About a month after the “Women’s March” rally, I witnessed news programs everywhere circulate tirelessly a story about a topless protester who climbed on the menorah statue across from the Knesset building. Somehow what seemed most urgent to comment and cover inside and out those days was the one feminst who was actually and fully reclaiming her right over her own body. What seemed most important in days when women of all sectors and ages are murdered and raped (disturbingly often) was to disapprove of this dangerous feminisit or merely her act itself. Anyhow, to make sure she is sanctioned, because there are priorities – you don’t put women’s body over emblem, not physically and not metaphorically. State’s symbols are protected at all cost, and women’s bodies are forsaken. Nine more women were murdered until the end of 2020.

I couldn’t verbalize these things back when they happened, so I started collaging over a cartboard menorah, which is my favorite way to process news.

When I heard the interview of Samech on the radio, it felt like everything I couldn’t put out in words before was suddenly phrased perfectly. I felt compelled to include her words as they are in the piece, an echo of personal and societal conscience. I had the privilege to speak to her on the phone and get her approval to use her voice and was met with compelling honesty and an uncompromising social responsibility

Inside everything that was seemingly happening around me, I felt that what she did liberated me. Samech enabled me a deeper freedom in my own body, and helped me channel out the anger towards the oppressive mechanisms inside me, that censor me.