Two Jerusalem artists who take on the challenge of the Shavuot narrative.
By Liane Grunberg Wakabayashi | In Jerusalem, May 21, 2026
In his book Dance of the Omer, Rav Benji Elson describes Mount Sinai not as a distant historical event but as an experience the Jewish people physically and spiritually entered together — one we renew every year on Shavuot.
Before revelation came preparation. Before the thunder and lightning, there was acclimatization — a gradual opening of the senses to a reality charged with divine presence. The Israelites did not simply arrive at Sinai and receive the Torah in an instant. They had to work on themselves beforehand.
As Elson writes: When entering a great palace or sacred place, people instinctively slow down to absorb the energy of where they are. “You look around, notice where you are, and if you are sensitive enough, you intuit the context and energy of the space in which you just entered.” Only afterward do you begin to move through it, exploring and inhabiting it.
Moses ascends the mountain not merely to receive instruction but also to encounter the divine — and, symbolically, he takes all of us with him.
For artists who take on the challenge of depicting scenes from the Torah — particularly Moses and the giving of the Ten Commandments — the process also begins with preparation.
Huvy Elisha: Inspired by Judeo-Spanish commentary
For one of Israel’s great painters of Torah scenes, Huvy Elisha (1927–2022), born in Jerusalem’s Bukharan Quarter and educated in England, this journey toward Torah learning and biblical imagery came later in life. She was the youngest student ever admitted to London’s prestigious Saint Martin’s School of Art, entering at the age of 14.
Returning to Israel with her businessman husband and three children soon after the ecstatic victory of the Six Day War, she settled into an affluent life in Herzliya. Years later, after marrying off her children, she and her husband chose a humbler, more observant life in accordance with Halacha, moving to the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Mea She’arim, where they founded a synagogue below their apartment.
Robert Elisha, Huvy’s younger son and owner of Huvy’s Heart and Art Gallery on Jerusalem’s Washington Street, recalls how his mother educated him into the deeper meaning of her art.
“My mother would say, ‘I’m giving you information I know from the Torah, from Rashi and from Me’am Lo’ez.’”
Me’am Lo’ez, the Judeo-Spanish Torah commentary first published in Ladino in 1730 by Rabbi Yaakov Culi, became one of Huvy Elisha’s major inspirations. It later reached English-speaking audiences through Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan’s monumental English translation, The Torah Anthology — Me’am Lo’ez, published beginning in 1977.
“Me’am Lo’ez was written in response to the growing estrangement from the Hebrew language after the Jewish expulsion from Spain,” Elisha explained, describing where his mother found many of the lesser-known details that inspired her Torah depictions.
“You see Moses coming down from the mountain, and he’s holding the Ten Commandments. If you look carefully at the blue, you see the Torah was made out of sapphire. Moses carried with him all the parts of the first Ten Commandments that he threw down and broke. Those pieces of that precious stone were always with him and made him very rich. That was his financial base.
“Painting isn’t just about what we see, but what we learn.”
For Huvy Elisha, these spiritual insights were essential to convey.
“My mother loved to read the Me’am Lo’ez English translation,” her son recalled.
She “actually pointed out the broken Ten Commandments, telling me how everyone took gold and valuables out of Egypt. The only thing besides the sapphire shards of Torah that Moses took was Joseph in his coffin. Joseph had made the Children of Israel swear they would take him out of Egypt.
“Moses actually took Joseph’s coffin on his shoulders and walked with him. The coffin was heavy — don’t forget Moses was very tall and strong. Still, the coffin was made of a metal weighing hundreds of kilos.
“The big miracle was that he could carry the coffin. It sounds a bit ridiculous to imagine he put this on his shoulders and walked with it, but Kadosh Baruch Hu gave everyone a mitzvah. This was Moses.”
Moses Coming Down from Sinai
Huvy Elisha’s son and gallery owner Robert Elisha notes: “You see Moses coming down again with the new Ten Commandments. It’s all really in one painting — both the flashback and the moment the new Ten Commandments come down.
“If you look at the pieces of the tablets that Moses broke, you see letters of the alphabet leaving and rising toward heaven. All those words and letters were done by Kadosh Baruch Hu and returned to the source.
“If you look carefully, the sky is red and has to do with the sin of the Golden Calf. If the scene had been depicted from below, you would never see the calf or the people of Israel. It’s as if we’re walking with Moses from the perspective of the painting.
“His figure is dominant. My mother thought of these things through her Torah learning. If you look very carefully at Moses, you don’t really see his face — you see illumination from those 40 days alone on the mountain with Kadosh Baruch Hu. When Am Yisrael saw the light emanating from him, they couldn’t bear to look directly at it.
“The Golden Calf is there to show that Kadosh Baruch Hu had mercy on Israel, as you see Moses coming down once again with the new Ten Commandments. Even after the sin of the calf, we received the Torah once again.
“What happens on Shavuot is that we receive the Torah again with renewed strength and understanding. That’s why it’s such an important and joyful holiday.”
Ruth and Boaz in the Field
The Book of Ruth, read every year in synagogue on Shavuot, was another major source of inspiration for Huvy Elisha.
Robert Elisha noted: “You see the way Huvy painted Boaz standing behind Ruth. Ruth is gathering the wheat left after the harvest for the poor. The way she gathers it is modest and dignified.
“Boaz eventually married her, and she became the great-grandmother of King David. All this happened after she left her people, the Moabites. She came from a secure and wealthy royal family and left all that behind to become part of Israel.
“Boaz saw prophetically that from their union would come King David.”
As the Lubavitcher Rebbe once said: “Real art does not reproduce the visible but rather reveals the invisible.”