“To
Show The Simple Things Of Life”
Profile
Of Artist Reb Daniel Weinberger
By
Chana Katz
The
wars of Moshiach wage on in the most far-flung places, with a little
victory here and a little victory there, all adding up to the ultimate
Redemption.
Take
the case of Daniel Weinberger, 49, an artist from Antwerp, Belgium,
whose controversial style gained him growing fame by the ‘80’s as
one of Europe’s “wild painters.” Had Weinberger continued his
climb in the decadent art world, he would have had fame and fortune.
Then again, he reckons, it also may have cost him his life.
Weinberger
made the cut from the traditions of his grandparents when he entered art
school at the age of 15 to study theater and jewelry design. His travels
around the world, searching for that perfect picture, that perfect mood,
introduced him to the wild lifestyle of the world’s art scene. This
wild life led him on a wild chase; yet the more he searched, the less he
found.
It
was the Lubavitcher Chassid, Rav Yankel Friedrich of Antwerp, who slowly
brought Weinberger back to Yiddishkeit. Rav Yankel made the final
breakthrough – the soul connection – when he shared a quote about
art by none other than the Rebbe Rayatz.
As
Weinberger tells: “The Rebbe Rayatz wrote that ‘art is the light of
the moon on the water and the wind in the wheat field.’ That is art
– that which cannot be grasped.”
Weinberger
remembered his own journeys in places such as Thailand, where he was
“crying, crying, just to grasp the light painting the sea.” Then he
heard the Rebbe’s quote and “knew that the Torah was everything. And
I gave myself over completely.”
That
meant emptying out his treasured (but non-kosher) wine cellar, packing
up his easel, and heading to Kfar Chabad in Eretz Yisroel to learn
Chassidus. “I didn’t understand anything,” he says, “but my neshama
was happy, absorbing everything.”
Within
a year after that, during his first visit to Crown Heights in 1984,
Weinberger was introduced to Machon Chana student Reva Remer. He took
his young kalla, a native of Ohio, back to the intoxicating, klippadik
art world and foreign culture of Belgium, where they brought nine (bli
ayin ha’ra) kinderlach into the world, all young
soldiers of Tzivos Hashem.
There,
they have been fighting the “wars of Moshiach,” some hair-raising
battles at times, with letters, advice and brachos from the
Rebbe. “I’m just a soldier. The Rebbe is the leader,” emphasized
Weinberger in an interview with Beis Moshiach during a
visit to Tzfas.
Some
artists who have become baalei teshuva change their
lifestyle in order to work and live exclusively in the frum
world. Weinberger, with guidance from the Rebbe, kept his earlier jobs
and connections in the art world, choosing to bring the light of
Chassidus and the power of “Yechi” into the pits of the art
houses and glamour of the galleries. After all, how many artists wearing
a yarmulka and tzitzis can talk about Moshiach and G-dliness
in such an environment?
It
hasn’t been easy...
*
* *
Weinberger’s
return to Yiddishkeit did not fit well within a European
establishment where the fascist, anti-Semitic parties were gaining in
stature. The two art schools where Weinberger taught, bringing him a
large percentage of his parnasa, were completely non-Jewish. His
sudden absences on the Jewish holidays and the doctors’ notes he
brought only at certain times of the year angered the school’s
directors. They wanted him out. And they made his life very difficult.
The
constant summons to the office, the harassment, the threats, weighed
heavily on Weinberger for more than a decade. It affected his health,
his family, his peace of mind.
He’d
win one battle and barely had time to catch his breath before another
would start. He faced threats from angry administrators, such as the one
who told Weinberger that he could go to the chief rabbi of Jerusalem and
he’d still have to work on Jewish holidays.
Weinberger
instead went to the Nasi HaDor, the Rebbe MH”M, for a bracha,
and a very strange thing happened. The next year, that school director
suddenly quit.
Ah,
relief. But not for long...
“Then
there was a new director,” continued Weinberger, “who was worse than
the first one. We used to be friends back in art school together. But
from the first moment, he didn’t want me to take leave for the
holidays. He started to check up on me and to destroy me completely. He
came into class screaming at me all the time. He really wanted me out.
They were terrible – those years with him.”
One
might ask Weinberger why he didn’t quit, why he didn’t just get away
from the non-Jewish schools and leave that entire environment. The
answer was simple. This was his work, and he wasn’t going to be
intimidated just because he had begun to live like a Jew. He wasn’t
going to allow them carry on the work of the Nazis that wiped out almost
his whole family a few decades earlier.
Meanwhile,
the director tried to convince Weinberger to take a sabbatical leave and
use the time to find another job. Weinberger refused. He threatened to
assign him to a smaller district school – where he’d have to work on
the Sabbath – and harass him until he weakened and fell ill. Then he
carried out his threat.
