All parents love their kids, right? True, as has been pointed out numerous times, no one goes to parenting school to get a license to bring up their kids and, yes, all parents make mistakes. Some, it must be recognized, do a downright awful job. But there is something about the total devotion of a parent, particularly (at the risk of sounding non-PC) of the Jewish mother, that stirs the heart.
Merav Tal certainly fits into that category. She and husband, Michael, have three children, one of whom is 27-year-old son Ofek. He was born with Pallister-Killian Syndrome (PKS), an extremely rare and severe genetic disorder caused by the presence of an extra and abnormal chromosome.
Strides have been taken to accept and integrate neurodivergent children and adults into our often bling bling-oriented society – in which “beauty” and “perfection” are trumpeted and sold to us for the benefit of commercial concerns looking to make a quick million or two. There is, nevertheless, some way to go before we, like Tal, can see the real beauty and precious gifts proffered by those who don’t fit the “ideal” air-brushed bill of our society.
Tal is not only a loving mother, she is also a former nurse and, more to the aesthetic point, a trained and talented photographer.
Unsurprisingly, she has been snapping her family and, in particular, Ofek for some years now. Several of the fruits of that earnest and heartfelt documentary enterprise will be on show at the President Hotel Gallery in Jerusalem in Tal’s exhibition “Horizon,” which runs at the social space on Achad Ha’am Street, from September 5 to October 25. Internationally renowned curator and art historian Dana Arieli-Horowitz acted as artistic consultant for the project.
The English title of the show is somewhat misleading. The original Hebrew version reads Halon Le’Ofek – literally, “A Window to the Horizon” – which, of course, is a play on the young man’s name. All told, the collection takes in 38 enlarged prints which tell a tale of a family and its special member.
“Ofek is almost 28,” Tal tells me when we meet up in a downtown café a couple of weeks before the grand opening. “A lot of my life has been devoted to Ofek.”
That has been a time-consuming role, but rather than ruing the intrusion on her own time or bemoaning what the fates had tossed her and the family, Tal expresses her gratitude for the way things have panned out.
“The way I see it, Ofek is a wonderful gift. For me, he is a choice. For me, he came to help me in some way to express my essence, my core,” she says.
AND IT doesn’t come easy. Since Tal retired from nursing, which she had taken up at the age of 45, she has spent the majority of her waking hours tending to Ofek’s every need and request.
“Horizon” includes shots of him at museums and galleries, including some delightful, smile-inducing, frames of him at a Sigalit Landau exhibition at the Israel Museum. He looks like he was having a whale of a time betwixt Landau’s weird and wonderful salt-encrusted artifacts.
Undiluted joy and undistilled emotion are prominent in the photographs. It is not always out there front and center, but the undercurrent of good cheer, a sense of familial ease, and basic happiness with the simple fact that they are together is there throughout.
Being a mom to an offspring with very special needs must be a demanding full-time job, so how does Tal manage to take such wonderful pictures? “I give while I create,” she states succinctly.
It is in her blood. “I can’t just make sandwiches every morning or just do stock things. But if it is something that is creative, like working out every day what Ofek needs, what will be good for him, what idea can make him happy – that is my essence; giving while I create.”
This is not the clichéd artist-suffering-for-their-art scenario. At the risk of sounding a mite crass, Tal could not have hoped for better raw material to work with. “This isn’t documentation per se,” she explains. “I studied photography a long time before Ofek was born,” she says.
“I completed my studies at HaMidrasha – Faculty of Art in Ramat Hasharon. I had an exhibition there and worked in the darkroom. I have connected to photography for a long, long time. I trained as an art teacher.”
So the skill came before the ongoing beloved theme. This isn’t just any old mother snapping her son here there and everywhere.
ACCEPTED SOCIETAL wisdom believes that women, as opposed to their more limited male counterparts, are better equipped for the modern world of multitasking. Tal says she got some backing for assuming the dual role from a professional colleague.
“Shira Richter, who is a director and photographer [and activist], once gave a lecture in which she used the term ‘imanit,’” Tal recalls referencing the amalgam term which comprises ima, “mother” in Hebrew, with the anit suffix from omanit, or “female artist.” That’s a neat combo which describes Tal to a T, although, it must be said, she navigated her way in at least several demanding capacities for quite some time.
“I really liked that word. I have dedicated my life to Ofek and all my [three] children, even though I started studying nursing at the age of 45 and became a nurse when I was 48.”
I wondered whether taking up a medical profession was, in any way, fueled by Ofek and his special needs. “Everything is connected to Ofek,” she declares.
Tal bowls me over with her next declaration. “Ofek helps me to heal myself. It is amazing.” The amazement factor takes another leap, into the realms of spirituality. “Sometimes it pains me that he had to sacrifice himself and come into this world as Ofek, to enable me to grow,” she posits, before adding that it is a win-win situation for all concerned.
“He also gets something from this. He gets unconditional love. It is rare for someone to get that. It is no simple matter.”
Tal may have showered her youngest child with affection and constant attention, but she somehow also managed to keep her creative pursuit alive and kicking. “I am always taking pictures. I thought to myself, ‘Should I stop photographing Ofek after the exhibition?’ But I can’t stop. I just have to do that.”
Tal may feel impelled to capture almost every gesture of her beloved son, at all sorts of twists and turns in his life, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she has to spend a fortune blowing the prints up to impressive dimensions, having them framed, and then getting a curator on board so that she can make close to 40 of her thousands of deftly caught snaps available to the general public.
It must surely take some courage, and steadfast inner conviction, to embark on such an emotionally draining, labor-intensive, and financially challenging venture. This is the complete antithesis of the Israeli attitude of yi’hyeh be’seder (“It will be fine”), skirting around the less socially acceptable stuff until, hopefully, it is forgotten, or simply ignored, and we can all get back to avoiding the uncomfortable aspects of everyday life. After all, haven’t we got enough to deal with anyway?
THERE IS an altruistic side to “Horizon.”
“This exhibition is designed to express my emotions but also to convey some message to this world,” she notes. “Every one of us has a place in this world. It doesn’t make any difference what they look like, who or what they are. That is my mission in life – to open up the heart for women. To be human.”
Tal has managed that with aplomb, through her life choices and her decision to be a fully hands-on mom to Ofek and to take on a profession that makes enormous demands on body and soul.
But, she points out, it brought her rich enlightening rewards, too. “That’s why I worked in a hospice and at the Alyn Hospital [rehabilitation center for physically challenged and disabled children, adolescents, and young adults in Jerusalem]. I worked at Alyn for 10 and a half years. It is a very moving place.”
There was a learning curve to be negotiated as well. “It is not easy working in a place like that. You encounter all sorts of difficult things which you don’t want to accept. But you just have to open up your heart, and do that specifically in places where it is really tough.”
In a world where social media allows us to express our opinions and thoughts on practically any topic – even, unfortunately, in a crass and unfiltered manner – one might have thought there was plenty of room for subject matter that doesn’t always pander to mainstream thinking. That, surely, means we can accommodate people and ideas that don’t quite come up to “polite” scratch. Tal’s experience in the field suggests otherwise.
“These days, galleries are still looking for the image of perfection – the bouquet of flowers that never wither – everything has to be just so.”
“Horizon” presents a down-and-dirty vignette of reality. “I see the beauty of Ofek, the beauty in him,” says Tal. “I put up a picture of him, and I think to myself: ‘Can’t others see how beautiful he is? How beautiful this all is?’”
Tal is hopeful that we will come away from the exhibition feeling humbled but, more than anything, alive to the possibilities life throws us and a heightened sense of what really matters in this world.
“I love people and human interaction, and I think that Ofek is part of that, just like all the kids at Alyn and all the people at the [Hadassah Mount Scopus] hospice, who were at their life’s end.”
That, Tal believes, provides for genuine encounters, with egos and other trivialities set firmly to one side. At this sorry juncture of our national and personal timeline, getting to grips with who we truly are and our place in the world can be of some comfort – and help us focus and maximize our limited resources on the people we love and things of real value.■
For more information: socialspace.org.il/
