Acknowledgments
My doctoral research, which this book refines and expands, was written as part of the gender studies program at Bar-Ilan University. Prof. Ruth Iskin, of the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, was a key activist in the feminist art movement in Los Angeles in the 1970s. Our joint work was enriching for me. The field of “Reception,” one of her areas of expertise, takes center stage in this book. Iskin’s contribution to my work did not amount to guidance; During the years of writing the doctorate and the book, she was a committed and challenging mentor to me. She marched me into new research areas that will continue to accompany me in my further academic work. I want to thank her from the bottom of my heart for all these.
I am grateful to the institutions that supported turning the research into a book: the postdoctoral fellowship of the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture in New York and the Institute of Sacred Music at Yale University, United States.
I would also like to thank the scholars who supported and continue to support my research in various ways: Prof. Ziva Amishai-Maisels from the Department of Art History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Prof. Margaret Olin from the Department of Art History at Yale University.
Many thanks to my parents, Chana Sperber and Rabbi Prof. Daniel Sperber, and my sisters and brothers – the beloved Sperber family, for their help and support during the book’s writing. Thanks to my beloved wife Noa Ruth Hayat Sperber, for the many years of love and partnership.
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In 2020 the artist Helène Aylon, who was in her late nineties, passed away in the United States following the complications of the Corona virus. While being a research fellow at the Institute of Sacred Music at Yale University in 2019, I had the privilege of dedicating my research, with the institute’s support, to Aylon’s work that began in the sixties and was interrupted by her sudden death in 2020. Aylon touched me in a way that no artist had before. Despite the critical nature of her work, she played on strings that conveyed warmth and love – for the world, for people, for her family, and for the tradition and culture from which she came. I will always cherish the long days we spent together in her home in New York and pored over her archive. Our joint work revealed to me how much she turned the course of her life into a work of art.