A Museum Director to Play Ping-Pong With

Sigalit Landau

By Daniel Rauchwerger June 13, 2011

Crossposted from Haaretz

Sigalit Landau

Former Tel Aviv Museum of Art director Professor Mordechai Omer was complex, comprehensive, multilayered, beloved and controversial at one and the same time. In his various roles, he influenced thousands of people.

“We’re left with a large black hole, and it will be a tough assignment to find a replacement who can fill his huge shoes,” says Omer’s former student, Doron Sabag, chairman of the exhibitions committee of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and an art collector. “Married to art, like a Buddhist monk, he was so involved in the field that he was almost divorced from everyday life,” Sabag adds.

From the eulogies delivered two days ago at Omer’s funeral by family members who called him “Uncle Mordechai,” many of those present heard personal details about the man who was so protective of his privacy for the first time.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO