by Reuters and Israel Hayom
"The idea of turning rockets into menorahs is turning a symbol of death and destruction into a symbol of light," says sculptor Yaron Bob, who uses remnants of the projectiles Gaza terrorists fire into Israel in his work • "This is my therapy," he says.
A Hanukkah menorah sculptor Yaron Bob fashioned out of the
remnants of a rocket fired from Gaza
Photo: Reuters
The clang of hammer on metal and the roar
of a blowtorch can be heard long before you walk into Israeli metal
sculptor Yaron Bob's workshop.
Featured prominently in his workshop is a
quotation from the Book of Isaiah: "And they shall beat their swords
into plowshares" (Isaiah 2:4).
Bob is doing something close to that in his
studio in Yated, an agricultural community near the border where
Israel, Gaza and Egypt meet.
His raw material is rockets and mortar
shells fired into Israel by Palestinian terrorists from Gaza, just 4
kilometers (2.5 miles) away.
The twisted shrapnel is dropped off at his
smithy by police and Bob, 47, crafts artwork and religious symbols from
the metal, selling his creations in Israel and abroad.
In the run-up to the Jewish holiday of
Hanukkah, he was busy crafting a monumental hanukkiyah, or Hanukkah
menorah, a candlestick with nine branches that is used during the
eight-day festival that starts this year at sundown, Sunday.
Also known as the Festival of Lights,
Hanukkah commemorates the 2nd century BCE victory of Judah the Maccabee
and his followers in a revolt in Judea against armies of the
Greek Empire.
Light is key to the holiday because Jewish
tradition says, the Maccabees found only enough ritually pure oil to
fuel a ceremonial lamp in the temple in Jerusalem for one day, but it
burned for eight days.
Bob also makes the seven-branched menorah, a symbol that appears on the emblem of the State of Israel.
"The idea of turning rockets into menorahs
and hanukkiyot is turning the symbol of death and destruction into a
symbol of light, and hanukkiyah is the symbol of light," Bob said.
Israel and Hamas, the terrorist group that
rules Gaza, have fought three wars in the past 10 years, in 2008, 2012
and 2014, and violence occasionally erupts along the volatile frontier.
But the skies have been empty of rockets and missiles since a mid-November flare-up, the worst since 2014, in which 460 projectiles were fired from Gaza at the Israeli communities near the border.
"We have only between 10 to 15 seconds to
run for shelter, so every millisecond counts, and because of that we
live in anxiety," Bob said.
"When I'm taking the rockets and I cut them
and I put them in the furnace and I'm working with them or with the
blowtorch and I'm working, I'm like destroying, annihilating the
rockets. So, this is my therapy."
Reuters and Israel Hayom
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/2018/11/29/israeli-artist-beats-gaza-rockets-into-hanukkah-lamps/
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