Those Who Sow with Tears
Treasures from Be’eri archives
Curator: Gilad Melzer
Since October 7, among those who suffered the most devastating blows, I found myself especially connected to the community of Kibbutz Be’eri. It may have happened after I met Sofie Berzon MacKie, director of the Be’eri Gallery, whom I had been sent to interview. At the time, I was called to do what most of the kibbutz’s members couldn’t bring themselves to do in the face of the disaster that struck them: Write eulogies. After I began posting photos from the kibbutz archive on my Facebook page, I was asked to write an article about the archive, which led me to interview Nili Bar-Sinai and Tamar Ben-Zvi. When Sofie asked me to curate an exhibition showcasing the archive’s treasures, I could not refuse.
Be’eri came to me, and I came to Be’eri.
The Be’eri archive holds some 200,000 photographs, 30,000 documents, 3,850 movie clips, and 709 audio recordings. And that’s only what has been scanned. This abundance was photographed, written, composed, collected, preserved, and safeguarded by members of the kibbutz throughout the generations. Everything stored in the archive comes from them and belongs to them.
Be’eri’s historical wealth came to me, and I came to it.
I chose the first photograph on October 18, 2023. Its caption identified the old dining hall, around 1952. Later, I learned that this building became the gallery, and we all know its fate since. Today, two years on, for the Israeli public, the name ‘Be’eri’ immediately conjures October 7, 2023. Some may let their memory drift to hiking trips, where they encountered the dazzling blossoms of the Western Negev. Fewer know that this kibbutz, which borders Gaza, also has a successful printing press—but that’s it. Be’eri was reduced to being a Kibbutz that suffered a devastating blow / has a printing press / is surrounded by wildflowers.
But Be’eri is far more than that. It has existed for seventy-nine years, not just the two, and while the anemones grow wild in the nearby forest, some visionaries tried to grow roses in the kibbutz. Be’eri is a community of growth, integration, and flourishing across three generations, until now. It is a place that represents development alongside wonderment and error, as well as many achievements. Be’eri celebrates Jewish holidays, and ordinary weekdays unfold with work, parties, weddings, and ceremonies. So many ceremonies: the playground fair, the kibbutz anniversary, International Workers’ Day… Be’eri has a pub, a club, a dining hall, fields, orchards, a swimming pool, sports of every kind, and an auto repair shop. It used to have a chicken house and a cowshed. In Be’eri, every poster ever made for a holiday, every bulletin, every weekly and even daily newsletter, is kept.
“Those Who Sow with Tears” is the first major collaboration between Be’eri gallery and the archive. Once the gallery is rebuilt, more treasures will be showcased, highlighting different themes: a chosen decade, the various kibbutz branches, events, festivals, people – anything and everything that presents and represents Be’eri.
This time, we tried to hold the stick at both ends. Though it is impossible to show the full richness of the archive at once, Netta Moses’s video installation offers a taste: dozens of photos, the occasional document, film clips, and even songs, music, and recordings from Be’eri’s own channel. Yes, all of that as well. Life in Be’eri has its own unique rhythm and soundtrack.
This guided us in directing a spotlight to several moments from the community’s life. One wall is devoted to the Omer Ceremony. The first one took place where Be’eri was initially established – Nahabir – on the day before the Seder, in 1948. Since then, the ceremony was occasionally revived until 1986, when it became an annual event. Held on a stage at the edge of the grain field, it included a pageant written by the established poet, Anadad Eldan, performed in song and dance. When it concluded, the Omer – that is, the sheaves – was harvested with sickles and carried to the dining hall. This was an occasion in which the entire community bound together tradition and commitment to agriculture, to another season of life and prosperity.
We also highlighted something that, for years before screens took over, served as a central gathering point in the kibbutz: the bulletin board. It was, in a way, WhatsApp, email, and social media rolled into one. And we pulled a few photos that remind us that within the sea of documents, certificates, and the intensive records of daily routine, the archive also holds pearls – moments of striking beauty.
In 1998, the archive moved to its current home in a building once belonging to the Tzabar (Sabra) cohort – class of 1973. Rivka’leh Zorea said at the inauguration ceremony: “If you’re fascinated by the traces left by the passage of time, come and thumb through. It’s good to have had a past – you would not be here if there weren’t one.”
If only there had been no need to open the gallery in Tel Aviv. This is just a waystation on the road to the gallery’s complete resurrection in its home in the Western Negev.
As all this unfolds, Be’eri comes to all of us, and I, like you, will come to Be’eri.
Be’eri will rise again.
Gilad Melzer, October 2025
