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A Chilean-Jewish artist strives to capture the entire Torah in massive murals
(JTA) — As a child, Mauricio Avayu wasn’t allowed to pursue art — his father thought he should study something more practical, like math or engineering. Avayu grew up in the conservative Jewish community of Santiago, Chile, the capital city home to most of the country’s 18,000 Jews.
But by now, Avayu has seen his paintings — many of them Jewish-themed — shown in galleries around the globe, put on the walls in the homes of former presidents around the world and presented to Pope Francis.
Today he’s working on his most ambitious project yet: capturing the key moments of the Torah in 40 large murals.
“Forty is a sacred number in Judaism,” Avayu told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Forty years in the desert, 40 days and nights to receive the Torah.”
He has already finished the eight murals that comprise his depiction of Genesis, the Torah’s first book. The murals, two meters tall, were shipped two years ago to Taipei, where they will be permanently displayed at the Jeffrey D. Schwartz & Na Tang Jewish Taiwan Cultural Association.
Avayu, 55, explained that each book of the Torah takes him about two years to complete. So with four books to go, the project will be complete 8-10 years from now. He already has buyer interest for the entire set.
The majority of Chile’s Jews belong to the Masorti movement, but Avayu didn’t always know that much about Judaism, let alone the Torah. Several years ago he wanted an artistic challenge, and his lack of knowledge intrigued him.
“When I paint now, I always paint with a kippah,” he said. “But even though I come from a home where everyone is Jewish, I didn’t come from a religious family.”
Rather than be intimidated by the vastness of the text, Avayu said he was drawn to its many “hidden messages” and the variety of commentary available for every passage.
And when he looked at past master painters’ depictions of biblical scenes, he was struck by the inaccuracy. For example, in the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo famously painted God as giving life to Adam by touching his finger. However, the verse in Genesis says God created man through his breath: “And the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and He breathed into his nostrils the soul of life, and man became a living soul.”
Avayu gifted one of his Torah paintings to Pope Francis. (Courtesy of Mauricio Avayu)
Driven to be more accurate in his work, Avayu called the leader of Santiago’s Chabad-Lubavitch community and began intensively studying the Torah. He was drawn to Kabbalah too, and studied for about four years at a Kabbalah center in Chile.
“When we think we understand something about a certain passage of the Torah, it’s only at that level,” explained Avayu. “But then suddenly, at a different time, we are able to understand the same passage but at a completely different level.”
To illustrate this point, he gave the example of Moses at Mount Sinai. In Exodus 3:5, God tells Moses to take off his shoes because “the place upon which you stand is holy soil.”
Originally Avayu understood the passage to mean that the taking off of shoes symbolized leaving one’s current path, to pursue the path of God. But upon further study, he believed that taking off the shoes represents Moses leaving the physical body, which was necessary to do as, according to the Torah, Moses fasted for 40 days and nights. So in Avayu’s interpretation of the scene, Moses is barefoot and points towards the sky.
Before he sets out to paint a new work, Avayu not only consults his rabbi but also reads multiple biblical commentaries, from scholars such as Rashi and Maimonides, and chooses the one that resonates most deeply.
When he painted the tree in the Garden of Eden, for example, he consciously did not do what many other famous artists have done: depict the “forbidden fruit” as an apple. Some commentators posit that the fruit is an etrog, others a grape; Avayu prefers the interpretation that it was a fig.
“There’s not only one truth,” he said. “There are a lot of true interpretations.”
Upon seeing Avayu’s art for the first time, Gabriel Goldstein, chief curator at the Yeshiva University Museum, was reminded of the work of Archie Rand — a Jewish artist from Brooklyn who has also painted biblical murals in synagogues across the United States. Goldstein also places Avayu’s artwork in the historic tradition of artists painting “exhaustive series” of the bible.
“There have been for centuries illustrations done for biblical text,” Goldstein told JTA. “Both from very early periods in illumination to much later… in the 19th and 20th centuries.”
When asked if being from Chile has influenced his art, Avayu said that being a Jewish artist who paints Jewish themes from a small country like Chile made his career more difficult, seeing as there isn’t much of a market for his artwork in his native country. But Goldstein found aspects of Avayu’s art that he believes are influenced by his country of origin.
