This is not an offering | Jewish art

I’ve been painting women from the Tanach for over a year now. Not all of them are names you’d know, some only appear for a few lines, some don’t even get that. But they’re there. And once I started painting them, they wouldn’t leave me alone.

The first was Yocheved. Not the moment that Miryam places Moses in the water, but the night before. When she’s still holding him, still deciding, still breaking. That painting didn’t come from theology. It came from something quieter and more human: grief, fear, and the ache of impossible choices.

I didn’t set out to make “Jewish art" or “Jewish contemporary art.” But that’s what this is. It’s work rooted in the texts that shaped me, questioning the roles they gave us, and giving space to the ones they nearly erased.

Women like Dinah, She’ila bat Yiftach, Tamar, the Levite’s concubine - they're usually remembered as symbols, not people. Their bodies are traded, punished, silenced, mourned, but rarely heard. I’m not painting them for redemption or comfort. I’m painting them because they’re still here, still watching, and still waiting to be acknowledged.