The Rebbe Returned This Painting

By David Schweke for COLlive.com

I’d like to share an episode with the Rebbe that has made my late father exceedingly proud and immensely joyous until his last day.

My father, Morris Schweke, was born in 1917 to Syrian Jewish immigrants living in Newark, NJ.

Being an only child, he was allowed not to be drafted during World War II so he could take care of his widowed mother.

The Military pressed him into service, making ships in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. I heard the Rebbe served there as well, but I haven’t heard that they met.

My father always kept Shabbos, ate kosher and never missed a day of tefillin in his life, at a time when it wasn’t socially acceptable to be religious. Being religious was portrayed as if something was wrong with you.

He attended Pratt Institute in New York and it was there that he developed his love and talent for art. Many of his oil paintings were exhibited and sold, all while working in the textile business his entire life.

I have a strong recollection of when I was about 7 years old of my father returning home one day and telling me,”David, I was just offered a job to be a manager at a new company called Duane Reade.” He paused and then added, “I will never work on Shabbat. No matter what!”

In 1988, my father drew a portrait of the Rebbe and was able to personally hand it over to the Rebbe during the ‘dollars’ encounters on Sundays at Lubavitch Headquarters in Brooklyn.

The next day, the Rebbe’s secretary Rabbi Leibel Groner called my father. Unexpectedly and without any further explanation, he told my father to come to 770 Eastern Parkway to “pick up the painting.”

You can imagine how fear and trepidation took control of my father as he returned to 770 to pick up his seemingly unwanted painting of the Rebbe wearing Tallis and Tefillin.

Rabbi Groner met him there and brought out the painting. He said the following: “The Rebbe is asking you to please repaint and properly space out the straps on the arm, and return it to the Rebbe.”

My father did just that and brought the perfected portrait back to 770. He was very proud of that fact and would often boast that “the Rebbe has my painting.”

After the Rebbe’s passing on 3 Tammuz 5754, the secretaries called my father to pick up the painting. This time, it remained in our home. My father was very crestfallen, but every time he looked at it on his wall, It was his personal connection to the Rebbe.

My father was always observant, but what the Rebbe did for him is unquestionably priceless. It made him exceedingly proud and immensely joyous, all the time. It was an artist’s crown on his head given by the Rebbe.