This is our editor-in-chief’s weekly newsletter. Click here to get it delivered to your inbox on Friday afternoons. When I first reached out to the Israeli artist Reuven Dattner about the “Flowers for Shabbat” he has been drawing and painting every week since 2013, he shrugged me off. “There’s not much to talk about,” Dattner, who is 79, wrote in response to my email asking for an interview. “It looks as if you are doing a mountain out of a molehill.”
Maybe. But this particular molehill is colorful and creative and has been fueling my Friday mornings for months, ever since Dattner’s brother Hezzy — a member of the Forward board of directors — started emailing me the artworks. I find small stories sometimes reveal big truths. And 10 years without missing a Shabbat, 500-plus distinct marker-and-watercolor pieces, is an impressive feat. “I had an idea, and I started it, and I liked it, and then it became — I’m a man of habit,” Dattner explained when we chatted via Zoom on Wednesday. He is retired now, but had a long career in the printing business and, he said, “was never sick in all the years I worked, I never missed a day in the factory, except going to miluim — reserve duty — and war.” He fought in three: the Six Day War in 1967, the Yom Kippur War in 1973, and the first Lebanon War in 1982. He has been married for 52 years, has three kids and nine grandkids. And ever since he was a boy of 6 or 7, he has made art. “People ask me if it’s my hobby — it’s not,” he said. “It’s part of me.“ |
On Facebook, Dattner introduces “Flowers for Shabbat” by saying: “every Friday when I was young my father used to bring flowers for Shabbat — and our home would light.” I tried to draw him out about this, imagining him as a boy at dad’s knee gathering stems in the early days of the Jewish state. No luck. “Maybe I made it up,” he said. “You were in Israel, no? The country of narratives. It sounds good, doesn’t it?” It does indeed. Dattner himself does now bring real flowers to his home in Petah Tikva, a city of about 250,000 people about6 miles east of Tel Aviv, each Friday. “I walk every morning,” he said. “For the last year, I’m going to the market, shuk Petah Tikvah, which is a very interesting market. There are a lot of people and a lot of action, especially on Friday mornings. So there I buy the flowers.“ By then, of course, the week’s “Flowers for Shabbat” artwork is done and posted on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The fresh bouquet might provide fodder for next week’s drawing. Today’s shows mostly red blossoms — maybe carnations, maybe roses — in a white vase with blue flowers, with a backdrop of the Tower of David and the Old City walls, in honor of Jerusalem Day. Last week, amid the latest round of airstrikes between Israel and Islamist militants in Gaza, the sky in the background showed the Iron Dome missile defense system intercepting a rocket. And for Yom Haatzmaut — Israel’s Independence Day — last month, Dattner said, “I put white and blue old flowers trying not to fall, with a young green one being our hope.” Each piece is 8 by 12 inches, and takes between 20 minutes and two hours to make, he said. He sketches every day but Shabbat — he is Orthodox — and starts thinking about each week’s flowers on Sunday. Dattner is whimsical and prolific — he might post a dozen paintings and drawings each week between installments of “Flowers for Shabbat” — and has sold perhaps 100 pieces over the years. (Prices range from about $200 to $2,500.) He has no formal art education or training. It’s just something he’s always done. “I sketch all the time, I paint all the time,” he said. “In the spring, when everything is flowering, I find things outside. I make up a lot of things, it’s not exactly what I see. That’s the difference between me and a camera. Excuse me for using the old word — between me and a phone.” |
“Maybe I made it up. You were in Israel, no? The country of narratives. It sounds good, doesn’t it?“ |
Hezzy, Dattner’s brother, first sent me “Flowers for Shabbat” on Nov. 5, 2022. “Every Shabbat different flowers,” was all he wrote. The email was forwarded from one Reuven had sent, so I mistakenly assumed there was some big email distribution list. In fact, Dattner — the artist, not the Forward board member — said he does not email it or put it on WhatsApp because “I don’t want people to have to see it.” His wife, a social worker and couples therapist, does distribute the artworks via WhatsApp, and if she skips a week, Dattner said, “people ask her where are the flowers.” “There are people who say — I never expected it — it’s a beautiful thing in their day,” Dattner said, referring to the comments on social media. “I’m not such a sentimental person, but I like it. Ego can’t be fed enough. If people stopped commenting on his flowers, he added, he might stop making them. Small stories, big truths. And what a beautiful molehill he has made. |
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Dept. of Corrections: I made two factual errors in last week’s newsletter about the U.S. on its 75th birthday in 1851. California was the 31st state admitted into the union, not the 30th, and Texas became a state in 1845 not 1849. Thanks to the readers who (quickly!) pointed these out. Matthew Litman, Adam Langer and Beth Harpaz helped produce this newsletter. Shabbat Shalom! Questions/feedback: [email protected] |
YOUR TURN: SHABBAT RITUALS LET US KNOW WHAT YOU THINK |
Last September, after writing column about an Israeli cafe owner in my town who decided to close on Saturdays, I asked our readers about how they make Shabbat Shabbat. Dattner’s weekly “Flowers” have become a special part of it for me. Your stories included special hot chocolate inspired by the Torah portion, sleeping late, wearing white, cleaning house and much more. |
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| Jenny Singer, a longtime Forward reporter who is now getting a master’s degree in creative writing, took a deep dive into Exodus — the Leon Uris novel, not the Torah book — for Israel’s 75th anniversary. Also: Arno Rosenfeld spent time with Ukrainian refugees in Berlin; Tom Freudenheim on book burning and banning; Louis Keene in conversation with an Orthodox ChatBot; a quick history of Rudy Giuliani’s relationship with the Jews; and a very New York story about shlepping up the stairs when there is no elevator. Download the printable (PDF) ➤ |
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