M.K.: These are complex issues, but let me first tell you something about the image of a donkey. The donkey was the only other person, I say «person», who saw Abraham, Isaac and the angel. So he knew a lot of things, but he is quiet, he doesn’t talk. Nevertheless he asked himself why are they doing this to themselves? The donkey is like an ancient observer, a dogged survival and a peaceable companion (fig. 6, 7).

When I was young I was living in the kibbutz Yesreel where I was working as a shepherd. I liked very conceptually the «idea» of animals, not that I was directly influenced by Rudi Lehmann or Ewald Mataré to make animals like they did. I already made abstract sculptures in 1959, which I just called «Figures» (fig. 8), but I liked the attitude and the sensitivity a sculptor like Lehmann had for the animals, for the animals as an «idea».

T.H.: After your initial studies in Israel you went to London to continue studying under Anthony Caro at St. Martin’s. Michael Fried, in one of his earlier essays on Anthony Caro, writes that «everything in Caro’s art that is worth looking at is in its syntax.» And he puts his finger on another difference with traditional sculpture: «In Caro’s sculptures, unlike Rodin’s, the spectator is not made to feel that the artist has been closely and passionately involved with his materials.» [1]