Students at Mercaz Academy were delighted to welcome artist Yaron Bob to their campus in Plainview last week. As the artist behind Rockets Into Roses, Mr. Bob sculpts metal remnants from exploded rockets launched into Israel by terrorists from Gaza and transforms them into beautiful jewelry, art, and Jewish ritual objects.
Yaron introduced himself to students in grades one through six, telling them that he had been an art teacher and blacksmith in the town of Yated, a small Israeli community near the border of Gaza. He told his fascinated audience about a time he accidentally sat on a fork, which bent. Aimlessly playing with the bent fork, he shaped it into a cat, and came up with the idea of teaching “students like me, who have trouble in school,” how to work with metal as a therapeutic method to relieve stress. As he told this story and throughout the presentation, he idly shaped a stash of metal forks into cats, bracelets, scorpions, and other fantastic sculptures that he gave to lucky students, much to their delight.
One day many years ago, Yaron told the students, sirens wailed, indicating that Yaron had seven seconds to take shelter from an incoming Kassem missile from Gaza. The rocket hit uncomfortably close, and while he wasn’t hurt, he was frightened and upset. Needing to retake control of his fear, Yaron sculpted the shrapnel from this near-miss into a rose. It needed a base, so he added one, allowing the rose to rise from a map of Israel.
Now, he makes many different pieces of art in addition to those originals, including a megillah case made from a rocket shell, mezuzah covers made from exploded Iron Dome fragments, and necklaces with charms shaped like maps of Israel or Stars of David. Mercaz students found Yaron’s most impressive creation to be a set of chimes made from exploded rockets, finished and painted with a Magen David. Yaron selected a student to strike each chime once in the order in which they were strung to demonstrate which song these particular chimes were designed to play. As the first notes of “Hatikvah” rang out, Mercaz students immediately recognized Israel’s national anthem and spontaneously sang along, bringing the artist to tears.
Yaron has a natural rapport with children, and they loved him, clamoring for fork sculptures and peppering him with questions. It was an incredible lesson on resilience and empowerment in difficult times, and the artist gently taught Mercaz students how to transform the things that try to break us into something beautiful.
