CITY SHUL

I don't even know the name of the schule.  It is across town from my apartment in NY, and I only know that its a very orthodox temple.  And  I know is that a lot of young people go there, looking for either wives or husbands.  The outside of the temple is quite beautiful, I think. What I don't understand is why there are  barricades in front of the shul.  They scream fear to me.
Every since 9/11 more synagogues have some kind of protection.  However the shul is beautiful... and I would like to only concentrate on that.

size: 22 x30

MY BLOG IS MY DIARY

As I started including my paintings on my blog, I began to write, as though I would in a Diary.  About why I painted about religion and religious architecture from the past and present.  I quess it comes from my interest in the World War I and II.... and my parents concern about the people they left behind in Poland.    What it was like for me to be a first generation Jew in New York, in America.  How I felt about the difference between spirituality and religion.  How I was not particularly observant, but the Jewish religion was in my identity... sort of in my blood.  I don't even know why I seem to paint about the Jewish religion.  It's all a mystery to me.  But I believe there are certain things in the life that one cannot answer.  They are just there.  I even have to deal with my admiration for Christ, as well as my love for Hasheim.  And that most of all, deep inside I really only believe in a higher power.  Could be universal truth.  Or it could just be my thirst for knowledge in general.  I do not know.  I invite you to go on the journey with me.  The only thing I am positive of is that most of my truth comes from any early age, and the story my parents told me.

The above paintings are of my mother and father, when they cam to America, around 1916 to 1918,  I must admit they are much better in person.  Both of them are 22 x 30 inches.

POLLUTION

I am taken by the church on 55th Street and 5th Avenue.  Every time I'm in that area a take a shot of the church, and then hope I will have time to paint.   I have done 3 paintings so far. Usually I get a bus and go down to So-Ho or No Ho.  As I stand on that corner, I notice that I cannot breath.  I am besieged by pollution.  My first painting of the church was surrounding by pollution.

Trump Towers is in the background.

size: 30 x 40

Keeping Al and Sophie Alive:

KEEPING AL AND SOPHIE ALIVE is in a show outside of Detroit in a Holocaust Museum and part of a group called the Jewish Artists Salon.  The piece is about the famous Actors Temple on 47th  Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues.  The small temple was started by a group of Orthodox Jews who arrived in Hell's Kitchen  in 1910.  For many years the temple attracted people who were in show business, because it is very near Broadway and many actors lived in Hell's Kitchen, because that's all they could afford.  As the actors, etc moved away to Hollywood and to  Long Island, the temple began to fall on hard times.  It is now getting on its feet again, with its director Rabbi/Cantor Jill Hausmann.

The Show at the Detroit based Holocaust Museum is called Silent Witnesses... about Synagogues turning into churches, or decaying into rumple, or like the Actors Temple are slowly, very slowly having a renewal.  The temple does receives some economic help from the plays which are performed there and I'm sure contributors. But it still in the need of more help... lots of more help.

HANS FALLADA, German Writer

This painting is from a book I read by Hans Fallada.  He was a German writer, who was very sympathic to the Jews.  He spent a great deal of his life imprisoned for his views. He did not understand the war, nor  what was happening to the Jews.   In the painting the woman's husband has been 

arrested and she is alone.  She waits  until it is dark and she feels safe to go out shopping for food.  

She put on her coat so she can hide her newly sewn-on Jewish star.  This reminds me that 

I must paint Fallada's feelings.

size: 22 x 30 inches