Avayu calls each of his works a self portrait of himself. (Courtesy of Avayu)
“At the museum, we’ve worked with Latin American artists frequently and have them in our collection,” Goldstein said. “I think that it’s a vibrant community with a vibrant artistic and cultural life. In [Latin American-Jewish art], there is a flavoring that comes from the local culture…as well as from traditional Jewish culture. And I think you can see that in his work — there’s a certain kind of vividness and palette and exuberance that may be more frequently found, but not exclusively found, in Latin American art.”
Since around 2012, Avayu has completed more than 120 paintings and has at least 30 more in the works. Not all of his art involves the Torah: He has also painted ketubahs, Jewish marriage certificates, and he has produced fantastical interpretations of mythological creatures, like the Greek Pegasus. Chilean businessman Tomas Munzer recently gave one of Avayu’s works to Argentina’s ambassador to the Holy See, who presented it to the pope.
Avayu doesn’t have a favorite painting — he calls each his “son” and described the pain he feels when he has to part with one of his children. But now Avayu is creating a different kind of “child,” by opening a studio in Florida where he now teaches aspiring painters. At the Mauricio Avayu Gallery and Fine Art Academy in Aventura, his classes incorporate lessons from the Torah and Kabbalah. And his students — mostly from the United States, but also from Russia, Argentina and Chile — don’t mind the mixing of Judaism and fine art, as almost all of them are Jewish.
“Regardless of my daily goal to be a better artist, to be as perfectionist as possible, I am never satisfied with a painting. I always try to see how I can make it a little better next time. The same always happens with the study of Kabbalah, where you learn something on a related topic, and over time, you realize you’ve learned a deeper level of that same topic,” he said.
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The post A Chilean-Jewish artist strives to capture the entire Torah in massive murals appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Treasure Trove explores the curious case of a stamp from an imaginary land
This 1 V. postage revenue stamp from West Refaim was postmarked in Virikoso in South Giantsland 100 years ago. Problem is—none of these places ever existed. There is a second […]
The post Treasure Trove explores the curious case of a stamp from an imaginary land appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Israel Has Told ICC It Will Contest Arrest Warrants, Netanyahu Says
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant during a press conference in the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv, Israel, Oct. 28, 2023. Photo: ABIR SULTAN POOL/Pool via REUTERS
Israel has informed the International Criminal Court that it will contest arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant over their conduct of the Gaza war, Netanyahu’s office said on Wednesday.
The office also said that US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham had updated Netanyahu “on a series of measures he is promoting in the US Congress against the International Criminal Court and against countries that would cooperate with it.”
The ICC issued arrest warrants last Thursday for Netanyahu, Gallant, and Hamas leader Ibrahim Al-Masri, known as Mohammed Deif, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict.
The move comes after the ICC prosecutor Karim Khan announced on May 20 that he was seeking arrest warrants for alleged crimes connected to the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas and the Israeli military response in Gaza.
Israel has rejected the jurisdiction of the Hague-based court and denies war crimes in Gaza.
“Israel today submitted a notice to the International Criminal Court of its intention to appeal to the court, along with a demand to delay the execution of the arrest warrants,” Netanyahu’s office said.
Court spokesperson Fadi El Abdallah told journalists that if requests for an appeal were submitted it would be up to the judges to decide
The court’s rules allow for the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution that would pause or defer an investigation or a prosecution for a year, with the possibility of renewing that annually.
After a warrant is issued the country involved or a person named in an arrest warrant can also issue a challenge to the jurisdiction of the court or the admissibility of the case.
The post Israel Has Told ICC It Will Contest Arrest Warrants, Netanyahu Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Jewish Girls Attacked in London With Glass Bottles in Antisemitic Outrage
Shomrim officers at the scene of a hate crime in London in which Jewish girls were struck with glass bottles. Photo: Shomrim Stamford Hill/Screenshot
A group of young Jewish girls were the victims of an “abhorrent hate crime” when a man hurled glass bottles at them from a balcony as they were walking through the Stamford Hill section of London on Monday evening.