Weinberger
reported back to his commander, the Rebbe, who gave him a clear bracha.
Weinberger hired a lawyer and sued the director for blatant
anti-Semitism. Then something strange happened, Weinberger says. The
director who had wished sickness upon him, himself came down with
meningitis and was required to take off the entire year from the school.
The new temporary director, already familiar with Weinberger, not only
promised to change the Sabbath decree, but got the very director who had
issued it to cancel it.
“It’s
like Purim,” reflects Weinberger. “Everything they wanted to do to
the Jews happened to them!”
He
remembers sitting in the large City Hall chambers, where the mayor and
governing body were shaken that a Jew was suing the city for
anti-Semitism. “I felt like I was in the Inquisition. I had to defend
that I was a Jew, that Shabbos was Shabbos and Yom Tov was
Yom Tov.” Weinberger won that battle, too, and received
a paper from none other than the mayor saying he could have the days
off. “The vicious director left, another director came and although it
was completely illegal to take time off for the holidays, it was okay
because the mayor approved it.
“Of
course, I didn’t do this; it’s the Rebbe,” says Weinberger.
“I’m just a soldier standing firm.”
Somehow,
through all his battles, Weinberger managed to keep his creative side
alive, that spirited, impulsive, impassioned vision that is, after all,
what makes an artist an artist. That same year, Weinberger had an
exhibit in the school’s art gallery in which he included pictures of
the Rebbe and “Yechi.” One big picture of the Rebbe ended up
in the school’s annual newsletter!
The
turnabout continued....
Weinberger
recently got the idea to have the works of his art students displayed in
local shops in the almost entirely non-Jewish community as a means of
publicity for the school. The school’s former director had never
approved that idea. Weinberger went back to the City Hall where he had
been interrogated for being a Jew and convinced his new ally – the
mayor – that it was a great idea for a joint community project between
the city’s art school and some 70 local merchants. Now he smiles when
he remembers how the mayor — in that one-time “Inquisition Hall”
— was now congratulating him for his wonderful project.
*
* *
Beginning
his teaching career at the age of 27, not yet frum, Weinberger
had been warmly received by the non-Jewish directors of the schools,
where his role as “a clown” made him gain in popularity. “When a
Jew wants to be a non-Jew, he goes overboard. He will do anything to be
special,” he says.
But
six years later, as a baal teshuva, he realized it
wasn’t easy for a Jew to be a Jew. All in all, the battles took some
15 years of his life. In each case, the brachos and help from the
Rebbe pulled him through one Purim-like story after another.
Once,
when his boss, screaming, summoned him to the office, instead of getting
flustered or intimidated, Weinberger looked him in the face and said,
“Yechi Adoneinu Moreinu v’Rabbeinu Melech HaMoshiach L’olam
Vaed” three times.
While
Weinberger juggled up to three jobs, he didn’t find relief at the
other schools either...
At
one school, when French neo-Nazi political leader, LaPen, was gaining
popularity, an anti-Semitic secretary, who had befriended Weinberger
before he did teshuva, suddenly – and relentlessly – began
taunting him that he would soon be out of a job.
Blessed
with a growing family, Weinberger was constantly under threat of having
his parnasa cut. During this time, Weinberger remained in touch
with the Rebbe and gave extra tzedaka and tefilla and...
“This
evening school changed from private to partly public, and the secretary
that kept telling me I’d be kicked out because I was a Jew was thrown
out because of fraud.” One by one, the entire board of directors, who
made his life miserable at the school, was disbanded. And a bonus: the
school, which had been a long ride for Weinberger, was moved to a mere
few minute walk from his house.
In
the secular world, when the battles are over, the soldiers are
discharged. But in the wars of Moshiach, the battles aren’t over yet.
In Antwerp, things might have calmed down on the school front, but the
Rebbe’s admonition to “do everything you can do” to bring the Geula
weighed heavily on Weinberger.
If
he carried out his dream of moving his family to Eretz Yisroel, or if he
used his creative energies to design Shabbos candles or even to paint
pictures of the Rebbe, Weinberger feared he might not be doing
everything he could do to bring Moshiach...
There
was a very big art world out there – a large part of it
Jewish—waiting to be elevated, waiting to be kashered. With his
newfound strength as a baal teshuva, and with the constant
encouragement of the Rebbe, Weinberger has returned to the art world
that almost consumed him to illuminate it with the light of holiness.
“Their
paintings might reflect genius,” he says, “but their lives are
messes.” Now he struggles to reconcile the two worlds in order to
illustrate that a Jew, a servant of Hashem, can still harness the
freedom of the creative spirit.
