His inspiration is Torah. His tools are the midrashim. Artist and author Rabbi Yonah Weinrib has spent a lifetime illuminating the Word of Hashem.

 

By Reuvain Borchardt

 

On a nondescript street, in a converted garage attached to an anachronistic ranch house in this duplex boomtown, one of Lakewood’s newest residents is hard at work. The artist is wearing his regular work clothes—a suit and tie. “I’m not the smock and beret type,” he says with a wink.

 

His brushes move back and forth across the parchment as he paints pictures from the story of Megillas Esther around the text of the Megillah. His brightly colored images are all based on the midrashim he studied for months before embarking on this project.

 

“When people ask what tools I work with,” he says, “I tell them the Yalkut Shimoni and the Midrash Rabbah. That’s where it all starts.”

 

 

Before he was painting limited-edition Megillahs, before he was spending four years illustrating a single sefer of Chumash, before he was receiving haskamos from gedolim around the world for his Torah masterworks, Rabbi Yonah Weinrib’s kindergarten teacher in New Britain, Connecticut, knew he’d be an artist.

 

On his report card, she wrote, “He does good work, especially in art. He has mature, clever, original ideas and expresses them well in art and language.”

 

If ever anyone nailed what a five-year-old’s life would turn out to be, it was that teacher. Today, he’s the foremost Jewish “manuscript illuminator” as he terms his art: writing the text of sefarim in calligraphy surrounded by breathtaking images of the stories and lessons contained therein.

 

He dismisses his teacher’s comments with a shy shrug.

 

“That doesn’t mean anything, a lot of kids like to doodle,” he says, having moved from his studio to his dining room table to discuss his life’s work with The Voice. “It was in my senior year in Philly yeshivah, as I got more into learning, that the letters began having a profound impact. My love of calligraphy started through the letters, for learning.”

 

Another turning point in young Yonah’s life, as it is for so many creative yeshivah boys, was camp and Color War, when staff members’ artistry comes to the fore, as does their achdus.

 

In Camp Torah Vodaas in the early 1970s, Yonah was assigned to paint the Color War banners. When the artist on the opposing team, Nuti Goldbrenner, saw that Yonah was just outlining and filling in letters with a pen, he asked, “You don’t know about nibs?”

 

“No, what’s that?” Yonah said.

 

“Those are the tools for calligraphy,” Nuti explained.

 

After he married in 1973, Rabbi Weinrib learned in kollel for several years, but as he and his wife, Miriam, a”h, began raising a large family, he had to go earn a living. After a brief detour in social work at Agudath Israel while doing some freelance calligraphy on the side, he began his career in earnest doing work for Artscroll Printing Corporation. At the time—before the establishment of Mesorah Publications, known for its translation of sefarim—Artscroll was a printing company that mainly did calligraphy, monograms, and printings of simchah invitations, shanah tovah cards, and certificates for organizations.

 

To this day, he calls Artscroll’s legendary founder, Reb Meir Zlotowitz, “my rebbi.”

 

In the mid-1980s, Rabbi Weinrib decided he no longer wanted to commute from his Flatbush home to Artscroll’s studio in Manhattan. “I wanted my own schedule in terms of learning and davening,” he says. And the city, in those pre-Giuliani years of moral decay, was “no place for a Yid.”

 

“Going out on my own was risky. There are many starving artists. But I saw tremendous hashgachah every step of the way. And unquestionably, my wife Miriam, my partner in everything, stood behind me and was totally supportive. She believed in me more than I believed in myself.”

 

In 1985, artist David Wander published The Haggadah in Memory of the Holocaust, a Pesach Haggadah with Shoah-inspired imagery. Rabbi Weinrib did the calligraphy, micrography, and commentary, while Wander drew the images. The project was commissioned by Wander’s uncle who was a Holocaust survivor and was displayed for a time at Yad Vashem.

 

This was Rabbi Weinrib’s first work that combined calligraphy, commentary, and images, but he only did the first two.

 

One year later, the Gibber family commissioned him to design bar mitzvah invitations; they loved them so much they asked him if he made bentchers as well. “I have a dream—an illuminated bentcher,” he said.

 

“Go for it,” they responded.

 

This was the first time he did what would become his life’s work: a combination of calligraphy of Hebrew and English letters, commentary, and images related to the words.

 

 

Most of Rabbi Weinrib’s work begins as a private commission and is then reproduced for sale to the public.

 

One of his monumental works is The Illuminated Torah, which so far has only Bereishis and Shemos. Before putting a single nib to paper, he spent nearly half a year absorbed in the Chazals. Then he began drawing the words, the commentary, and the images, working with a talented artistic team for this project.

