ELAN GERZON is a weaver and educator born and raised in Israel, and the USA. Having been raised in a farming village, to a family of artists and farmers, in 2009 he shifted his focus from sustainable agriculture to indigenous, Middle Eastern textile arts, when he was adopted by the late Faiza Abu Amra, a matriarch of the Azazme Bedouin tribe, and began an apprenticeship with her. Faiza was one of the last remaining master Bedouin weavers in the Negev / Naqab Desert. Soon after, he found that his Jewish lineage descends from a Jewish tribe of Levites whose role in society during the biblical era, was to weave and maintain the textiles that covered the ark of the covenant, the Mishkan, along with the teachings at the heart of the Abrahamic faith. In 2014 he befriended Israeli weaver, Yael Beit-Av. As a Jewish woman, Yael had already devoted a decade to recovering the lost art and culture of Bedouin weaving, as she had also been adopted into a number of Bedouin clans. Finding myriad parallels, interests, in a mutual search for remembering an ancient, more natural way of life, they joined forces on several collaborative educational projects, bringing together Jewish and Bedouin communities, revitalizing an extinct culture, and building close ties with Bedouin clans. With his love for holistic agriculture, Elan introduced dying into the revival, and learned the more intricate weaving process from Yael. They both learned from Joy Totah Hilden, author of “Bedouin Weaving of Saudi Arabia and its neighbors.” Eventually, with the seed of a vision that Faiza planted in them both, and with desire from a handful of women in Bedouin communities to return to weaving, Elan and Yael founded Gazala Weaving, an inter-cultural weaver’s collective. Since then, Elan has continued to develop his own unique approach to weaving as a creative process with an ancient spiritual foundation.

In 2017 he completed a museum commission for Paul Bernard Exhibits, an internationally acclaimed Museum Design Firm contracted to build a living museum inside the palace walls of Al-Turraif – one of the main palaces of the original royal Saudi family – recently designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site in Saudi Arabia, and considered the largest clay-built city in the world. His work is now on display inside the Al-Turaif Museum, among the re-built ruins of the ancient city of Ad-Dirriyah. He served for 4 years as Educational Director for The Española Valley Fiber Arts Center, in New Mexico, where he taught an interdisciplinary approach to textile arts, working intimately with indigenous communities throughout the Southwest. He has taught seminars at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum for rising artists. As Gazala’s co-founder, A modern man with an ancient spirit, Elan continues to devote his life in service to an endangered way of being whose hidden teachings live on in the art.

“Weaving has always been and will always be a resilient act of soul-filled expression and cultural remembrance. It is the expression of a profoundly spiritual way of life, when tied to its original stories. It is a process of tying the threads of our lives onto much older inter-connected strings of stories that reach back in time towards our Divine origin, while striving to become true human beings, able to truly love.

It is my most heartfelt wish that each thread warped and woven on our looms will assist people in deepening and healing their relationship with their origins, so that they can best offer their unique gifts to their communities and the world at large, each in their own unique way.”

YAEL BEIT-AV, co-founder of Ghazala Weaving, has been serving as an active bridge between Bedouin and Jewish cultures for 15 years. She specializes in preservation and research of traditional crafts and culture in the Middle East. In 2010 she was adopted by one of Israel’s last semi-nomadic Bedouin clans who also shared much of their folklore with her and taught her the many languages of the desert. Yael has since become a master weaver on the ground loom, specializing in processing fiber, spinning, and dyeing. Her desire to live and learn from native people of the desert led her to become a leading voice for the renewal of Bedouin culture. She has since worked closely with Ministries of Tourism and Development in the Negev and Arava to create programs that teach women traditional crafts, as a tool for economic empowerment and cultural preservation.

Yael also teaches weaving courses where Jewish and Bedouin women meet for cross-cultural exchange, emphasizing community work through traditional crafts. She leads seminars through a series she calls “Return to the Desert.” These intimate seminars give people the opportunity to live with Bedouin families where they can experience and participate in the full breadth of traditional desert life. Her seminars include “From Shepherding to Cheese-making,” “Fleece to Fiber – From raw wool to weaving,” “From The Wheat Field to Baked Bread,” “Traditional Cooking and More.” She is also a licensed desert tour guide, leading camel treks deep into Bedouin territory. She lives in the village of Shacharut with her partner and their toddler, where they serve as community leaders and raise camels, donkeys, goats, orchards, and gardens.