I was born in 1955 to Pnina and Ben-Zion in Jerusalem’s Abu Tor neighborhood, on the stitch between east and west Jerusalem. I grew up in the Negev, living close to the Bedouin Abu Rakaik tribe. With them, I experienced the power of nature in the desert. After eight years of military and national service, I realized what my heart does not desire, and I went to seek a new path. I loved wood, and so I learned joinery, which I enjoyed a lot. I then studied at the Bezalel Academy of Art.

 

It was during this year, 1985 that my father passed on following a prolonged illness. It was from my father that I learned to love wood, creativity, and aesthetics. A big void was left in my heart, and I started to create.

 

During these years, when I was in my thirties, I traveled around the world and was exposed to different cultures from which I learned their ways of life and the sources of their faith.

 

In 1995 I fulfilled a long time dream and opened a wood workshop at Even Sappir, in the mountains west of Jerusalem. It is where I live, create, build furniture out of whole wood, raise my children and take care of the trees of the forest. Four years later I participated in a bamboo house building workshop held at the Vitra Museum. There, between the large cedar trees, I was exposed to a daytime vision about the totem poles of North West America. Since then, through an exciting exploration of the subconscious mind, I use this powerful tool to conduct communal creative encounters with young people from a different cultural background in Israel and abroad. These deal with contemporary topics.

 

I have three children, Eliyah, my oldest girl, Yishay and Avner are the boys.