About

Shalom and Salaam, Peace.

Welcome.

My name is Daniel.

We are here for joy, jubilation, rejoicing and healing.

I am blessed. Soul-Portraits emerge. I am the artist. Supremely grateful to be healed. I see and hear the thousands of paintings born into the universe. There is a reason.

We will live when we remember how to love and not fear. Miracles happen. Daily (for you, for me, for us). 10,000 paintings in five years for joy. Each one is a prayer.

Beginning: January 2016

10,000 Souls is a story. I don’t know the ending and have some questions about the beginning. To experience and understand the middle I paint.

10,000 Souls came to me as an unknown feeling and need to paint hundreds of portraits, thousands. Why?  Perhaps the paintings were started by the availability of the grocery bags that I use for the canvas each day but that isn’t the reason. I now understand more. I understand I will paint a total of 10,000, G-D willing, in five years (January 1 2016 – January 1 2021). I have started.

Each person represented on a bag led a life, a usually silent and an unremarkable life; So called unremarkable.  Each life is remarkable, each soul is a world.

The people emerged. The faces spoke silently, People I know told me what they noticed and thought and I started to realize:  The portraits were the people of the Middle East.  The majority were traditional or religious Jews or Jewish in only memory. A few may have worn the garment of another faith and spoke another national language. The portraits are from ancient families, even Jewish Bedouin families and others are modern souls, alive in paint and they carried within themselves the oldest of kinship and ethnic backgrounds.

Then in our recent lifetimes a cleansing took place.  It continues today. The beauty, intelligence, wonder of their civilized world is in ashes. So the portraits are of people who have vanished. The men and women, everything that they were, everything that they valued, their traditions, the home they kept, their remarkableness is forgotten. The 10,000 soul paintings are a way to honor their memory, without fully knowing who they are or what happened.

To understand the paintings and why I paint I think of the following story, the story of a sick man being raised to his feet by a healer. It could well be a Talmud story. I heard it from a Rabbi and friend. The man in the story was in a lot of pain and had other sorrows as well, not having had an easy life without troubles.  He was poor, had lost loved ones.  He began to cry. The healer asked him why. Was he fearful of death, the world to come, the pain of living, was it so great? No, the man answered, he was crying because he knew that the greatness of the healer would someday be forgotten and the beauty that was this man would be taken from the world.

He was crying at the loss of beauty and a life forgotten. In some ways that resonated with me and I thought of the lives I had painted on the bags and the duty and honor I owe them.

This is how I started. Then I realized I knew so little. I will now paint today and tomorrow until I have 10,000 portraits.  I will write these illuminated letters almost daily to Jews and Arabs (to paint 10,000 souls it needs to be a daily blast! Indeed). We are the sons and daughters of Abraham. Something is happening.

The story continues. Stay tuned. Something amazing is about to happen. We’ll find out together.

I know one thing more without a doubt, the answer is love, not fear.

In Loving Peace (January 2016),
Daniel

1st Update: February 2016

Each painting is a message in a bottle, a glimpse into the lives of the children of Abraham (Jews) living with the children of Abraham (Arabs), sometimes joyfully, sometimes wondrously, neither Arab or Jew ashamed or wronged. At other times the lives are lived tragically. Fates can be changed. Souls will be healed. We will know joy and peace in the land and our love will be a blessing.

2nd Update: March 2016

The paintings are released into the universe for you. Read more, look around and find the soul portrait’s voice that speaks to you.

3rd Update: May 2016

Ok, perhaps this will help. I know about illusions. I’ve said this before, the answer is Love Not Fear.

Rejoice!

The opinions each Jew or Arab takes into their heart is what separates us.

July 2016

We’ll all be happy, at peace, true to ourselves.

We’ll rejoice.

Yes, we don’t know the answers now. Odd, even when they are right in front of us, and have always been.

It’s like going on a long journey with a road map. You understand the routes, the places to visit, the places to avoid, how to get around. Then one day you’ll look at the same map again and see everything different. You wake up and see the world as it really is, glorious, alive.

The essence of this site is joy.  Look around. You are open, we are so grateful. Ten Thousand Soul portraits are for you. It is time, wave your hands. Let us know.

Rejoice.

Esther and I have placed a few soul portraits here when they talk to us or appeal in a special or fun way. The site is open to see thousands. Take a look. Share your self. When you are ready, rejoice. 

 

Note: hundreds of paintings were completed before the site launch.  When posted now we still use the date when the painting was painted as the date of the post.