the sadness piercing their hearts.
Artist Toby Woolf, in a deeply moving and exquisitely expressive exhibit at the Jerusalem Theater, imagines not the horror or the pain, but the haunting silence of the individuals, and the loving hugs of the hostages looking out for each other. Woolf points out to me as I peruse the collection that when one walks through the exhibit from the beginning, you will notice that only toward the end do the works morph from charcoal to water color, symbolic of hope.
It is an unusual exhibit, one that will entrance you. 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 exhibit spring?
Toby Woolf was born in 1957 in Brooklyn. She grew up in a home where music and art and literature were commonplace, and their family history included war and hardships.
Woolf says, “My sister Judi, a’h, was an artist. I grew up going to museums. My father, z’l, was a ba’al tefillot [led the prayers in the synagogue]. My mom sewed, read voraciously, and both parents engaged in high level conversations on politics and religion.
“My dad fled Poland to Russia and ended up in a slave labor camp in Archangel. They were released and went to Tashkent where my Russian born mom’s family had fled. They married and made their way to a DP camp in the American zone in Germany where my two eldest sibs were born. They came to the U.S. in 1950 where first Judi and then I was born.
“I think about my 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 were murdered. Yet he went on, married, and had a family.
“I pray for all the bereaved and wounded that they, like my parents, will find the strength to go on. And live.”
Disclosure: 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 an assignment, 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 exhibit at this stage of life.
Toby married Professor Jeffrey Woolf in 1980 and they made aliyah in 1993, first to Jerusalem, and eventually settled in Efrat. Professor Woolf lectured at Bar Ilan University on the History of Halakhah, Medieval and Renaissance Jewish History. Prof. Woolf also spoke at the opening.
Dr. Batsheva Ida, Curator of the exhibit for the Jerusalem Theater, 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, “After making aliyah, I sought appropriate teachers so I could continue my art and work in a related field. I worked in computer graphics but then settled on Art Therapy. Working with children to express their emotions through art led me down artistic paths for myself.”
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. 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.
“Afterwards,” says Woolf, “I studied silkscreen printing with Ellen Lefrak to find a way for the color to tell the story.”
She studied under Yitzchak Greenfield, her closest mentor, who spoke at the exhibit’s reception. Greenfield made aliyah from Brooklyn, N.Y. 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 Kabbalah became the intrinsic content of my art.” His studio and gallery are located in Ein Karem and his work can be seen in museums, galleries, and private collections around the world.
“I have been in Yitzchak Greenfield’s studio for thirteen 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 the world went black. October 7th brought monstrosity to the fore obscuring everything else. I felt that I had to respond artistically because words were meaningless.”
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. 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 exhibit’s opening, Woolf said, “I used to draw for nature in Yitzhak Greenfield’s garden, and I drew dancers because I was inspired by my daughter Elisheva who was studying dance, and then October 7th happened. I felt this need to draw what was happening, but I 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 exhibit opening, which was well attended by friends and family, she said, “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.
“I also kept feeling and hoping that by the time the opening happened, the hostages would be freed, and I’d be told to take down all the work; that it’s passé. Well, I hope it will be someday.”
Greenfield, who spoke, said, “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 exhibit that in my opinion should be shown in many additional locations.”
One last disclosure. 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 start me on my way.
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, in the sweep of a brush on canvas, in the clarity and magic of water colors.
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 exhibit in the Henry Crown Gallery until December 31, 2024. n
The author is an award-winning journalist, theater director and editor-in-chief of WholeFamily.com.
