It was no surprise that after the October 7 massacre, people stopped buying Israeli art.
“The shops were closed, the art fairs were closed, and people stopped buying Israeli arts or crafts on Etsy,” said Liran Weiss, an e-commerce consultant who teaches Hebrew courses on how to sell on Etsy and other sites.
So Weiss, who also manages an Etsy group for 10,000 Israeli artists, started an Excel spreadsheet of all the artists and craftspeople and asked them to blast it out to their American family and friends.
“It wasn’t successful... probably because it was Excel,” he said.
'Israeli shops to purchase from' Facebook group grows
He then reached out to Ronit Peter, a beading and fabric artist who took his Etsy course, and they decided to start a Facebook group for Israeli artists called “Israeli shops to purchase from.”
Little did they know that awful October that the group would grow to more than 50,000 people – growing by thousands per week, Weiss said. He estimated that about 10% of the members are Israeli artists, selling everything from Judaica to Jewish jewelry to paintings and food and merchandise – to Americans and others looking to buy art and support Israeli small businesses.
“The mood of Israelis is not great,” said Peter, who saw her calendar of workshops that fall get canceled. “Jews in the Diaspora actually contribute creatively to people who want to survive, work, and create,” she said. “An artist who sells their art and receives recognition and feedback from an audience – [this] gives them the desire to live, the desire to get up in the morning. They now have responsibility, are committed, which means that a whole community of people gets up in the morning to work while the entire Israeli market is dead.”
Weiss added: “The Americans have supported us in ways you cannot imagine. Some people here have sold more art than they’ve sold in their lives.”
LIYA NAIDICH was supposed to get married on Sunday, October 8 – that’s why she and her fiancé did not attend the Nova music festival on Friday night.
“We decided it was irresponsible [to attend] right before the wedding,” she said. “In a way, this wedding saved our lives.” (They postponed it until spring.)
Instead of a honeymoon, the El Al flight attendant and artist volunteered to participate in an artistic commemoration project for the fallen, using pastels and flowers to illustrate the victims. She reached about 30 portraits before it became too much to bear. Instead, she decided to create a blooming map of Israel – an illustration of the state made up of hundreds of pastel flowers, called And Life Will Bloom Again.
She posted it on the Israeli shops to purchase from Facebook group. “In a short time, I had over a thousand likes, dozens of messages, and hundreds of followers on Instagram. I was totally stunned,” she said. “I never imagined it would reach such heights.”
It wasn’t only the orders but the letters of support that moved her to tears and gave her the motivation to keep creating. “Some customers said the map was the most optimistic and touching thing they had connected with since the beginning of the war.”
Other artists in the group are long-established, like 90-year-old painter Herman Gold, who made aliyah from Ukraine during the war there (it took him and his wife two weeks to get to Netanya).
His first solo exhibition in Tel Aviv, prophetically titled, “Souls on Fire,” was scheduled to open on October 9 at the Ukrainian Cultural Center at the Embassy of Ukraine. (It eventually opened January 10.)
“In the days following the war’s outbreak, I felt lost, but then I started to think about how I could help our country. Being 90 years old is not an obstacle to doing good deeds,” he said, adding that he decided to release a series of reproductions of his paintings and donate a significant portion of the profits to charities supporting Israel, including ZAKA and Israeli Children’s Fund. He dedicated his first painting of IDF soldiers to the Netanya Municipality.
Through the Facebook group, his art has found homes around the world, from Liechtenstein to Alaska.
“The greatest reward for me is seeing my works displayed on walls and making people happy. I am heartened every time I receive a photo of my painting in someone’s home. At 90, I continue to work nearly every day,” he said.
WITH PURIM just around the corner, many American Jews are looking to purchase Israeli products in bulk for their mishloah manot gift baskets.
Leslie Gang, director of admissions at Brandeis Hebrew Academy on Long Island, had been buying artwork, clothing, food products, and handmade pieces from the Israeli Facebook group’s vendors for herself, her friends, and even her workplace, for which she bought an acrylic “mi’sheberach” IDF blessing by Shira Auman, and for her dining room, a giant, colorful, custom hamsa resin wood painting by Taryn Treisman.
As she was planning for her Purim gift baskets – about 40 to send to family and friends – she thought, Instead of spending money on Amazon or Oriental Trading websites, I want to make a curated box with everything from Israel: wine, coffee, mugs, hamsa key chains, Jewish star wine glass charms [and more].
“It’s very important for us to support Israel,” she said, noting that some people can volunteer in Israel and go on missions, but as a full-time working mom, “I am buying from Israel and supporting small vendors. These people are so incredibly talented – how can you not support them?”
Many want to buy for the holidays from Israeli artists.
For the ramp-up to Purim, Leah Bar Shalom is so busy she has had to enlist the help of her husband, Aylam Yisrael, to run her Etsy merchandise shop “Jew Got It Art” (which complements her YouTube channel, where she does lifestyle and Judaism videos).
Bar Shalom creates hand- and custom-designed art and products, including mugs, T-shirts, challah boards, tote bags, and posters. The San Francisco-born artist, who lives in Israel, has gotten bulk orders for her Purim tote bags, and even for 700 matzah covers for a synagogue in Texas. She donates 15% of her order profits to help IDF soldiers.
“I was so excited to see tens of thousands of people wanting to support Israel and buy from Israeli artists and shops,” she said. “I feel so connected to people around the world. It’s so amazing that I could create something so meaningful for their lives,” she said, noting that she gets long letters from Jews and non-Jews around the world. “Who would have thought that selling shirts or other items would make you feel so connected to Jews?”
Peter, the Israeli group’s co-founder, said she has gotten orders from around the world, from the US to Australia to England and Switzerland.
Weiss, the Facebook group’s founder, talks of Maimonides’s eight levels of charity – the highest being to support a Jew by creating a partnership with him or giving him work, “meaning, strengthen him until he no [longer] falls and becomes needy,” Maimonides wrote.
“When we wrote to people in the American group, we said ‘We don’t need your donations; we want to work!’” Weiss said. “Buy from us to give us work.”