A video of Yehuda from the early sixties making art and acting in a short narrative film.

New York

I arrived to New York in late 1969. I did not know anybody. The only one who had been here in New York was Ben-Yehuda. A friend of his, an artist by the name Shmuel, who I met weeks before leaving Israel to New York. He told me i must go see Ben-Yehuda….”you can learn a lot from him”  Weeks after my arrival to New York, I came to see Yehuda, who lived at that time at Allen Street below Houston Street. In those days, it was a very scary area and as I was walking down the street, I felt like I was going to be mugged at any minute. Finally I arrived to Yehuda’s studio and that was my first meeting with him. I did not know what to expect. 

Yehuda was covered with plaster and he was working with a model that he was about to cast with plaster. He immediately decided that I was going to be his assistant and from that moment I was working for him with material that I was not accustomed to. As Ben finished casting the model with plaster, we prepared the cast to be recast with latex, which is liquid rubber. That was my first introduction to Ben-Yehuda and over the next few years I was his assistant, casting different models, different shapes of furniture with plaster and later on into latex. Yehuda was my first introduction to the real world of New York and I will be forever grateful for his introduction to the art world. 

Yehuda had his first one man show at OK Harris. That gallery was among the first galleries in Soho. Ben-Yehuda, Bill Stewart and Duane Hanson, opened the OK Gallery in Soho. I was fortunate enough to meet those three artists and assist Ben-Yehuda to install the show. During this time, I met Christine, his wife at the time, as she came to visit Ben-Yehuda, working. She was extremely nice and gentle. I never managed to communicate much, since I did not speak much English and she did not speak much Hebrew.

My relationship with Ben-Yehuda dwindled and was on and off. He moved to Woodstock, later to Israel and I saw him less and less. 

The last time I spoke to him, was a few months prior to his passing, when I spoke to him on the phone. At that point, he lost most of his eyesight. I invited him to my show in Tel Aviv. He insisted on coming to see it and I will never forget the note he left for me, of his feeling about the work. So forever I will be indebted to him for my inauguration into the artworld.

KOCHI DOKTORI

The business card of Yehuda’s father, Yoseff, from Baghdad.

Memories of Yehuda Ben-Yehuda: The Burke Family

Memories of Yehuda Ben-Yehuda

Thirty years ago, on an airless summer night, Ben-Yehuda sailed into our lives. The small yellow sail boat was trapped in the weeds of the shrinking, inadequate Yankeetown pond, his boat was locked in the grip of this muddy pond.

We—me, my wife and our young children (now adults, Chris and Stephanie) watched in speechless fascination. We-me had never seen a sailboat or any boat larger than ten feet on Yankeetown Pond.

Yehuda Ben-Yehuda plodded out of the mush, chest covered with swamp He emerged from the slime serene, and imperturbable. He looked like a hundred and eighty pound beaver covered from the chest down with muck and pond lilies. “I love sail boats, very silence and perfect,” he explained it all with an ease and comfort within himself. “I’ll bring the car and drag it out of the water. There should be more water.”

Yehuda Ben-Yehuda, laughing his garbled thoughts had explained himself, that each day he got beneath the skin of just another day. He was an artistic explorer chasing the ordinary into beauty. It was everywhere; it took a bit of effort to find it.

He had an a panache, a style, and a hand skilled to build a post and beam studio in the middle of the woods. The view from the road was the graceful slope of tiled Japanese roof peeking thought the trees. It tickled the eye. He build smooth squares of wood furniture, full of parson’s corners and edges, the refurbishing of an ancient apothecary chest, with its hundreds of hinges and glass doors. It was full of things you never expected.

Now that the time has come, Death is more everyday than life; Yehuda has left a gift from each day of his life that was beauty, fun, disappointment, courage … moments that were unique to him and the memories of his friends and others who barely knew him.

