In 1968 I was invited to be the first Israeli artist at the documenta in Kassel. I met Rauschenberg and Christo; it was nice, but I realized it was not the main thing, but you have to go through it. Abstraction, Minimal Art, Expressionism, these are all gossip. Think of a simple candelabrum, a half-circle with lights. Let’s say it’s hanging upside down like a Readymade and you call that Minimal Art. Well, but how can we deny the meaning?

Let me tell you what I did with the notion of the upside-down. We all know the story of Abraham and Isaac. I made some drawings and a sculpture out of rough, raw, iron plates with a ram hanging on the wall; underneath is the head of a boy (fig. 14, 15, 16).

I thought that every boy who died in the war was the figure of the ever-sacrificed son who didn’t have a ram as a substitute. Isaac did when the angel said to Abraham «don’t touch the boy» and they found a ram. As Amnon Barzel once wrote, the ever-sacrificed son symbolizes the non-appearance of the miracle, the non-involvement of God, and the continuation of the slaughter of the sons. The sacrifice of Isaac is not an abstract symbol for me. It is part and parcel of my own biography and that of my generation, and it may be the biography of my children after me. I consider the story of the sacrifice of Isaac neither as signifying a divine command nor as a decree of God.