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  • Bringing the Dead Sea to Life: Art and Nature at the Lowest Place on Earth by Hadas Marcus and Yossi Leshem
  • Linda Johnson (bio)
Bringing the Dead Sea to Life: Art and Nature at the Lowest Place on Earth. By Hadas Marcus and Yossi Leshem. (Tel Aviv, Israel: The Society for the Protection of Nature, 2018. 232 pp. with color illustrations. Hardback. $74.00. ISBN: 978-965-92011-2-9.)

Authored and edited meticulously by Hadas Marcus and Yossi Leshem, Bringing the Dead Sea to Life: Art and Nature at the Lowest Place on Earth, is a treasure to behold and an inviting introduction into the multicultural, political, and environmental landscape of the Great Rift Valley. Opening the beautifully illustrated book, one immediately understands that this is no mere coffee table gloss. The gravity of the authors' purposes are weighted in the beginning pages, where governing bodies, artists, and "wildlife" organizations join together in a common voice of wonder, and urgency, to confirm that the Dead Sea (really a lake), is "dying." As a result, so is the region's rich plant and animal life. Coastline shrinkage, [End Page 111] declining water levels, and shoreline erosion and sinkholes are the collateral damage of water diversion, industrial impact, urban development, and habitat destruction. The peril facing the Dead Sea is summed up in a quote by Barbara Kreiger: "It is like a creature in distress: a living organism ensnared by human need, or greed" (p. 26).

In hopes of bringing awareness, raising funds for research, and offering solutions to this "distress," the authors acknowledge nations, such as Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority, and multiple societies, such as the Artists for Nature Foundation and the Amman Center for Peace and development (to name just a few), who have collaborated to produce workshops and symposia with an emphasis on education and research. Engaging in art-making and musical concerts, the hope is to create tight bonds between the peoples in the Middle East.

The book is the culmination of this ambitious creative international initiative, demonstrating how arts can join with science to foster environmental awareness.

Themes: Uniqueness and Urgency

The book thematically resonates with paintings and drawings that illustrate the uniqueness of the region as well as the urgency to protect the encroaching destruction of the land, largely from human impact. The multilingual text and labels are in English, Hebrew, and Arabic, reminding the reader of the collaborative goal of this project.

Art: Unique

Many paintings honor the beauty of the region such as Roseanne Guille's Plant and Insect Life in the Judean Desert, depicting an amazing bustle of animals who live in a seemingly dry gorge (p. 107). The area is home to an abundance of flora and fauna that defy difficult conditions and survive in the harshest of conditions. In Fan-Tailed Raven, Amir Balaban paints the raven in a posterior view to witness the grace embodied in her uplifted tail and skipping feet, as her lighthearted dance and outstretched wings balance her forward movement to assure the viewer all will be well (p. 75).

Bernd Pöppelmann's Nubian Ibex at Ein Gedi delights the viewer with the ibexes' jaunty surefootedness across a precarious terrain of striated rocks of blue, green, and gray. Their majestic horns mimic "shofars," which emerge from the top of their bearded heads, trumpeting loudly that yes, indeed, mammals live in this sacred region (p. 114).

The importance of preserving familial networks in the Dead Sea is represented in paintings of nursing mothers, nuzzling and nestling with their broods. Rosanne Guile's Female Nubian Ibex and Kid, Juan Varela's Bonelli's Eagle nest, and Anne Shingleton's Rock Hyrax Family are only a few of the birds and animals who demonstrate the necessity of species protection to avoid extinction (p. 117).

James Coe's Desert Pedestal-Laughing Dove embodies the warm colors of the landscape in golds and yellows. Brown wavy lines are drawn along the dove's rosy brown throat, animating her feathers as if sounding a soft "coo" (p. 93).

The falcon in Zev Labinger's Lanner Falcon and Tristram's Grackles, Wadi Tzelim, soars and glides into the...

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