If you’ve eaten at Ben Yehuda Pizza anytime over the past six years, chances are you’ve seen the mural on the back wall.
You may have noticed its bright colors. You may have searched for the section your family painted. Or perhaps it simply became part of the landscape—so familiar that after a while you stopped noticing it.
Soon, after nearly six years on the wall, the mural will be retired and replaced with a new work of art. Before that happens, it’s worth taking a closer look at what has been hanging there all this time. More than just a mural, it became a record of a community and a snapshot of a moment when we were apart, yet still found a way to create something together.
Back in 2020, when the world had become very small, schools were closed. Shuls were quiet. Playdates vanished. Simchas moved to screens. We waved to friends from across sidewalks and driveways.
That was when Josh Katz, owner of Ben Yehuda Pizza approached me about creating a mural for the restaurant. Rather than paint it myself, we came up with a different idea: what if the community painted it together?
I sketched one large neighborhood scene across 62 separate canvases. Then I broke the image apart, canvas by canvas, labeling each section with colors like a giant paint-by-number puzzle. Families received a kit containing a canvas, brushes, and six paints: red, yellow, blue, black, and white.
Each family painted its section in its own way. Some were careful. Some were bold. Some were neat. There were assorted patterns painted throughout, and the unmistakable evidence of children being handed paint and permission.
One by one, the canvases came back. As they arrived, I pieced them together, outlined the mural in black, added some cars, people, and a few special details requested by Josh (Go Caps!), and slowly watched dozens of individual artworks become one unified picture. What looked random on a single canvas suddenly made sense as part of a larger scene.
When the mural finally went up at Ben Yehuda, it was exciting to see all of the pieces patchworked together for the first time. What had started as 62 separate canvases, painted in 62 different homes, had become one colorful neighborhood scene stretching across the wall.
As America prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday, I find myself thinking about the patchwork quilts that have become such a recognizable part of American history. Individual pieces, stitched together by many hands, create something larger than any one person could make alone. Looking at the mural today, it’s hard not to see a similar idea at work.
There is something deeply Jewish about this idea as well: Chazal teach, “כשם שפרצופיהם שונים כך דעותיהם שונות”—just as people’s faces are different, so too are their minds and opinions different. Human difference is not a problem to be solved. It is part of Hashem’s design. The work of community is not to erase those differences, but to weave them together into something larger than ourselves. This is true achdus.
Perhaps that’s why the mural has remained meaningful for so many people. It wasn’t just the finished artwork people remembered but the process. Families painted their small section without knowing exactly how it would fit into the final picture. Only when all 62 canvases came together did the full image emerge.
Soon, the mural will make way for a new painting. Before it comes down, stop by and spend a few minutes with it. Look for the careful sections and the wild ones. Look at the mural not simply as a mural, but as a group photograph taken during a time when no group photograph was possible. The mural was born during a season of separation. For nearly six years, it has quietly reminded us of connection.
That’s a pretty good run for 62 canvases and a pizza shop wall!