One of the girls was struck in the head and rushed to the hospital with serious but non-life threatening injuries, according to local law enforcement.
A spokesperson for London’s Metropolitan Police said officers were called to the Woodberry Down Estate in the city’s borough of Hackney following reports of an assault on Monday evening at 7:44 pm local time.
“A group of schoolgirls had been walking through the estate when a bottle was thrown from the upper floor of a building,” the spokesperson said. “A 16-year-old girl was struck on the head and was taken to hospital. Her injuries have since been assessed as non-life changing.”
Police noted they were unable to locate the suspect and an investigation is ongoing before adding, “The incident is being treated as a potential antisemitic hate crime.”
Following the incident, Shomrim, a Jewish organization that monitors antisemitism and serves as a neighborhood watch group, reported that the girls were en route to a rehearsal for an upcoming event. The community, the group added, was “shocked” by the attack on “innocent young Jewish girls,” calling it an “abhorrent hate crime.”
14-year-old girl rushed to Hospital with head & facial injuries following an attack in #StamfordHill.
Young Jewish girls on their way to a rehearsal were pelted with glass bottles by a male on a balcony at Woodberry Down Estate N4.
This… pic.twitter.com/MzHPHusgyX
— Shomrim (London North & East) (@Shomrim) November 26, 2024
Since then, another Jewish girl, age 14, has reported being pelted with a hard object which caused her to be “knocked unconscious, and left feeling dizzy and with a bump on her head,” according to Shomrim.
Monday’s crime was one among many which have targeted London Jews in recent years, an issue The Algemeiner has reported on extensively.
Last December, an Orthodox Jewish man was assaulted by a man riding a bicycle on the sidewalk, two attackers brutally mauled a Jewish woman, and a group of Jewish children was berated by a woman who screamed “I’ll kill all of you Jews. You are murderers!” A similar incident occurred when a man confronted a Jewish shopper and shouted, “You f—king Jew, I will kill you!”
Months prior, a perpetrator stalked and assaulted an Orthodox Jewish woman. He followed her, shouting “dirty Jew” before snatching her shopping bag and “spilling her shopping onto the pavement whilst laughing.” That incident followed a woman wielding a wooden stick approaching a Jewish woman near the Seven Sisters area and declaring “I am doing it because you are Jew,” while striking her over the head and pouring liquid on her. The next day, the same woman — described by an eyewitness as a “serial racist” — chased a mother and her baby with a wooden stick after spraying liquid on the baby. That same week, three people accosted a Jewish teenager and knocked his hat off his head while yelling “f—king Jew.”
According to an Algemeiner review of Metropolitan Police Service data, 2,383 antisemitic hate crimes occurred in London between October 2023 and October 2024, eclipsing the full-year totals of 550 in 2022 and 845 in 2021. The problem is so serious that city officials created a new bus route to help Jewish residents “feel safe” when they travel.
“Jewish Londoners have felt scared to leave their homes,” London Mayor Sadiq Khan told The Jewish Chronicle in a statement about the policy decision earlier this year. “So, this direct bus link between these two significant communities [Stamford Hill in Hackney and Golders Green in Barnet, areas with two of the biggest Jewish communities in London] means you can travel on the 310, not need to change, and be safe and feel safer. I hope that will lead to more Londoners from these communities using public transport safely.”
Khan added that the route “connects communities, connects congregations” and would reassure Jewish Londoners they would be “safe when they travel between these two communities.”
However, it doesn’t solve the problem at hand — an explosion of antisemitism unlike anything seen in the Western world since World War II. Just this week, according to a story by GB News, an unknown group scattered leaflets across the streets of London which threatened that “every Zionist needs to leave Britain or be slaughtered.”
Responding to this latest incident, the director of the Jewish civil rights group StandWithUs UK Isaaz Zarfati told GB News that the comments should be taken “seriously.”
“We are witnessing a troubling trend of red lines being repeatedly crossed,” he said. “This is not just another wave that will pass if we remain passive. We must take those threats and statement seriously because they will one day turn into actions, and decisive steps are needed to combat this alarming phenomenon.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Jewish Girls Attacked in London With Glass Bottles in Antisemitic Outrage first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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