Kerem Shalom after Christina’s world

In January 2024, I spent some time in the south of Israel. One of the places I visited was Kibbutz Kerem Shalom, located at the border crossing between Egypt and Gaza. While there, I listened to the stories of mothers who had lost their husbands on that terrible day, October 7.

Kerem Shalom is a unique kibbutz. It's a mixed community, not predominantly religious, which is unusual in the region. The mothers spoke about their pride in the kibbutz despite everything they’ve endured. I also spent time with one of the fathers, a member of the kibbutz security team. He showed me around the attack sites and the homes where people had hidden, desperately trying to survive.

Walking around the kibbutz, I felt an eerie sense of unease. If you imagine the scene from where I was standing, right behind me was the security barrier—the same barrier that terrorists broke through on October 7. The house I was looking at, destroyed and one of the first attacked, stood as a chilling reminder of the events.

As I stood there, taking in the way the ground curved and sloped away from me, I suddenly thought of Andrew Wyeth’s famous painting Christina’s World. Wyeth’s painting depicts his neighbor, a girl with polio, striving toward her home. For me, this painting in Kerem Shalom became a meditation on the loss of the idea of home.

For the residents of this kibbutz—and for Jews everywhere—home is not just a physical place but a symbol of safety and sanctuary. On October 7, that sense of home was violently taken away. In my vision, a religious woman stands, looking back at her house—at our collective home—trying to find a way to return to what was lost.