Robert Weisman’s come to love Chris Riggs’ “Ahava” (love) so much he’s
given it prime real estate above his mantle.

Courtesy of Robert Weisman
galleries all my life over there.”
He’s visited around two dozen times since volunteering as
a teenager to work on a kibbutz shortly after the Six-Day War.

Weisman’s sister Helen has lived in Israel for the past 40 years, so
he’ll routinely spend a couple days with her, too.

But Weisman’s version of Shabbat — where he rejuvenates and
communes with something greater — is spent (mostly) alone,
connecting and reconnecting to Israel. He particularly likes
desultory strolls through Mea Shearim, the old haredi neighbor-
hood in Jerusalem, or simply observing religious pilgrims, both
Jewish and not, in Jerusalem’s Old City, looking for the stories he
wants his collection to reflect.

“I’m fascinated, for instance, with the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre. To me, that’s one of the nicest places I’ve ever seen,” he
said. “I’ll sit there and watch for hours the people coming in who
kiss the slab of granite where supposedly Jesus was taken down
off the cross. I’m fascinated by it. And then I’ll wander the Old
City looking for artwork.”
Weisman’s been buying Jewish art in Israel for so long, many
of the gallery owners have come to know who he is and what he
likes. “They tip me off when something they think I’ll like is coming
up,” said Weisman, who’s built relationships with art dealers
both in Israel and in the United States. “They’ve come to under-
stand my tastes. I like brightness, pieces that tell stories.”
He also likes pieces that hit on more than one note but don’t
play out of key. He’s excited by Jewish artists who subvert the
expectation that Jewish art must be solemn and earnest all the
time. And he’s attracted to the experimental and avant-garde
insofar as it’s tethered to the traditions that make Jewish art
Jewish — a nod to the biblical, a reverence for the sanctity of
Jewish ritual.

“As a collector, his taste is very eclectic,” said Rita Poley,
director and curator of the Temple Judea Museum at KI. “It
runs the gamut from the formalism of (Israeli artist) Menashe
Kadishman to the outsider art of the late Nathan Hilu, and from
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