Jewish Art - Blog Posts

thoughts on paper

since the first day of Hanukkah is right around the corner I painted this cow wood thing his name is hank the Hanukkah heifer now I have to figure out what milk he produces (yes its a he I didn't think all the way through so ig he's trans) can yall leave some suggestions in the comments I want to write him a little story ^^

Some books covering the Jewish roots of the comic superhero genre:

Up, Up and Oy Vey!: How Jew­ish His­to­ry, Cul­ture, and Val­ues Shaped the Com­ic Book Superhero by Rabbi Simcha Weinstein

From Krakow to Krypton: Jews and Comic Books by Arie Kaplan

Superman Is Jewish?: How Comic Book Superheroes Came to Serve Truth, Justice, and the Jewish-American Way by Harry Brod

Is Superman Circumcised?: The Complete Jewish History of the World's Greatest Hero by Roy Shwatz

We Spoke Out: Comic Books and the Holocaust by Rafael Medoff (Author), Neal Adams (Author), Craig Yoe (Editor), Stan Lee (Introduction)

(please feel free to add more if you know of any!)

More Jewish sculpey projects.

Can't make a golem without a rabbi. Additionally, some pickles and gefilte fish for shabbos and a dreidel out of clay (unfortunately not good for spinning, favors gimel quite a bit)

a collection of custom Jewish tattoo designs, 2020-2023

reminder: custom tattoo designs are for client use only. it's disrespectful to get an artist's work tattooed without permission, and incredibly so to steal a design that was made for someone else. if you're inspired by these, you can commission me to create something for you!

descriptions & details below

as a Jew with (Jewish) tattoos, i'm delighted whenever someone commissions me for a design that speaks to some core aspect of their personal relationship with Judaism. the first of these is an angelic meditation on the phrase "hineni" ("here i am") & its connection to fearless self-embodiment, the next two are illustrations for passages from the Talmud (one about being self-made, featuring the miraculous "first tongs", the other about the life cycle of Jewish demons), and the last is a more traditional tree of life with torah scroll.

if i had the time/money for a tattoo apprenticeship, i would love to learn & be able to do this work myself - as it stands, i'm honored to be part of it as a designer & grateful to the talented tattooers who have inked or will ink my pieces!

image descriptions:

an ink line drawing of a black heart with four angelic eyed wings, over a ring of flame around it and the word הנני

an ink drawing of a pair of tongs, with flames wrapping around them that contain the words ועשיתם אתם

an ink line drawing of a hyena skull, surrounded by thorns with a pair of bat wings above it and the letter ש

a vector drawing of a stylized tree with a torah scroll below it and the words עץ חיים היא

Another crochet lace ribbon almost done. They’re yellow for the hostages held by Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and whomever else. Let me know if you have any ideas for what I should do with them, or if you’re also Jewish and like to crochet.

a really fun recent commission: this custom bookplate for the curator of Judaica at the Museum of the Bible! it's based on a variety of texts that describe (at least some) sheydim as observantly Jewish - especially the Talmudic stories of Yosef Sheyda, a demonic scholar or possibly even a rabbi himself. the quote in the window is from Psalm 24, "the earth is the Lord's, and everything in it" which is often written above an owner's name in Jewish books, but provides double meaning here for the fact that sheydim too are divinely created. Jesse shares my love for sheydim as transgressive, marginalized figures who are nevertheless deeply Jewish, so this was an ideal collaboration & a delight to make!

also done entirely in Procreate, inked with True Grit Texture Supply's "Rusty Nib" engraver brushes - totally in love with this new process & the relative ease of accomplishing this type/level of hatching vs. traditional media (giving me added respect for the 17th century printmakers I've been studying). i will always love working traditionally but adding more digital techniques to my repertoire has been super useful.

A beautiful Polish Jewish circumcision knife.

Silver Keter Torah by Ilya Schor, made in the 1950s, most likely destroyed in a Synagogue fire.

Illustration by Ben Shahn of Pirkei Avos 1:14. "He [Rabbi Hillel], used to say, 'If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am [only] for myself, who am I? And if not now, when?'"