Until we meet again,

The Burke family

THE BEACH

ONE DAY WE TOOK A RIDE OUT TO JONES BEACH WITH THE KIDS (ZOE AND DONNA ) AND JUST AS WE SAW BEACH, YEHUDA TURNED OFF THE ROAD ONTO A DIRT PATH———AND INTO A FIELD OF BUTTERFLIES WHERE WE SAT THE WHOLE DAY———-I’LL NEVER FORGET IT.  - Judy Levy

My father sure knew how to make a mess. He made a mess of food, a mess of paint, a mess of our lives, a mess of his houses, a mess of his clothes, his beard, his finances, his health, his relationships - it seemed like either the world was complicated and he had no intention of changing that fact or else he had a tendency to turn even the most straight forward interaction into a complex entanglement. Why carry on a friendly discussion about the weather when you could fight about it on three different levels. Nothing would be simple or orderly for long, nothing would continue as planned, nothing made sense at the end of the day but this is how it all worked out. On the handful of family trips we took when I was little we never went directly to our final destination, he always bought tickets that would have us spending a week or two in layover in Turkey or some other Mediterranean location with open markets and haggling. This was how he tasted every food, saw every sight, loved every son, daughter, grandchild, wife or friend. If something was simple it was boring, if it was complicated he could really care about it, invest emotion. I don’t think we ever entertained a conversation that at some moment didn’t have the potential to become a fight, he really cared and invested himself within the world around him. In return everything was always pouring out of him, his tears, sweat, urine, blood, insulin, coffee, olive oil, cayenne and some new ingredient he was trying out and wanted me to sample too. My tasting bites were always too small, he wanted me to take a full mouthful of everything and finish it too. “How could i taste with such little bites?” He combated me. By messing everything up he got to experience it all and see how it worked. He wanted the truth, he wanted reality, and if it wasn’t pretty or pleasant that was ok, perhaps he would even try and change it but first he had to know what it was. When i got electrocuted in Ein Hod and cried about how much more it hurt because it was 220 volts instead of 110 he asked me to describe the difference and congratulated me on exploring both options.  By making things messy, pushing us to our limits and breaking things down before starting to build them back up he found his peace in a brutal honesty that I’m still chasing after for my own life. This was one of many things he taught me. Today, In contrast to my dad, I am neat and orderly, my workshops, desks and drawers are pristine and everything has its own place. I like to get everything arranged just so and then I like to make the mess. I like to think that I have a lifetime of messiness to look forward to, hard work with lots of sweat, broken hearts with many tears, big meals with dirty dishes, and long convoluted trips traveling around the world. On this day I’d like to remember my dad not by his simple virtues (if there even are any) but by all the messes and complicated routes through which he brings us here today. I think the only simple thing about Yehuda was that he was always making messes and his messes were always making us laugh, cry or shout or ask for another serving of his delicious cooking. — Yoseff Ben-Yehuda

Yehuda’s father’s business card from Iraq.

Farewell
by Agha Shahid Ali
.
At a certain point I lost track of you.
They make a desolation and call it peace.
when you left even the stones were buried:
the defenseless would have no weapons.
.
When the ibex rubs itself against the rocks,
who collects its fallen fleece from the slopes?
O Weaver whose seams perfectly vanished,
who weighs the hairs on the jeweller’s balance?
They make a desolation and call it peace.
Who is the guardian tonight of the Gates of Paradise?
.
My memory is again in the way of your history.
Army convoys all night like desert caravans:
In the smoking oil of dimmed headlights, time dissolved- all
winter- its crushed fennel.
We can’t ask them: Are you done with the world?
.
In the lake the arms of temples and mosques are locked in each other’s reflections.
Have you soaked saffron to pour on them when they are found like this
centuries later in this country
I have stitched to your shadow?
.
In this country we step out with doors in our arms
Children run out with windows in their arms.
You drag it behind you in lit corridors.
if the switch is pulled you will be torn from everything.
.
At a certain point I lost track of you.
You needed me. You needed to perfect me.
In your absence you polished me into the Enemy.
Your history gets in the way of my memory.
I am everything you lost. You can’t forgive me.
I am everything you lost. Your perfect Enemy.
Your memory gets in the way of my memory:
.
I am being rowed through Paradise in a river of Hell:
Exquisite ghost, it is night.
The paddle is a heart; it breaks the porcelain waves.
It is still night. The paddle is a lotus.
I am rowed- as it withers-toward the breeze which is soft as
if it had pity on me.
.
If only somehow you could have been mine, what wouldn’t
have happened in the world?
.
I’m everything you lost. You won’t forgive me.
My memory keeps getting in the way of your history.
There is nothing to forgive.You can’t forgive me.
I hid my pain even from myself; I revealed my pain only to myself.
There is everything to forgive. You can’t forgive me.
.
If only somehow you could have been mine,
what would not have been possible in the world?

