On Thursday, February 6, we attended a student art exhibit at Younited School, located in the Givat Haviva complex about a half hour drive from Zichron Yaakov, where we live while in Israel. Our friend works for that school and she offered to take us to the event.

Younited is an international, residential high school whose mission is “to transform the Middle East and beyond by developing a powerful network of leaders who will work together towards inclusive, democratic societies and a just future for all.” Younited is “a welcoming and compassionate community, in which students are encouraged to reject easy answers, challenge conventions, and be ethical and positive change agents.”

I am extremely glad that she offered, and that, despite being a homebody who tends to turn into a pumpkin way before midnight, I decided to go. And this is why…..

For over an hour I was in the company of a group of beautiful, creative, engaging, thoughtful young people from many areas of the Middle East, from Russia, Nigeria, South America, and Rwanda, along with many of their beaming and proud parents. I heard Hebrew, Arabic, Spanish, and English.

I saw young people, whom the world has named as enemies, hugging and congratulating each other on their artwork. I listened to young artists explain how their works represent their thoughtful struggles to make sense of the world, how they gather courage from the artistic expression of their emotional life. And I listened to their teachers and school staff (also a mixed group of gender, nationality and language) express pride in their students, amazement at their talents and commitment.

The first artist we talked with had worked in several different mediums. She had done some paintings based on photographs, some from her imagination, and some wire sculptures of birds in flight. She told us that the birds represented her feelings about flying off into adulthood, excited, but also journeying into the unknown. One of her paintings was done after she read a book that prompted her to think about her ability to make choices–between being a victim or being a queen. The background noise and her accented English (although very good) may have led to some inaccuracy in understanding on my part, but the depth of serious thought she was giving to her creative life was very evident.

One young woman from Nigeria presented a stunning collection of paintings, photographs and a mask reflecting the ways that Western colonization has damaged her tribe, her people in Nigeria. She made no apologies (nor should she) for “telling it like it is.” But she was also able to connect the kidnapping and sexual enslavement of so many Nigerian women (by Nigerian terrorists) with the hostages still in Gaza.

One of the most intriguing creations was comprised of three separate horizontal planks placed one on top of the other with a small space in between. The top plank had three heads – one of a fish, one of an ape and one of a human. The next plank below (in the middle of the three) had torsos of the three, and the lower plank had two sets of legs (ape & human) and one fish tail. However, the torsos, legs & tail were not in the correct places – that is, the human head was on top of the ape torso and had a fish tail; the fish head was atop a human torso and had ape legs, and the ape head had a fish torso and human legs. The artist explained that this particular painting was a way of expressing his feeling that so often the world really makes no sense. He also had done another painting of a huge crow standing over three very small, human-like scarecrows, which represented how bad leaders and governments work to overwhelm and mislead the public.

Throughout the exhibition there were other representations of how governments oppress their own people, reflecting a sophisticated understanding of the difference between oppressive leaders and the people they govern. Clearly, these young people put a lot of thought into their political understanding of the world and are not just getting processed information from various social media outlets.

Right now the world seems only to be getting darker and more hopeless. I have been struggling to maintain hope that there will be any (let alone enough) positive change and that we humans will ever get our act together to save ourselves and the rest of creation from our violent and destructive tendencies.

What I experienced that night was a ray of hope–
***perhaps a small one
***perhaps a weak one
***perhaps of questionable significance–

As I finish writing this on Friday afternoon, the sky is beginning to darken and the time for lighting Shabbat candles is coming soon. Jewish days begin at sundown and thus begin with increasing darkness. At first glance, this may seem a depressing way to mark the passage of time. Wouldn’t it be better to start in the light? But consider this. Starting in darkness means our days always turn toward light. It means that we greet darkness with the act of kindling light.

It is easy to think that the work of dedicated people such as the students, teachers, staff and supporters of schools like Younited is “just” a small ray of light. In the face of all the pain and suffering in the world, it is tempting to consider it of questionable significance.

I don’t think that is so. I think it is facing the darkness by kindling light.

(c) 2025marthahurwitz