buzzed in through an iron gate, the visitor climbs an unprepossessing stairwell to crash into Kahn’s kingdom of crocheting heaven, pulsing with children and hot food, volunteers and nuns, and women (today in masks) creating breathtaking art.

Kuchinate, or ‘crocheting’ in Tigrinya, the language of Eritrea, is a collective of African asylum-seeking women who crochet colourful baskets, carpets and other creations in a studio that doubles as a collective kitchen, haven and home. The workers, escaping their rundown, lonely living quarters for some healing hours of community and productive labour, earn a basic salary. Extra cash comes from sale of the products, traditional coffee ceremonies and workshops for the public.

Beautiful Diddy Mymin Kahn, clinical psychologist and an electrifying 55-yearold mother of three, was born in Israel, grew up in South Africa and lived for years in London. In 2009, back in Israel, she offered psychotherapy for refugees living in a shelter funded by the United Nations Victim of Torture Fund and run by the African Refugee Development Centre. “I was working in a pilot project to offer assistance to women who survived brutal camps in the Sinai; women who had been raped and tortured by Bedouin smugglers who demanded ransom for their release,” recalls Kahn. “They had no idea how to react to therapy; there was not even a word in their lexicon for it. It was culturally alien for them to talk about negative events in their past to a stranger.” A survivor explained: “Thinking and thinking – you can spoil your mind.” What they needed, Kahn understood, was food for that day, a job, somewhere for their children to sleep.

Together with two others from the shelter – Sister Aziza Kidane, an Eritrean nun and nurse, and Natasha Miller Goodman, a South African immigrant artist – Kahn set up Kuchinate in 2011. The not-for-profit organisation started with five women on its books. Today almost 300 women sew, crochet, chat and heal in the centre; 70 take home a regular pay cheque.

When the pandemic hit, Kahn flew into overdrive, organising sewing machines for women stuck at home, as well as food, medicine and medical help. A hotline of psychologists and social workers contacted each Kuchinate woman regularly, mapping needs and providing solutions. “It was important for our women to keep working,” Kahn explains, “for their mental health as well as to put food on the table.”

It might take a village to raise a child, but what if you leave your village with an ill baby, and you are beaten and hungry and not wanted anywhere? Kuchinate nurtures women like this; incredibly, they bounce back with quiet dignity and innate joy. One of the managers today is a survivor of brutal domestic abuse and a list of challenges from here till the days of redemption. During the Corona lockdown she sewed protective masks for those fighting their own battles for survival.

Masks are only some of the colourful new products. As well as the trademark baskets and rugs, Kuchinate women also create striking purses, notebooks and ragdolls. Donors can buy the dolls for refugee children. And in that joyous studio, where women who’ve seen it all crochet their tears into glorious colours, powerful art has emerged as testimony.

In 2012, Gil Yefman, prize-winning artist extraordinaire, heard about the Kuchinate Collective and briefly considered inviting the women to his studio. “But I explore the body and gender identity, among other issues,” he explains, “I could hardly bring victims of rape into a space full of models of genitalia.”

Instead he went to them, and they taught him to crochet baskets. Yefman spoke to them of art, they spoke to him of Africa, and together they wove their stories into life-size baskets. Yefman set up speakers within the works, which resonated with the women’s voices relating their stories. “For me crocheting is like writing,” says Yefman, “the needle is the pen; the yarn a stream of thoughts; the chain of stitches equals the changing points of view comprising a narrative.”

And what a narrative: stories of survival and grit and pain echoed within the baskets clothed with crocheted human forms. A gash of red on one face

10 JEWISHRENAISSANCE.ORG.UK JULY 2020