 

People who see the work on exhibition or in a volume he published often tell him that they were taken by the beauty of the art. But he always asks them, “Did you read the commentary?” If their answer is yes, he says, “Now you can fully appreciate the piece. It’s not about the artwork of Yonah Weinrib. It’s the vision of Chazal, interpreted artistically by me.”

 

The Tessler Collector’s Edition of Shemos took him four years to complete. The sponsoring family received the original, and a limited edition of 613 copies was made available to the public, commissioned by the Rennert family.

 

One of his earlier projects was  The Wolinetz Edition of The Illuminated Pirkei Avos. A Judaica collector said it was the most elaborately designed Pirkei Avos in the last 500 years.  A limited edition of 613 copies was made, with a handful remaining. The 3,000-year timeline of the transmission of Torah graces the cover of this issue.

 

“You want to excite people, not just visually, but intellectually, in their neshamah,” he says. “The source work is so important. It’s Torah!”

 

Limited-edition copies of some of his high-end works are exclusive items. (The Megillas Esther on parchment was completed recently—each must have the text handwritten by a sofer, so only two or three can be made per year.)

 

But he has many volumes that are widely distributed and available for the general public at affordable prices as well. His life-cycle series: The Childhood Treasury, The Bar Mitzvah Treasury, The Bat Mitzvah Treasury, and The Wedding Treasury; and the Illuminated Megillos, Haggadah, and Hallel are attractively priced.

 

His books contain hundreds of images, and each is a masterpiece. Prints of individual pages from his books have been sold as unique artwork.

 

His talent has been honed by patience and practice. He only took two courses in his life, one on gilding—the process of applying gold leaf to artwork—and the other on airbrush for making color gradations. He even taught himself micrography, the process of writing tiny letters. The cover of his Illuminated Pirkei Avos features a circle, with six teardrop shapes representing each of the perakim and the words “Hafach bah v’hafach bah dekulah bah” superimposed over the entire text of Pirkei Avos—over 4,000 words—in micro letters.

 

For one volume of the life-cycle series, Rabbi Weinrib had Yaakov Salomon as a co-author. It wasn’t the first artistic collaboration between the two.

 

Back when he was in high school in Philly, Yonah Weinrib was not only doodling, but also composing. His most famous composition of this era was Hashem Elokei Yisrael shuv mecharon apecha, which would be a popular song in schools and camps for decades to come.

 

On his first night at Camp Torah Vodaas in 1970, he saw a group of boys sitting around with a guitar.

 

“I walked over to them and said, ‘I can play guitar,’” he recalls. “So they said, ‘Great—you’re the night activity tonight!’”

 

One of those boys was Yaakov Salomon. Yonah and Yaakov, along with Bency Schachter, would go on to create the group Simchatone, which released two albums.

 

Yonah was the main composer and Bency was the lead singer, with Yonah and Yaakov on harmonies and backing vocals.

 

Yonah wrote melodies for Hebrew songs as well as his own English lyrics. Simchatone’s “Keeping Watch” was a popular tune of the day.

 

Rabbi Yosef Chaim Golding, producer and director of the first four JEP records, asked him to contribute English songs, and he came up with the title tracks for JEP II (Return My Children) and JEP III (Kol Yisrael Areivim).

 

“Rarely have I met such a multi-talented individual like Rabbi Weinrib who excels in art, music, and menschlichkeit,” Rabbi Golding tells me.

 

Rabbi Weinrib also contributed the haunting narration to JEP’s Ani Maamin, in the form of a son forced to watch his father die Al Kiddush Hashem.

 

In 1997, co-producer Moshe Hauben decided to bring back a JEP choir after an 18-year hiatus. He called Rabbi Weinrib and asked him for songs for JEP V. Rabbi Weinrib came up with the song titled The Master Artist.

 

Rabbi Weinrib says music and art are both “expressions of your neshamah. You’re given a gift from Hakadosh Baruch Hu—now what are you going to do with it?”

 

His most enduring composition is Vehareinu, a song from Simchatone II of hopeful longing for Yerushalayim taken from the words of Shabbos bentching, with the iconic chorus, “Ki atah hu, ba’al hayeshuos…” The song is still sung today by the grandchildren of those who first heard it and who only know the name Rabbi Yonah Weinrib as an artist and not a composer.

 

When Yaakov Shwekey was recording his 2005 kumzitz album B’his’orirus, he wanted to include Vehareinu but didn’t know who composed it. He recorded the song in studio, but producer Yochi Briskman told Shwekey he’d have to get hold of the composer and obtain permission before they could publish the song.

 

That night, Shwekey’s aunt asked him to go sing at the home of a friend who was unwell—Miriam Weinrib. Shwekey went to the home and sang some songs for her as his aunt and the Weinrib family watched. When Shwekey asked what other songs they’d like to hear, his aunt said, “What songs did you record tonight? Sing those.”

