By Jeffrey M Rothenberg

Recently when visiting Israel for the unveiling of my wife Joani's painting (Partnership Bridge) celebrating the Partnership between the Jewish Agency, Nahariya and the Indianapolis Jewish Community Center.  I had the opportunity to meet and work with the acclaimed Israeli glass artist Batia Gil Margalit who graduated from Bezalel and lives in the Artistic commune of Clil in the Western Galilee. 

Having been on an early ERG I was familiar with the partnership and it's medical interactions but after my wife got involved I realized the amazing opportunities that existed outside of my own discipline of medicine. 

As a successful glass artist myself (I am a full time Professor at the Indiana University Medical school where I work on incorporating the Huamnites into the curriculum) I was really pleased and honored  that the staff at the Jewish Agency was able to find someone for me to partner with in art-we all took a chance, and did it ever pay off!

I briefly met Batia at my wife's opening and told her that I would call her the following morning.   I drove to Clil and left a message on her cell only to learn that I had the wrong number.  I stopped off at a house and asked if they knew her and the woman graciously informed me that Batia and her husband were a kilometer away in a field picking olives.  I found them in the field and after introductions, I found myself dragging a tarp to collect the olives from a ripe olive tree-what an unexpected treat-performing a task that has been a part of life in the middle east for thousands of years.

Batia and I then went to her studio (which she shares with her ceramicist husband Alon Gil) from the field and I got 'the tour'-it was amazing what she has been able to accomplish with a self built studio. 

From there we took my wife who met me at the studio to a fellow painters' (Alon Porat) studio to work for the day and Batia and I went to sketch a 400 plus year old olive tree.  We used these sketches to create a glass sculpture in her studio by cutting up to 500 pieces of glass and then inserted enamel colors and copper wires between the cut pieces sheets of glass.  The metals are converted into organic forms that are trapped inside the translucent glass and are influenced by the light passing through, giving a warm and luminescent feel to the piece.  The final piece was a combination of both of our talents coupled with the fortuitous timing of the olive harvest. 
   

The evening finished with a wonderful dinner in a Clil organic outdoor caf? under a star filled Galilee sky-with a new friend and artistic partner.

Thanks to the Jewish Agency, the Partnership, the Jewish Federation of Greater Indianapolis, Batia and everyone else involved in making this new 'partnership' possible-and successful.