Rabbis turned into rock stars at Chabad art show

The late Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks (Photo: Natalia Rabinowitz)[Missing Credit]

The exhibit was on display this week for one night only, attracting over 120 people to Chabad in Hampstead Garden Suburb.

“I didn’t even bother approaching a [non-Jewish] gallery,” she says. “I knew a ‘normal’ gallery wouldn’t do a show about rabbis, especially in today’s climate.”

The psychedelic portraits are reminiscent both of stained glass windows and also posters from the Beatles’ album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The collection is a merging of secular and religious celebration – a journey that started during Natalia’s childhood, when, although from a Jewish family, she was not brought up in a traditional home. “Music was our second religion,” she says.

Natalia is the daughter of Stephen “Sugar” Segerman, a record store owner and music writer, whose hunt for a vanished American musician became the Oscar-winning 2012 film Searching for Sugar Man. Her childhood home resembled “a teenager’s bedroom that exploded into the whole house”, recalls Natalia.

Artistic from a young age, she grew up drawing in the company of floor-to-ceiling posters of the Beatles and other music icons.

The colourful visuals stuck with her after she married her husband and moved to London, where the couple joined Beis Gavriel, a Hendon-based Chabad-Lubavitch synagogue.

She became a mother and took up illustration, a “clean” medium that required little space, and tried her hand at digital art.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson (Photo: Natalia Rabinowitz)[Missing Credit]

When her husband “begged” for a birthday portrait of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe, Natalia glimpsed an intriguing possibility.

“If people are going to put pictures of rabbis in their houses, I want them to be beautiful,” she explains.

She began a weekly practice of drawing a rabbi and studying him in depth, listening to educational YouTube videos on her subjects as she sketched. The resulting 14 portraits of deceased Jewish religious leaders, which include one of the late Chief Rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks, were designed to spotlight the rabbis’ “essence”, hinting at their beliefs or contributions to Judaism.

“With the Baba Sali [Rabbi Yisrael Abuchatziera, a 20th-century leading Moroccan rabbi], there’s a picture of little moons because of the length he would go to make the blessing on the new moon. His colours are very blue because he was all about water. He was always in the mikveh, always blessing bottles of water.”

The Baba Sali (Photo: Natalia Rabinowitz)[Missing Credit]

The only continuous aspect between the diverse portraits is their geometric, almost art-nouveau style – “I’m obsessed with patterns,” and their halo-like auras, which, she explains, allude to the rabbis’ long-standing influence.

Natalia guesses her featured rabbis would be “horrified” by the exhibit. “They were so humble,” she explains. “They weren’t in it for the recognition. They were holy. It’s important to keep them around as role models.”

The project was, overall, a chance to connect her musical childhood to her new adult life. Natalia continued her Rabbi of the Week endeavour for six months, learning more about Judaism along the way.

“When I studied the parshah, I’d try to find an angle to see it through the Rabbi of the Week’s lens.”

While “crowdsourcing” rabbis, she was recommended Rabbi Yosef Kapach, the Yemenite rabbi who “followed Maimonides to a T” and was an outspoken critic of Jewish mysticism (Kabbalah), which Natalia found challenging to accept.

“At first, as a Chabad follower who’s interested in Kabbalah, I didn’t want to draw this rabbi,” she reflects. “But the more I learnt, I realised he was amazing.”

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the late Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel (Photo: Natalia Rabinowitz)[Missing Credit]

She compares the lengthy list of the Jewish tribes in the Torah’s book of Bemidbar to a thrilling roster of football teams in the World Cup.

“It’s like Hashem is announcing the leagues. All the teams have different styles, histories, and uniforms. That’s how we are as Jews. I realised, this rabbi is just a different team from me.”

Having forged her own path to a strong religious identity, Natalia urges other Jews to seek connection in whatever way they can.

“When we are divided as Jews, that’s when we are open to attack. That’s what happened in Israel. We must focus on respecting, loving and learning about each other, because our differences are beautiful.”

 nataliarabinowitz.com