The Portrait

Despite his desire to hang it in his living room, Avromi’s pleas fell on deaf ears

“I will not allow that picture to hang in my home.”

This decree was heard for years from the mouth of Baila Kleinbaum.*

The picture under review did not depict a place or person one would consider objectional. Rather, it was a painting of Beryl Kleinbaum, her husband’s great-grandfather, who passed away in 1968.

Reb Beryl’s children had commissioned an artist to paint an oil painting of their father, and they presented it to him on his 80th birthday. The painting originally hung in Beryl’s home. After he was niftar, it made its way from father to son to grandson and was now in the possession of his great-grandson Avromi.