{"id":164808,"date":"2024-11-18T11:50:25","date_gmt":"2024-11-18T09:50:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.nli.org.il\/?p=164808"},"modified":"2025-04-29T13:36:42","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T10:36:42","slug":"eden_ben_rubi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blognli2026.moonsite.co.il\/en\/eden_ben_rubi\/","title":{"rendered":"Larger Than Life: Remembering Eden Ben Rubi"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The colorful elephant looks ahead from a painting hanging from a first-floor wall in Rishon Lezion\u2019s city hall. The pachyderm\u2019s blue, green, orange, yellow and red body, depicted in wide brush strokes, may not fit on an African savannah, but it seemed plenty natural to Eden Ben Rubi, the local artist who painted it.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Eden
Eden Ben Rubi’s elephant painting<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The image so appealed to Meirav Ben Rubi that she wore it on a t-shirt while being interviewed for a short film about the life of her daughter, 23, who along with her boyfriend Ariel Bitton was murdered by Hamas terrorists after fleeing the Nova music festival and taking refuge in a bomb shelter on October 7, 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eden painted the elephant during a two-week art workshop in India during a visit the last summer of her life. Because the canvas hadn\u2019t dried when Eden left India, the workshop\u2019s director mailed it later. It reached Eden a week before her murder.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Edens
Eden’s sketch of the Taj Mahal, which she visited in summer 2023<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

When the city hall exhibition \u2014 displaying works of six natives killed at Nova and in the war since \u2014 closes, the painting will return to the Ben Rubis\u2019 home \u2014 the only artwork by Eden displayed there. It\u2019s not that Eden particularly loved elephants, Meirav said. Rather, her daughter had been struck by this post in English:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ADVICE FROM AN ELEPHANT<\/p>\n\n\n\n