God, an Italian stranger, and a pair of scissors

In the spring of 1989, I was a refugee child caught in limbo between the Soviet Union and the United States and all I wanted in the world was a new toy.

When we left Ukraine it felt like seeing color for the first time. I was enamored by the clean, wide streets of Rome, but most of all by the window displays full of all kinds of toys the likes of which I could not have imagined.

The Soviet government did not allow refugees to take many belongings, so I could only take my lovie, a ragged doll named Tzinzenella. But on the way out of the country, the KGB security slashed her throat, supposedly to make sure we weren’t smuggling anything inside her. Never mind that her neck could be screwed off, the murder of a child’s doll was the point.

I knew better than to ask my struggling parents for something as frivolous as a doll. And so, I drew pictures of the toys instead. I would draw big soft stuffed animals and uninjured dolls that looked just like real babies, cut them out and play with them.

And then one night after seeing a particularly mesmerizing toy store window, I decided to try something new. Before falling asleep that evening, I talked to this guy called God I had heard of, asking him for a new toy.

The next day my mom and I were walking along an avenue when a car pulled up beside us and an energetic older man hopped out. With great animation, he talked a mile a minute in Italian, gesturing wildly. The only word I picked up was Bambino. And then, he opened the trunk of his car and took out two huge stuffed animals. They were the biggest toys I had ever seen. He handed them to me, hopped back in his car and disappeared.

That evening, my dad came home from selling decorative matches at the market with the most beautiful thing in the world: a Barbie doll. That was when, at seven years old, I knew God was real.

* * *

When we arrived in the United States, art became my language. I didn’t speak English, but I could draw. And I never stopped.

By the fall of 2023, I was living in Los Angeles, a real, grown-up, working artist. Within the span of a few months, I lost my oldest childhood friend and my beloved grandma, who had helped raise me. October 7 fell between those two losses.

And with those events, my art became a scream caught in my throat. I continued painting for clients, and managed a few small watercolors in response to October 7. But I couldn’t really express what I was feeling visually, the way I always had during difficult times in my life.

Through my grief, I talked to God, just as I had in Italy at seven. I begged Him for the hostages to be freed, for healing for their families and the families of all who had lost loved ones, for safety for our people and for the children of my dear late friend.

Two years went by in a painful fog. And still I couldn’t paint. Then, I traveled to Israel. On the last day of the trip, we went to Jerusalem.

When I lived in Jerusalem in my twenties, I often visited the Kotel. I had seen people cry there, and dance, and pray so vigorously that I couldn’t help but wonder what was going on in their lives. But I had never felt that connection to a divine presence at the wall, as much as I wished I could experience what others seemed to.

But this time, as we entered the plaza in front of the Kotel, I felt something inside me crack open. This time I was that person praying and crying. I prayed for all the things I had been talking to God about for two years, and then, though I hadn’t planned on it, I found myself begging God for my ability to paint back. It’s my superpower, I told Him, and I am not myself without it.

When I returned home, an unexpected email appeared in my inbox. It was the Evelyn Rubenstein JCC in Houston, a place near and dear to my heart, inviting me to have an exhibition in their gallery. But how could I accept? I didn’t have any new paintings from the last two years.

I thought of the old joke about the drowning man who asks God to save him but refuses to board the rescue helicopter God sends. Perhaps this opportunity, and the pressure that would come with it, was my helicopter. I said yes.

There was no turning back, so I faced my easel.  And then something interesting happened. Instead of picking up a paintbrush, I picked up scissors. I began furiously cutting paper into small squares of color and texture. As I assembled them into mosaics, the stories and images I had been carrying inside me for two silent years began to take shape. There were poppy flowers and beautiful redheaded babies, young, vibrant dancers and saucer-sized Jewish star necklaces.

I called the collection Shehecheyanu, the Jewish blessing of gratitude for being alive and reaching a new moment in time. Sometimes God’s blessings come out of an Italian man’s trunk. Other times, they come in the form of a pair of scissors.