Avigail Antman
Spotlight
Within weeks of October 7, 2023, NLI Bustan Poetry Incubator alumna Avigail Antman was busy creating something new: she and her colleague, clinical psychologist Ayelet Wieder Cohen, wanted to support Israel’s “helping professionals” – psychologists, counselors, doctors, and therapists of all types – who were bearing witness to people’s experiences, all while contending with their own grief and trauma. She felt the key to this could be working with words. Avigail reached out to Tsila Hayun, Head of Culture and Visitors at the Library, and NLI’s Ararat: The Resilience of the Spirit was thus born. “Mount Ararat is where Noah’s ark landed after the flood,” Avigail explains. “It evokes the idea that in the midst of catastrophe we have an ark, a place to sit for a minute to rest, a place from which to draw strength to go on.” Ararat empowers participants by engaging them with the Library’s incredible collection of Jewish texts from throughout the ages. “To bear witness to resilience in the face of terrible tragedies is to be inspired by our human capacity for creativity.” For participants like the officer whose nephew was killed in action, the doctor tasked with notifying the families of fallen soldiers, the parent whose child is among the hostages, the mother with five children fighting in the war -- “to feel you have a community is so important.” Right now, Avigail says, “What the soul craves is to be home, to breathe fresh air. Words are air. The National Library is a home.”
Avigail Antman is a poet, an alumna of NLI’s Bustan Poetry Incubator, and co-founder of Ararat: The Resilience of the Spirit
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