Tal Dudai - Kibbutz Nir Oz
Tal spent the day before October 7 at the "Maccabi Archery of the Emek and the Mountain" club in Bethlehem of Galilee, where the opening event of the 2024 archery season took place.
Those same bows that Tal chose to renew as part of the "Comfort Object" project are the ones that, in hindsight, took her out of Nir Oz the night before October 7 and in fact, are what saved her life.
She discovered the world of archery by chance (or not by chance...) in 2018 following a visit to Bethlehem of Galilee, where she tried archery and was immediately enthralled by the magic of bows and arrows.
Tal describes archery as an almost out-of-body experience. Targeting, focus, attention, detachment, flow and meditation are some of the words she uses when describing target shooting.
Tal competed in competitions in Israel and around the world, took an instructor's course at the Wingate Institute and founded "Here and Now" in May 2023, an experiential archery enterprise with two main goals: to pass on the pleasure and excitement of archery to groups and organizations and a higher goal, to help deal with victims and the elderly that Tal identifies as transparent, people who do not receive sufficient attention from the Israeli society.
On the morning of October 7, while she was staying in Tel Aviv, she realized that this time something different was happening. As the person in charge of her neighborhood emergency team, together with her daughter and another friend who was off the kibbutz, she began to send tens of messages and phone calls to the residents of the kibbutz. Tal did not imagine the disaster the kibbutz was experiencing.
She describes the feeling as an experience of complete abandonment and desolation, as if they had forgotten Nir Oz, completely.
Tal's bows were burned together with the house.
Five of the bows were in the safe room, which was not reached by the fire, but which was damaged by the heat. The bows’ wings were twisted and broken, and the wooden handles were ruined. They were brought to Maya's studio together with Tal and the project team, where they were given a new life - this time as a stand for the bows and a mirror, since they cannot be returned to their original purpose. We chose to make use of what was left of them, in order to produce a new object with a different purpose, choosing the positive and continuity of life, despite everything.