An exhibit of breathtaking oil paintings can be seen at the entrance to the Jerusalem Theatre. Called Painting Longing (L’Tzayer Ga’agua in Hebrew), it will be on display in the Sherover Foyer through February 4.
The artist is Tamar Aluf, who on January 8 hosted family and friends at the exhibit’s elegant opening, in the presence of curator Dr. Bat-Sheva Ida.
Like most artists, Tamar has a story – though not all of it is a happy one. Her father, Boaz Aluf, worked as a programmer at Bank Hapoalim in Jerusalem’s Russian Compound area and was murdered in a terror attack in 2002.
It happened on the No. 32 bus line at the French Hill junction, when he was on his way to work. “It was a routine morning,” Tamar recalls. “I was 16 years old.”
She had been painting since she was 12, and began painting again the very day she rose from the shiva weeklong mourning period. About half of the works in this current exhibit, she says, were created after Oct. 7.
I first met and interviewed Aluf when she exhibited a sample of her work at the residence of President Isaac Herzog and First Lady Michal Herzog on Hanukkah. The Herzogs were hosting members of OneFamily’s Bonim Chalom (Building a Dream) cohort, of which she was a part.
The organization describes the program as a seven-month journey that supports bereaved siblings as they find their way back to lives of purpose and fulfillment, rediscover dreams that were pushed aside, and translate them into practical steps in their personal, family, and professional lives.
Aluf’s emotion was palpable as she spoke movingly to the audience on the evening of the Jerusalem Theatre opening. “For me, this is a meaningful moment, and I’m happy to share it here, in this place, with you,” she said. “Thank you for allowing my works to meet you.”
Painting life through longing
Her personal story notwithstanding, Aluf said, “I paint life – life that contains longing. It’s not always possible to explain this elusive feeling in words, so I try to give it form – color, dimensions, a place.
“Perhaps the time has come to give ‘longing’ (ga’agua) its place,” she said. “There is development, there is life, there is value. Longing is sometimes for a particular person, sometimes for a period of time, sometimes for an experience from the past, and sometimes for what has not yet come to be.”
She thanked the audience for coming, and expressed her appreciation to the curator and to the theatre.
Curator Ida also spoke, situating the exhibit within a broader emotional landscape. “All of us are living in a kind of post-trauma,” she said. “We feel the loss and the longing for those who are no longer with us, together with the entire people of Israel. Therefore, there is a special attempt with this exhibit to bring us closer to this kind of feeling and to connect a bit more deeply with our own emotions.”
When I asked Aluf whether she senses a difference in her artwork before and after her father’s death, she reflected quietly. “Painting is a place where I express myself – my silence, my inner world,” she said. “It helps me understand things, and process insights that often come quietly, through my hands.”
She walked me through several of the paintings on display. One is titled Cracks in the Foundations. It’s the feeling that things change; everything changes,” she explained. “You have to rebuild, to rearrange your life again after something like that happens.”
From rupture to renewal
One of the most striking images in the exhibit is a stunning tree. Aluf shared that she had originally painted a tree entirely in black on the day she rose from the shiva for her father. Years later, a teacher encouraged her to paint in response to that image. The result was two creations: the first is Tree of Renewal, painted in 2017. Nearby hangs A Mosaic of Life, completed in 2025.
When asked whether she defines her work as impressionistic, Aluf said she has never consciously placed it within a particular artistic style, though she acknowledges impressionist influences.
In addition to the richly colored oil paintings, the exhibit includes four charcoal drawings displayed together at one end of the foyer. Responding to a question from an audience member, Aluf explained, “I drew only in black, and my goal was to create figures that gradually fade away through a technique of erasure.”
At the other end of the space are four brightly colored paintings grouped together. One, depicting the face of a girl or woman with a tear running down one side of her face, is titled What Remains of the Gaze. Aluf says it is her most recent work, completed only weeks before the exhibit opened. The paintings in this grouping, she explains, relate to brokenness, to memory as it shifts with the passing of years, and – like the rest of her work – to longing.
Asked whether she has had a teacher or mentor who particularly influenced her, the artist said she had several over the years, most recently Bella Hvatskin, a talented artist from northern Israel. It was Hvatskin who encouraged her to paint in reaction to the black tree. “At the moment, I’m not studying formally,” Aluf says. “I’m looking for my next teacher or mentor.”
Community, creation, and continuing forward
Aluf grew up in Jerusalem’s Gilo neighborhood, but today lives in Alon Hagalil, a community village in the Jezreel Valley. Her eyes light up when she speaks about the area. “I move around in that general region,” she says, using the Hebrew word nodedet for “move around” – the verb of being a nomad.
In her exhibition text, Dr. Ida writes that Aluf has absorbed “the meeting point between sacred and mundane, old and new, near and distant,” noting that the Jezreel Valley’s open landscape and light have become sources of inspiration and renewed connection.
Aluf has been part of OneFamily since her father’s murder. The organization was created 25 years ago, during the second Intifada, by Chantal and Marc Belzberg, to help bring psychological and financial relief to families whose lives have been shattered by terror and by war.
When I asked how the Bonim Chalom program helped her, she paused. “Wow,” she said. “It’s difficult to compress it into a sentence.” She explained that the program provided a framework and a home for a process of dream fulfillment – not only in art, though that was what initially brought her there.
“After Oct. 7, I went into an artistic deep freeze,” she said. “In our first conversations, I said I want to bring my art into the world, and I want to create more. The Bonim Chalom program is an extraordinary framework in which to realize one’s dreams.” Through the guidance of program director Dan Katz, participation in a small group, and connections formed during the journey, she felt propelled forward.
“It was with the help and encouragement of Bonim Chalom that I approached different places where I might exhibit,” she said. “That’s how I came to the Jerusalem Theatre. As the opportunity unfolded, it obligated me to create – and that was good. It’s still good. I’m still creating now, with passion, regardless of any exhibit.
In addition to her painting, Aluf works as an employment coordinator with the nonprofit Shekulo Tov (All for the good), under the Health Ministry, helping others find meaningful work. Her grandparents, Jerry and Sylvia Gibraltar, were born in Manhattan and Brooklyn and made aliyah in 1948. Her mother, Gila, and her sisters attended the exhibit opening, while her brothers came on another evening. It has been an emotional time for the family.
Ida writes that in this exhibition, Aluf explores longing “not merely as a sense of absence, but as a vital, ongoing presence.” Her works, she notes, move between personal and historical nostalgia, and between memory and documentation, revealing how longing transforms over time: from an initial ache into a softer, more reconciled gaze.”
The curator said that in her paintings, longing takes on color, line, and texture; it manifests through glance and gesture, within both inner and outer landscapes. “Aluf paints life itself – life imbued with longing, tenderness, and light.”
What remains of our own gaze, after encountering Tamar Aluf’s evocative works, is a heightened awareness of life – and longing – within our own souls.
The author is an award-winning journalist and theater director, and the editor-in-chief of WholeFamily.com. Her current theater project is Heroines! Songs & Soliloquies for the Soul, with Raise Your Spirits Theatre.