Smile

A few weeks ago, we had a free day so a few girls and I visited the Artist’s Colony just outside one of the gates of the old city. We’d heard reports that there wasn’t much there and it was sort of lame, but the park behind it was supposedly pretty so we thought we’d go anyway.

As we walked down the empty street between the shops, we came across an interesting store front with a sculpture of what looked like rusted pots. Being the touristy girls that we are, we decided the sculpture merited a picture. As we stood in the front of the door, smiling for the camera, a white-haired old man with glasses and a pony tail emerged from the store and placed his hand over one of my friends’ head. Surprised, she turned around.

“Don’t you know that if the police saw you here, he could haul you off to jail?” he said.

Shocked, one of my friends’ eyes grew wide and she gasped, “Really?” In this country, you never can be sure about the government.

The old man laughed, and in his Hebrew accent replied, “No, no, can’t you see that I joke?” Relieved, my friend began to explain how we were just admiring the sculpture and wanted a picture. He was completely wonderful and we soon discovered his name was Motke and he’s lived in Israel nearly his entire life. After talking with him for a few minutes, he looked at each of us and said, “I see that you love to smile.”

Living in Jerusalem, we actually get this a lot. Everyone here recognizes us as “The Mormons,” and when we ask them how they can tell, they say, “Because you smile.” Personally, I think it’s probably the standard khaki pants, white V-neck and matching water bottle holders that give us away, but it’s a nice idea anyway.

“Smiling is good,” he said. “One time a rabbi told me that smiling is better than milk.” We kind of stared at him for a few seconds. “You see, what he meant was if there is a needy stranger, instead of inviting him in for milk, it is better to offer a smile,” he said. And you know, in some ways I think that might be true. Maybe all they need is a little lovin’.

“If you smile, you have a better life” he said, “when you are sad, you can’t think because there is so much,” he lifted his hands to his wrinkled face, searching for the word, “tension.” It was a little difficult to understand his accent, but it sounded like he said he knew this because of a certain time in his life that became all too clear when we stepped into his shop.

The walls in his small studio were lined with paintings, drawings, sculptures, and mixes of all three. Although he was perhaps one of the cheeriest men I’ve ever met, his artwork was dark and hauntingly reminiscent of the Jewish Holocaust. It showed gloomy dream-like cityscapes with dark skies, and limp bodies with tortured faces. It was the kind of art only a person who had experienced these horrors first-hand could create.

We began to ask him about his art and he told us he has paintings in prominent places such as the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C. and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He even said Bill Clinton visited his shop once here in Jerusalem, and that is when I became a bit wary. I mean, come on. Bill Clinton? In his cramped little shop? Maybe this was just some crazy old man after all. He had to be at least 80 anyway.

Then he pulled down his guest book from off the shelf, flipped a few pages, and there it was: the John Hancock of Bill Clinton, if you know what I mean.  Shoot, maybe he was cooler than I thought. He invited us to sign the same guest book, and I suddenly felt way more legit with my name in the same guestbook as the former president of the United States.

It turns out after some internet stalking on my part, this guy is a world-famous artist, prominent award-winner, and survivor of a holocaust labor camp from which he escaped and took a boat to Israel. His art has become his way of coping with the nightmares and terrifying memories he still deals with every day. It made me wonder how a person who had been through such horror could even have the power left to live, much less enjoy life.

After we signed his book, he brought out a box full of small prints of his paintings. He handed it to us and told us to pick one out as his gift to us. I was touched by his kindness as I shuffled through each one. When we told him we had to leave, he thanked us for stopping in, and told us to keep being happy.

Now, every time I look at my signed Motke Blum print on my bulletin board, I can’t help but smile.