Nireh Or is a conceptual and artistic response to the Torah and Jewish teachings that seeks to make Judaism more accessible for a generation that lives online. “Nireh Or” means “light will be seen” in Hebrew. Beyond the blue light of our phones, we wanted the light of Torah to shine through.

My partner (Rabbi Hayley) and I started with a weekly response to the Torah portion and posted it on Instagram. R’ Hayley distilled the Torah portion into a digestible nugget while I illustrated the concepts within it.

We started at the beginning, the creation of the universe. You can visually track the process of creation emanating outward from the center of the graphic. From when God created light on day one, separated the waters on day two, separated water and land on day three, etc.

After we completed the entire year of weekly posts, we self-published a coffee-table book, “Nireh Or: Illuminating the Weekly Torah Portion” in December of 2019. We did a book talk at a synagogue and had plans for a book tour before the world shut down. Subsequently I led workshops on Jewish art (on Zoom) as our digital following grew. We’ve sold over 400 copies, all through grass roots marketing, and direct engagement with our online community.

At this point, we also started to sell prints of the Nireh Or pieces on our website.

For year two, we pivoted to posts centered around the Jewish holidays. Our second year of posts culminated in the production and sale of our first Jewish art calendar (which sold out!)

For year three, we pivoted to post about whatever we wanted. Loosely based on the structure of Jewish blessings, but generally the Torah that we ourselves needed to hear.

One of my favorite pieces below, plays on the idea of the “70 faces of Torah,” representing the many different ways to interpret the teaching of the Torah. Here I present… the 70 typefaces of Torah.

We put out another calendar (that also sold out!), and started to experiment with selling other products. One of our most popular is the rainbow blessing sun catcher sticker. The sun catcher casts a rainbow into your space when the sun hits it, and conveniently has the blessing in Hebrew for when you see a rainbow.

In our fourth year, we’ve grown our following to over 2,500 instagram followers, and our posts have been liked and shared thousands of times. The art has been licensed by synagogues, musicians, and shared in Jewish spaces across the world.

We seek to create pieces that feel responsive to the cultural moment. The dead of winter, the new year for the trees. In times of social upheaval, when hope is hard to find. In moments of collective joy.

Selected Posts