 

Shwekey proceeded to sing Vehareinu and then asked, “Do any of you happen to know who composed that song? I’m trying to track him down.”

 

To Shwekey’s shock, Rabbi Weinrib said, “Actually, I composed it!”

 

 

Rabbi Weinrib’s work has haskamos from numerous gedolei Torah. And some gedolim even have his work hanging on their wall. Rav Shmuel Berenbaum, Rabbi Weinrib’s rosh yeshivah and sandek of his youngest son, was gifted the Moshe Kibel Torah page.

 

At the aufruf of Rav Yerucham Olshin’s son Isser Zalman, Rav Elya Meir Sorotzkin, the father of the kallah, gave a present to Rav Yerucham: a framed artwork by Rabbi Weinrib that was originally a page from the opening mishnah, “Moshe kibel Torah MiSinai, umesorohu L’Yehoshua…” of The Illuminated Pirkei Avos. It has a timeline of three thousand years of Jewish history.

 

In that painting, following the fire of the Holocaust are images of three American yeshivos: Bais Medrash Govoha, Telshe, and Mir. This is a reference to Rav Chaim Volozhiner’s ruach hakodesh that America would be “di letzte stantzia—the last station” of Torah in galus.

 

The artwork held particular meaning for the Olshin-Sorotzkin shidduch: Rav Yerucham is rosh yeshivah in Bais Medrash Govoha; Rav Elya Meir’s father, Rav Boruch, was rosh yeshivah in Telshe; and Rav Elya Meir’s father-in-law, Rav Shmuel Berenbaum, was rosh yeshivah in Mir.

 

 

Asked to name his favorite painting, Rabbi Weinrib unhesitatingly points to another page in the Pirkei Avos: Ha’Olam Hazeh domeh lifrozdor bifnei ha’Olam Haba.

 

This painting, which hangs on his dining room wall, depicts Olam Hazeh as a sukkah, a temporary dwelling, with 15 steps leading up to the Beis Hamikdash in Olam Haba. The 15 steps are Rabbi Weinrib’s allusion to the Gemara in Menachos 29b that says Hashem created Olam Hazeh with the letter heh and Olam Haba with the letter yud; the 15 stairs are for the expressions of praise found in Yishtabach.

 

 

 

Less than a year ago, Rabbi Yonah Weinrib joined the rest of the civilized world and moved to Lakewood.

 

In his ranch house in the Hearthstone neighborhood, where one can still find detached houses with front lawns and plenty of parking spaces, he spends his days in the converted garage, illuminating Torah works. (He maintains some connection to the Old Country with his business office still in Flatbush, above renowned sofer Rabbi Heshy Pincus’s Tiferes Stam. “I do the Torah in color,” he likes to say, “and Rabbi Pincus does it in black and white.”)

 

His children are all married, and five live within a 15-minute walk of his home. Though a senior citizen, he laughs when people ask if he is planning to move to one of the retirement communities here.

 

“B’davka not!” he says. “There’s such a sense of vibrancy here. I love hearing the kids.”

 

The man who has spent his life with ink and paper is now adapting his work for children and the digital age.

 

His latest project is compiling images and commentary from The Illuminated Torah and other volumes for teaching children and having them formatted especially for a screen. (His similar paper pamphlets have been used for several years now for classroom instruction.) These digital displays are popular in yeshivos around the country, starting with Ohr Yehudah in Lakewood, where his son Reb Gedaliah is the menahel. They will im yirtzeh Hashem be  translated for schools around the world as well. The large, printed art panels with commentary offer a magnificent non-digital alternative.

 

“We call it the Digital Dimension of Torah,” he says. “This is a whole new world.”

 

 

 

In the end, the story of Rabbi Yonah Weinrib’s life is best encapsulated by his song The Master Artist (JEP V). It describes how the entire world is painted in blazing color—the beauties, the joys, and the sorrows—by the greatest Artist of all: Ein Tzayur k’Elokeinu.

 

This is how Reb Yonah sees the world: in vividly colored brushstrokes blending together in musical harmony all in service of Hashem.

 

All the heavens are His canvas drawn in pastel shades of blue

And He adds a blazing sunset in a scarlet crimson hue

He sprinkles golden sunshine brushed with early morning dew

And He lifts the veil of darkness to begin each day anew

He paints with every rainbow in a hundred different ways

And His picture of perfection lasts until the end of days

If all the skies were parchment and the quills were made of trees

And the ink to write the letters was the water of the seas

And the people of creation were the scribes to write the tale

They could never tell all the glory of the G-d of Yisrael

For it’s He Who paints the picture—we just follow His command

For Hashem’s the Master Artist, we’re just brushes in His hand.