CREATIVE COMMANDMENT
At Jewish center, mural by ‘Pop Art Rabbi’ aims to convey essence of ‘mitzvah’
On Dempster Street near Crawford Avenue in Skokie, a Jewish organization’s building is decorated with a mural showing pages from an open book exploding into fiery colors and Hebrew letters flying around.
Rabbi Yitzchok Moully, who’s known as the “Pop Art Rabbi,” was the lead artist behind the mural, painted in 2020 on an outside wall at Lubavitch Chabad of Skokie.
He says the book is meant to be a religious text and the mural a way to show Judaism is a living faith.
Moully says he tried to capture the spirit of the Hebrew word mitzvah — often thought of as a good deed but which actually translates as “commandment.” He says that can be viewed as “building bridges with the divine” through prayer, religious study and other “physical acts that bring about spiritual energy.”
“When you pray, make a blessing, whatever you’re doing, you’re creating a transferable experience down here, having a positive spiritual impact on the world,” says Moully, who painted the mural with help from kids in CTeen, the Lubavitch Chabad youth group. “My work is about visualizing that spiritual energy.”
Moully is from New Jersey but is longtime friends with Rabbi Yochanan Posner from Lubavitch Chabad, which is in the 4000 block of Dempster Street in Skokie.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, Posner organized an event where the youth group painted the center’s van in shades of blue with an orange CTeen logo.
“Painting a mural” was “one of my dreams,” Posner says. “But we never really had an occasion.”
Then, when COVID-19 hit, he thought that getting the youth group involved in creating a mural would be a perfect pandemic activity — something that could be done outdoors, in shifts and with proper social distancing.
Also, it would be something to be done in real life, which people were craving.
“It’s not Zoom,” Posner says. “It’s actual reality. In a funny kind of way, COVID gave us an opportunity to do things we wouldn’t have otherwise.”
He says he thought of Moully: “I knew he wanted to do more murals, and I wanted to do a mural.”
So Posner made plans for Moully to come and lead the creation of the artwork.
“Other murals have a very clear plan and idea,” Posner says. “This was not like that.”
He says Moully’s style “is very casual. He doesn’t paint lines. He begins with a concept.”
That let the kids “do what they want with very loose parameters.”
But Posner says he had a basic aim: “I wanted it to be Jewish. There is public art in Skokie and Chicago. But there isn’t Jewish public art. And that’s what I wanted.”
Posner’s take on the mural? “I think it’s meant to convey a sense of purpose and meaning in life. Things that are worthwhile or important are denoted by the open book.”
Moully says he’s “been creating murals for a number of years.” He “was a full-time rabbi in a synagogue” when he “realized that the gift God has given me is using art to communicate. Now, I’m a full-time artist.”
He was back in Chicago last year to do another mural, this one with Rogers Park artist Anshie Kagan at the Akiba-Schechter Jewish Day School, 5235 S. Cornell Ave.
Moully was hired for that project because someone with the school saw his work in Skokie, according to Jill Kohl, director of operations at Akiba-Schechter.
That mural’s message? “It all begins with the Torah,” Kohl says. “And we have the Torah that’s open, and all the letters are coming out, and it helps create life.’ ”