Life is a constant struggle here. We precariously exist on a tiny, boiling and volatile piece of land, Surrounded by hostile neighbors. So it's unsurprising that i wanted to go away. Back in 2001, trapped in a sweltering uniform as a young soldier, I vividly recall myself cursing this place in my mind. I hated the heat, the army, and enduring endless bus rides after unmeaningful and boring days. My pale skin, a testament to my ancestors' eastern European origins, bore the brunt of the relentless sun.

It was a period of bus bombings in Israel, and the possibility of being burned to death on bus 83 at the central station in Petah Tikva was a fairly likely and logical scenario. In my imagination, I sailed to colder places, where I quenched my parched throat from dark, cool streams that bled into evergreen carpets from fog-shrouded peaks, thundering in their silence.

I didn't always feel this way. My childhood memories are filled with Sabbath trips with my family and summer vacations in the desert. We traveled throughout the country, the parks and the museums, absorbing the local cultures, foods, history and archeology. The slender silhouette of a date palm, the taste of sun-kissed grapes, and the names of the seven biblical plants were etched into my memory. As a secular man, my love for the land was never a religious matter but a result of a deep cultural education.Summers came and went, I finished my military service and started studying visual communication in Tel Aviv. I started learning about the graphic heritage of the Israeli designers. They created new symbols out of old, and developed Hebrew typography, which is the transparent beauty of the language, embodied in the various forms of letters from different periods and places.