A few months into the summer of my study at the BYU Jerusalem Center, I went with a few friends to visit the Artist’s Colony just outside one of the gates of the old city. We’d heard reports that there wasn’t much to see there, but it was a gorgeous day and the park behind it was supposedly pretty, so we thought we’d go anyway.
As we walked down the empty street between the shops, we came across an interesting storefront with a sculpture that, like nearly everything else that summer, merited a picture. As we stood in the front of the door, smiling for the camera, a white-haired old man with glasses and a pony tail emerged from the store and placed his hand on one of my friends’ head. Surprised, she turned around.
“Don’t you know that if the police saw you here, he could haul you off to jail?” he said.
Shocked, my friends’ eyes grew wide and she gasped, “Really?” In this country, you never could be sure about the government.
The old man laughed, and in his thick Hebrew accent replied, “No, no, can’t you see that I joke?” Relieved, we explained how we were just admiring his sculpture and wanted a picture. We soon discovered he was completely wonderful, his name was Motke and he’d lived in Israel nearly his entire life. After a few minutes, he paused, looked at each of us and said,
“I see that you love to smile.”
Living in Jerusalem, we actually got this reaction a lot. Everyone there recognized us as “The Mormons,” calling hello as we walked by their shops and offering “special price for Mormons.” When we would ask them how they could tell, they’d say, “Because you smile.” In reality, it was probably the standard khaki pants, white V-neck T-shirt, and matching backpacks that gave us away, but it was a sweet sentiment regardless.
“Smiling is good,” he said. “One time a rabbi told me that smiling is better than milk.” We stared at him blankly. “You see, what he meant was if there is a needy stranger, instead of inviting him in for milk, it is better to offer a smile,” he said. And you know, in some ways I think that might be true.
“If you smile, you have a better life,” he continued, “when you are sad, you can’t think because there is so much,” he lifted his hands to his wrinkled face, searching for the word, “tension.” It was difficult to understand his accent, but we could tell he spoke of a certain time in his life that became all too clear when we stepped into his shop.
The walls in his small studio were lined with paintings, drawings, sculptures, and mixes of all three. Although he was perhaps one of the cheeriest men I’ve ever met, his artwork was dark, abstract and hauntingly reminiscent of the Jewish Holocaust. It showed gloomy dream-like cityscapes with dark skies, and limp bodies with tortured faces. It was the kind of art only a person who had experienced these horrors first-hand could create.
We began to ask him about his art and he told us he has paintings in prominent places such as the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C. and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He even said Bill Clinton visited his shop once there in Jerusalem. That’s when I became a bit wary. I mean, come on. Bill Clinton? In this cramped, messy shop? Maybe this was just some crazy old man after all.
Then he pulled down his guest book from off the shelf, flipped a few pages, and there it was – the John Hancock of Bill Clinton, if you know what I mean. He invited us to sign it too, and I suddenly felt way more legit with my name in the same guest book as the former president of the United States.
After some Googling back home, I discovered Motke Blum is not just a local Israeli painter, but a world-renown artist, prominent award-winner, and survivor of the holocaust. He was forced into a labor camp as a young teenager, often painting the walls of the camp in prison. It is said the art saved his life more than once. He finally escaped to Israel by a boat that was nearly sunk by a German torpedo. His art has become his way of coping with the nightmares and terrifying memories he still battles every day. Learning this, I was taken aback. How could a person who had been through such horror even muster the strength to live, much less smile and create beauty?
After we signed his book in his shop, he brought out a box full of small prints of his paintings. He handed it to us and told us to each pick one out as his gift to us. I was touched by his kindness as I shuffled through each one. We thanked him, and as we left, he said, “Don’t forget – keep being happy.”
It’s been 9 years now. But every time I glance at the signed Motke Blum print framed on my 4-year-old son’s bedroom wall,
I can’t help but smile.
This story was written by Julie Null from Spring/Summer 2011 semester.
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