“He came up with this idea of finding craftsmen all over Israel who would be willing to contribute a bit of their time to do something especially for soldiers injured with shrapnel. In Israel it seems to be that after surgery the surgeon will give the soldier the piece of shrapnel he has just extracted as a souvenir.”
Elkouby thought of taking “something that was traumatic and dark and to turn it …into something beautiful… He got my number from a cousin of his in France who 20 years ago happened to be in yeshivah with me and remembered I was into artwork.”
When Weiss said he was willing to help, the next day he received a call from Aviad. “I went to his house on the first night of Chanukah and met him. I had no idea what I was going to do. He gave me the shrapnel in a little medical box.”
When he hit on the idea of a dreidel, he worked quickly, intent on having the gift ready before the end of Chanukah. Some 15 centrimetres high, the aluminium object, mounted on a mahogany base, is hollow with round windows made of watch crystal; inside the shrapnel is pinned, ringed by the inscription (the first letters of each word of which are traditionally the letters displayed on a typical dreidel in Israel).
“I wanted it to be something special,” Weiss said. “I worked relentlessly for four days and nights on the piece.”
On the sixth night of Chanukah, Weiss, accompanied by his wife, returned to the soldier. “It was just amazing - two complete strangers, bonded together by this story. His wife had prepared some doughnuts for us and a bottle of wine. He was just so overcome with emotion.
“His wife said she had never seen smile like that since his injury. She said, ‘You really made his evening’. He said, ‘He made my life, not my evening’. It was a very special moment.”
Aviad explained that he had had “this very weird relationship with his shrapnel”. On the one hand, it was something “very precious to him” that recalled “a miraculous salvation in a way”. On the other hand, it was something that had almost killed him.
“He had it at the back of his cupboard in a box. One time he almost threw it out - he didn’t want to have anything to do with it because it brought back the horrors of the past.”
But he told Weiss that it had stood next to the menorah during the festival and now he keeps proudly in his silver cabinet. “His wife said she has seen a marked improvement in his whole outlook. He is more open to talk about his experiences.”
As images of the dreidel circulated on social media, Weiss was “bombarded” by further requests. “I would love to help but I can’t spend the next two months working for free.” He has commissions to fulfil, among them one for a monumental illuminated Tanach that is likely to take the better part of a decade to complete.
Some of his clients have offered to help but by publicising Elkouby’s project he hopes other sponsors will come forward to enable other craftsmen to create artworks for soldiers.
But there is one other piece he is planning to make himself. On the last day of Chanukah, “another soldier reached out to me. He was a tank commander in the early days of the war. His tank drove over a mine and blew up. Two of his crew were killed, while he and the gunner sustained severe injuries.
“He got a piece of shrapnel the size of an etrog and he sent me a photo it. How he survived is crazy. He asked me if I would do something for him. I started to brainstorm.”
While art as a vehicle for healing may not speak to everyone, Weiss said, “I think it is something that has the potential to help a lot of people in the path to emotional recovery”.
To find out more about the art project, click here.
