Yaron Bob, an Israeli artist known for transforming enemy rocket casings into menorahs and rose sculptures, isn’t sure how he will mark Hanukkah this year.
Moshav Yated, his village that sits about two miles from both Gaza and Egypt, has been deserted since the Israel Defense Forces evacuated its 184 families on Oct. 8. His community is scattered across Israel.
Weighing even more heavily on him are all the deaths. Bob knew more than 70 people who were massacred after Hamas infiltrated southern Israel on Oct. 7, though by a “pure miracle” very few of them were from Yated.
“I don’t know if I will be happy or celebrating Hanukkah, you understand?” he said in a phone interview on Monday. “I don’t know how to respond.”
Rabbi Nosson Potash understands “the grief and the worry” that Israelis like Bob and Jews everywhere are feeling. It’s why the director of Chabad of Cole Valley in San Francisco decided to use one of Bob’s “Rockets into Roses” menorahs for a public lighting ceremony on the fourth night of Hanukkah, Dec. 10.
For the past 15 years, Bob has been transforming the casings of rockets fired from Gaza into Israel. His artwork, which includes Judaica and jewelry, has brought him renown. One of his menorahs was lit at the White House during a 2019 Hanukkah ceremony.
Bob created Chabad of Cole Valley’s menorah from the dark-gray steel cylinder of a Qassam rocket that fell years ago on the town of Sderot, north of Gaza. The menorah stands 2-by-2-feet and weighs about 23 pounds. Its nine branches appear to be wrapped in the stems and leaves of a rose bush. The rose heads, which sit atop each arm, serve as candleholders. The base is inscribed with a verse from Isaiah in Hebrew and English: “And they shall beat their swords into plowshares.”
Unusual menorahs are a signature of the Hanukkah events hosted by Chabad of Cole Valley. Previous gatherings have featured an ice sculpture menorah, a menorah made of Legos, a menorah mounted atop a pedi-bike and a menorah covered in foil-wrapped gelt. On Dec. 12, the same Chabad will also light a 9-foot glow-in-the-dark menorah at the entrance of Golden Gate Park.
Potash has been in possession of the “Rockets into Roses” menorah — one version currently sells for $2,999 — since it was anonymously donated seven or eight years ago. He auctioned it off as part of a fundraiser, and then the winner donated it back to him. Since then Potash had been storing it in his garage.
After the Oct. 7 terrorist attack, he remembered the menorah’s origins and decided that this would be the right year to use it in a public lighting ceremony.
“The message of someone transforming a rocket that was intended for destruction into something of hope and art and light is the message that we need right now,” Potash said.
Bob, who is 52, began creating art from rocket casings after Israel evacuated Gaza in 2005 and a rocket landed near him as he took shelter. He had been working as an art teacher but decided to learn blacksmithing to transform an instrument of destruction into an object of beauty. Now soldiers and police give him rocket casing leftovers after the dangerous materials inside are removed.
Over the years, Bob has expanded his project, creating tulips, doves, hearts, Stars of David and mezuzahs. However, when he creates mezuzahs he will use only the metal from Israeli Iron Dome interceptor missiles, which stop incoming rockets. He said he doesn’t want anyone to kiss a material that was designed for death.
When J. reached Bob, he was temporarily back home in Yated for only the second time since Oct. 8. The temporary cease-fire with Hamas that began on Nov. 24 led to the release of more than one-third of the hostages but has also meant that Hamas rockets were no longer falling inside Israel. When Bob briefly returned for the first time to retrieve some of his sculptures and personal belongings in mid-November, a rocket hit a neighbor’s house. He left almost immediately.
“It’s not a safe place. It’s a war zone,” he said. At times during the interview, the sounds of IDF drones and helicopters filled the background.
Three waves of terrorists attacked Yated on Oct. 7 and 8, he said. The IDF and Yated’s security team helped repel them all. One Israeli commanding officer died in the fighting to protect Yated on Oct. 7, Bob said, and three more Yated residents who were at the nearby Nova music festival also were killed that day.
Bob and his family are currently living in Eilat. He isn’t sure when they can return to their home in Yated, where he has lived since 2000.
“We need some assurance that it won’t happen again,” he said of another Hamas infiltration. Otherwise, the residents of Yated and the other Gaza communities will feel like “fish in a barrel.”
Two of Bob’s children are now serving in the IDF as combat medics, and he is worried about them, too.
At the moment, he isn’t even sure that he wants to keep creating his art.
“My goal is to change darkness into light,” he said. “But because of what happened, I don’t know that I can continue to work. My beliefs are shattered.”
Regardless of his own situation, Bob said he feels proud that one of his menorahs will be part of a public lighting ceremony this year.
“It is really a huge honor for me,” he said. “It symbolizes something very, very deep.”