18 faces of Elie Wiesel

Eighteen painted portraits of Elie Wiesel by Meyer Uranovsky will be displayed at the community Yom HaShoah commemoration on April 12 in Wyckoff.

Mr. Wiesel died a year before Mr. Uranovsky painted the first portrait in 2017. The artist never met the celebrated Romanian-born Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate. He’d never read any of his 57 books.

That would come later.

“I loved Elie Wiesel’s television appearances and his Yiddish songs,” Mr. Uranovsky said. “I felt a kinship to him, but he was just some celebrity far away from my personal orbit.”

He created his first Wiesel portrait based on a classic headshot of Mr. Wiesel. It was provided by a colleague, who urged Mr. Uranovsky to paint the portrait for a dear friend of Mr. Wiesel, the cantor and Judaica artist Deborah Katchko-Gray.

It took a while for Mr. Uranovsky to be persuaded. He’d come to the United States in 1996 from his native Cape Town, South Africa, on a special-priority “Aliens of Extraordinary Ability” visa.

As the decades went by, he and his wife, Marcia, bought a house in Riverdale, N.Y., and he paused his successful artistic career so that he and Marcia could build a business in the New York interior design industry.

But once he picked up the brush again, he couldn’t put it down.

The 87-year-old artist explained, in an interview from his present home in Rehovot, Israel, that his excitement at how the first painting turned out led him to do another one.

“I found a picture of Elie Wiesel as a young man and did a painting from that,” he said. “These two pictures brought me back into painting again.

“Then I did a third one. And after a few more, I made a commitment to make 18 of these.” In Hebrew numerology, 18 corresponds to the letters “chet” and “yud,” which together spell “chai,” meaning “life.”

“From the beginning, I had wanted the paintings to be a living memorial to the six million victims of the Holocaust, with Elie Wiesel as the articulate embodiment of the Jewish people,” Mr. Uranovsky said. “My people.”

“As both survivor and spokesperson for all those who perished in the flames of hatred, I felt he deserved more. One painting was not enough. And it became a personal mission for me to continue.”

If the story behind the making of the collection is remarkable, so is the story of how the collection came to the attention of the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey.

Mr. Uranovsky’s daughter, Marisa Uranovsky of Scarsdale, gave the Jewish Standard the details.

“In the last year or so, after he and my mother moved to Israel, my father has been painting portraits of people fighting totalitarianism and antisemitism,” she said.

His subjects include Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman murdered in state custody in 2022 after her arrest for not wearing a hijab; and Arab Zionist political activist and influencer Rawan Osman, founder of Arabs Ask, a platform promoting dialogue and challenging misinformation about Israel in the Arab world. She was a featured speaker in the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey’s Visionary Voices series in February.

“Rawan is an inspiration, and my father was blown away by her,” Ms. Uranovsky said.

“Several months ago, I was visiting my parents in Israel, and my father was telling me that Rawan needed to see this picture he made of her. The next day, we went to the shuk” — the Machane Yehuda market in Jerusalem — “and ran into Rawan. She’s such a wonderful, down-to-earth and open person, and she gave me her phone number.

“When I saw that she was in New York, I messaged her and told her about the 18 Wiesel portraits. She connected me with the Jewish Federation, and Laura Freeman called me.”

Ms. Freeman, JFNNJ’s managing director of marketing and communications, immediately envisioned the exhibition as part of the Holocaust Day memorial planned at Temple Rishon.

“By pairing the 18 portraits of Elie Wiesel with our Yom HaShoah commemoration, we created a meaningful connection between art and memory — inviting our community not just to remember, but to reflect and bear witness together,” she said.

The Wiesel collection previously was displayed at the UJA-Federation of New York and at the Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest in Whippany. Mr. Wiesel’s son, Elisha Wiesel, came to the Manhattan show and later visited Mr. Uranovsky at home.

“My father’s work is so powerful and moving, so important and relevant, that I feel I have to do something to bring it to the attention of the world,” Ms. Uranovsky said.

The artist describes his style as “expressionist, where the brush mark is an integral part of the excitement of the painting. I use very cheap brushes to inhibit micro control and allow expressive gestures. It’s transforming mud into something beautiful and living. That was God’s process in making man from dust.”

A product of the Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town, Mr. Uranovsky has won numerous prizes and awards. His works have been exhibited in Paris, Nice, New York, and South Africa.

He’s painted portraits of a diverse range of people, from Pope Innocent to Tevya the Milkman to two of the hostages Hamas kidnaped from Israel in 2023.

“Painting portraits of the hostages led to a desire to bring people together, and to encourage aliyah from people who are secular or somewhere between secular and religious, like I am,” Mr. Uranovsky said. “My passion for Judaism, even though I’m not very observant, is very strong.

“I feel that my paintings, in the right circumstances, can help people like me connect. I feel like a kind of shaliach,” an emissary.

The paintings of Mahsa Amini and Rawan Osman are included in his current collection still in progress, called “Beacons of Light and Hope.” These are portraits of public personalities he sees as fighting totalitarianism and antisemitism, including Noa Tishby, Charlie Kirk, and Gal Gadot.

His painting is not a moneymaking venture. “I’d love people to buy the paintings, but I don’t make them as a commercial project,” Mr. Uranovsky said.

The Elie Wiesel series theoretically is available for sale as well, though not as individual portraits.

“Yad Vashem in Jerusalem saw photographs of the Wiesel paintings, and a curator there wanted one,” Mr. Uranovsky said. “I refused to let her have it because I didn’t want to break the set.

“I’d be very happy if someone wanted to take the responsibility of owning all of them and getting them exhibited widely. It’s a job that I cannot do, and don’t want to do, and I’d be delighted if someone loves the paintings enough to do this.”

What: “Elie Wiesel: The Eighteen Portraits” by Meyer Uranovsky

Why: As part of the community Yom HaShoah commemoration

Where: Will be on display in Wyckoff; the address will be provided after registration

When: April 12, from 3 to 6 p.m., as part of the community Yom HaShoah commemoration

For more information and reservations: Go to jfnnj.org/yomhashoah, call Laura Freeman at (201) 820-3923, or email her at lauraf@jfnnj.org

And one more thing: Zalmen Mlotek and Steven Skybell will present “Songs of the Holocaust” as part of the commemoration.