For
example, a famous fashion designer, made an art exhibit in Florence,
Italy. The hall was huge and she invited 80 of her most influential
friends to contribute a small piece to the exhibit. Weinberger’s
contribution was a ring with a picture of the Rebbe and “Yechi.”
Another
time, the city of Antwerp asked all its art teachers to make flags for
public display. Weinberger’s flag said “Moshiach Now!”
Then
came the day when Weinberger completely reunited with his past, making
his first major exhibit in more than 20 years. You can imagine the
strain that making the exhibit was placing on Weinberger. He was
returning to the very art world that he left behind at the pinnacle of
his career, and was about to be under the microscopic scrutiny of his
former colleagues and art society in general.
His
form of art was called “an installation,” and he was given an entire
house in which to express himself. 400 guests attended opening night in
the house, which happened to be in an Arab neighborhood.
The
exhibit was held in a somewhat rundown house. Weinberger spent weeks
beautifying it by, among other appurtenances, hanging fancy curtains and
wrapping the old staircase in white nylon. As people approached the
house, they would hear music played by a trio of Leviim singing their
special praises to Hashem, which continued throughout the exhibit.
He
closed off all the windows in the house so that when one entered, it was
as if he or she were entering into Weinberger’s own personal life.
From the outside of the house, he made the windows appear as if they
were a display case in a jewelry shop. He filled them with his artistic
jewelry, fun pieces such as a necklace strung with 200 plastic soldiers
– not exactly the gold and silver pieces he sold in champagne-sipping
galleries to supplement his parnasa.
In
the window of a neighboring house, he used a black light to shine on
black-and-white photos he enlarged, such as one of his then young father
standing in front of a burning Torah scroll, one of several destroyed
during the Flemish riots and pogroms, r’l.
In
one room, the “Galus Room,” he covered the walls with black velvet
and hung his “clown doll,” a piece that captured Weinberger’s
feelings of pain about the Galus. Although the doll was a clown,
its whole body was wrapped with tefillin and he had a little tear
in his eyes. On his heart was a small tefillin box and on its
head was a little hat made out of an old tefillin box. At the
entrance of the house a poster was hung depicting the Rebbe and the
third Beis HaMikdash. On one box he hung an embroidery in
white silk that said “Yechi Adoneinu.” On another box he
displayed a necklace fashioned out of chrome and formed in a circle in
which he carved out, ‘We want Moshiach now.” (This piece traveled to
exhibits in America, Germany, and Czechoslovakia, and was featured in
the promotional brochure along with a story about Weinberger’s return
to Yiddishkeit.)
Another
room was done entirely in red velvet and included strong, modern
interpretations of the Holy Chariot; as you approach you could see the
Rebbe sitting on the Chariot headed to the Beis HaMikdash.
The
next room he covered with white cloth and included a 1,000-watt lamp
with a large picture of the Rebbe entering his car on the way to the
Ohel on Chaf-Zayin Adar. Music from the Leviim singing “Trust in
Hashem” filtered through the room; a music stand contained a copy of
the Rebbe’s prophecy of preparing for Moshiach. Then there was the
imitation of a pinball machine, painted with wild and vivid colors,
picturing the Leviathan and Shor HaBar under the
glass and a big “Yechi.”
“No
one left that place without being touched,” said Weinberger, whether
it was the Belzer Chassidim, Lubavitchers, Misnagdim, or even non-Jews
who entered. One non-Jew described the exhibit as “visual poetry.”
Some
time before the exhibit, a non-Jewish journalist had written an article
for the government’s art ministry quarterly, featuring Weinberger as
an artist making a comeback, who was now creating artwork as a religious
Jew. She concluded that only the Creator can create from nothing, and
all that artists actually do is create something from something else.
With
her permission, Weinberger printed this story on the invitations he made
to invite the public to his exhibit and sent it to everyone in the art
world.
This
exhibit now behind him, Weinberger is busy planning another exhibit
scheduled to open in October in Mechelen, Belgium, a city that once
housed a concentration camp.
He
wants one room to show pictures of his current family – his son
dressed up in a Purim costume, his mother standing by her parents’
grave, “to portray a Jewish artist who is making quality art and
showing the value of the Jewish family and Torah.”
By
the entranceway to the room he wants to display an excerpt from Chapter
12 of Tanya explaining how a little light makes the darkness go
away. He wants to include a necklace of rusty soldiers on rusty wires
(symbolizing that the war is over), a picture of the Rebbe, and a
picture of his own family dressed in their Shabbos clothes, with the
music of the Leviim in the background and strong smells of fragrant oils
adding to the atmosphere. “Just to show the simple things of life,”
says Weinberger.
“The
Rebbe, Torah, Yechi Adoneinu and Moshiach – this is what life
is all about.”
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