M.K.: George Segal worked with an innovative casting technique, but in some way he also related more to the tradition of David Smith. When he came to Israel he had certain ideas of how Abraham should look. He was looking for a very skinny person, but everyone he asked was scared to be the model, so I said if you don’t mind you can cast my 9-year-old son and me. When we went to Jaffa and I held the knife to my son, I remember that I really didn’t like it. I wasn’t scared superstitiously, but I felt in a way like someone who says «I don’t like this kind of joke». I was really affected and it was a good experience for me too.

T.H.: We’ve talked about the narrative and metaphorical dimension of your work. I wonder how this relates to the material embodiment of the sculpture. The use of «material», of glass, wood, iron, and even living sheep was certainly very important for your work. In Shalechet you were cutting faces, «visages» as Lévinas would have said, from hand (fig. 19). You used sheet iron, like in the monumental sculptures Sacrifice of Isaac. How would you describe the relation between the sculptural imagination and the way the material physically yields?