Chag Pesach Sameach!

🫓 A quick Passover update

My grandfather, Yaakov Levi z”l, who was born in Germany in 1923 and whose yahrtzeit was yesterday, was an artist and intellectual. His education was cut tragically short by the Nuremberg Laws, but his life was saved by the Youth Aliyah movement (as well as my grandmother’s). He ended up going back to war-torn Europe as a member of the Jewish Brigade, but not before his British uniform allowed him to hide from the British a critical list of strategic assets held by the Palmach. I wanted to share with you some of my favorite of his paintings, of the landscape of the Galil, where he lived since arriving at the age of sixteen. My grandfather was an avid evening walker and would traverse the fields of his moshav for kilometers around, and then come home and paint them. During the summers, when we would visit, I would join him in the fields and in his studio.

Why am I showing these to you now? And what does this have anything to do with Pesach? Stay with me for a minute here!

Yesterday, movers came and packed up our house for our upcoming aliyah. On my grandfather’s yahrtzeit, I packed his paintings that have hung on my walls here in Los Angeles and equipped them, and me, for a long journey back home. (I was amused by the western wagons on the movers’ packaging and texted them to our family WhatsApp—my aunt quipped, “From the wild west to the wild east.”)

So when I wanted to choose an image for today’s Pesach note, my mind went immediately to Israel—not least because of the week’s events—and I thought I would take the opportunity to show you some art by a Jewish artist dear to my heart, who you’ve probably never heard of, with an incredible (if recent!) history of his own. My grandparents’ story will be featured this year in the Yom ha-Shoah oral history project Zikaron ba-Salon, so if you’re in the Merkaz area in Israel, you can hear the much longer and more colorful version in person.

I had hoped to get one more Kabbala newsletter out to you before Pesach, so this is also by way of explanation. That may have been a tad ambitious for a week that includes lift packing and Pesach prep, yes? This year Pesach falls out on my pub days so we’ll pick up in two weeks after Pesach with the Zohar and more mystical secrets history of Kabbala.

In the meantime, a few updates and reading selections:

Substack has recently made some helpful updates to the backend, which means I was able to organize the newsletter homepage to display series posts beneath the current posts. Scroll down (here) to see the completed series I’ve done and browse the articles. The first series, about the great Rishonim, is pinned to the now-decluttered top navigation bar and remains freely accessible.

Also in the top navbar are links to audio versions of the newsletter (under Podcast), to eBooks, which I’ve just updated, and to Holiday editions of the newsletter (all paid features). Also new: Spotify now allows for subscription podcasts to be included on their platform, so if you’re a paid subscriber, you should be able to listen to audio newsletters via Spotify.

If you’re looking for reading ideas from the archives, I have a few suggestions. I have two posts about illuminated haggadot:

I started writing holiday newsletters last year at Shavuot, so my first Passover newsletter just debuted, in case you missed it (there’s a preview section available):

And just in case you made a vow to visit the Land of Israel in the coming year—

May I see you all, my dear readers, next year in Jerusalem!