—posted by Raphael

Those Were the Days– Cristina

I met Yehuda in 1963, when I was a nineteen year old student. He was a dark and burly man, and people would cross the street when they saw him coming. And he wore sandals made of car tires. Having just spent a year dating polite Ivy League boys, I found him irresistible. I also liked his art. So I married him.

Cristina Ochagavía

Yehuda with his parents and sisters.

Chris Olivera from the Woodstock Times

Woodstock Times: 7/22/10  In Memorium

Yehuda In Woodstock

1972- Working at a small nursery school on Wiley Lane with two and three year olds - one day an intense, charismatic dad arrived just off the plane form London to look after his daughter and son for a year (his soon-to-be-ex-wife was on a journey to relocate).

            Within a couple of months my sister and I began School of The New Moon (as planned - around the corner on Lower Byrdcliffe with Yehuda’s daughter, Noa, our first enrolled).

            Yehuda and I immediately became friends and lovers. We’d meet at Joshua’s Café, with various children and colorful locals, for lunch each day. Summer came and Yehuda decided to buy his wife’s property here to build a home on the stream near Yankeetown Pond- “the land” (this was the first of three houses he designed and build in Wittenberg). At first he put up a tiny shed with a loft structure right on the stream where we camped off and on for two years with the children and assorted animals until the main house was completed.

            As I worked with him behind the scenes on this house, he encouraged me to draw the plans and be the contractor for his design for School of The New Moon - to be situated on five acres in Riverby donated by Jerry Wapner. These were heady times in Woodstock, in many areas, but especially with the energies in creative construction. Building codes were not so rigid and many artistic, innovative and ecological buildings were in the works. Many of us would gather at Joshua’s for dinner to discuss plans and solve each other’s building challenges.

            Yehuda had a keen sense of aesthetic design and an intuitive ability to solve construction and mechanical problems (he did not read directions which led to interesting results). He could literally immerse his whole being into a given situation.

            School of The New Moon now has (since 1974) a 39-foot span octagonal building, which, due to Yehuda’s daring, pushing and hands on approach took the construction past much professional advice and the methods espoused in the Architect’s Manual. Dean Shambach, Yehuda and I had many intense discussions and even battles over this, but Dean is a wild man, too - and the school was built.

            Yehuda lived here pretty much full time for the next eight years, then back and for the to the city for the next 14. He was the instigator to design and gather locals for a “barn raising for Mark Black”- as thanks for the countless evenings of musical fun at the White Water Depot. He designed and encouraged Joshua and Ellen to expand their café, which lead to the present incarnation.

            His children would come summers and Yehuda would get us all to explore all the nooks and crannies of activities, arts, animals, event- some quite obscure- in the Hudson Valley. One especially memorable summer, he would prepare weekly shashlik shish kabob barbecues for on and all at the house, on “the land”. He hired local square dance bands and others to eat, drink, and be merry and to make his children more a part of Woodstock. (Did I neglect to mention Yehuda was a terrific innovative cook- lots of delicious mid-eastern food- not recipes of course, thought he wrote a book in later years).

             Yehuda would get very restless without project and certainly could be difficult to work with, but his creative energy, intelligence, and humor always drew people to him and loved him.

            When Yehuda’s youngest child turned five in ’93, he and Hadass brought him to New Moon for his kindergarten year. I had met Yoseff at age two and saw he had that innate mechanical sensibility, and aesthetic sense, a love of good food and a sense of humor (qualities I later learned his mother had too).

            So - full circle - Yoseff became part of Hew Moon history- in attendance in his father’s creation. Yoseff recently graduated from Reed College and is attending Pratt to study…architecture.

            I share the above in appreciation of Yehuda’s artistic abundance - in thanks for the school structure I get to work in everyday and which has been the hub of a very magical and peaceful environment for the several hundred children (and their families) who have shred this space with for 36 years.

The school continues on and I think of – and thank – Yehuda, in all his complexity,  everyday.

Christine Oliveria

School of The New Moon

Message from Yael Shimoni

My deep condolences to all of you.  I cannot believe that I cannot pick up the phone and call Yehuda.  That really hurts.  And yet, I’m so grateful that Yehuda’s pain is dead.

My relationship with Yehuda began when I was a child.  My brother David and I were taught to call him Uncle  Yehuda.  I later learned that he was not my uncle, rather my father’s cousin and  best boyhood friend when they were growing up in Baghdad and Jerusalem.

When I was growing up we visited Uncle Yehuda, Noa and Raphie in Woodstock.  To  my child’s mind Yehuda was a big, furry, funny, magical, larger than life man who could get very loud sometimes (scary!) and who was like a big kid himself.  I thought Yehuda was cool. He could make doll houses (that Noa and I played with), real houses (that Raphie -who did not like us girls- helped him build).  He took us walking, sliding across a frozen lake- to my father’s dismay! The heating  often didn’t work at  Yehuda’s, and there was a huge terrifying bathtub.  He performed magic tricks and showed us how to roast marshmellows and chestnuts in his fireplace.  Visiting Uncle Yehuda meant visiting adventure- and not always adventure without danger.  When danger entered the picture my father would argue with Yehuda. He would try to reason with him.  But Yehuda had a dogged ability to turn all reason on its head and make it look silly.

Many years later I became a grown-up living in Switzerland.  After I had been estranged from Yehuda for a long time (I had witnessed one of his angry explosions in New York) I was back in contact with him.  Now he was living in Tel Aviv, was blind, had diabetes and many other conditions.  And he had become my friend.  I still don’t completely understand our friendship.  Part of it was that we both sensed each other’s pain- in Yehuda’s case both physical and mental pain.  And there was this silent agreement to honor that pain without forcing the other to talk about it.  And if one of us did talk about his pain (rare) the other one just listened.  There was no pity and no judgement and no demanding for more admissions of pain.

Most of the time Yehuda told me about his views on life or told me about his dreams and ideas (some of them really nutty) or he turned something I said or he said on its’ head and made it funny.  And then he’d turn it over again and make it even funnier.

And occasionally Yehuda made a completely unacceptable and hurtful comment about me and my life, or he made such a comment about someone else.  Being a very sensitive person, I could have let those comments ruin our friendship.  But I didn’t. Yehuda was far enough away to be safe and close enough to be dear.  And I think I  understood a few things about his pain.  He sometimes mixed up his pain with a more objective reality.  He mixed it up with his wish to love.  And he mixed it up with his wish to be creative.  He was in a constant struggle with his pain.    He hurt a lot of people, but he really wanted to love a lot of people, and sometimes his love came out in huge waves.   And sometimes the pain got in the way.  Occasionally, Yehuda voiced regrets about mistakes he’d made with loved ones.

Yehuda tried to advise me about my life- sometimes giving me serious advice delivered in caring tones, sometimes giving me the most crazy advice imaginable- just to let his imagination run free.

And now Yehuda is completely free.  Somewhere he is cracking jokes about his own death and feeling love for those he left behind… . .

The Children of Yehuda

From Jesse

Noa, I remember sitting in what used to be your father’s studio on 175th street, on a little bed (built by your brother?) and you pulled out old photo albums and told me a little of your family. I remember feeling closer to you then, with a creative and complex family history in common, and wanting to hear more.