Mark Podwal's Jewish Book Council Cover of the Week

Artist Mark Podwal's cover for Elie Wiesel's Jewish, Literary, and Moral Perspectives was The Jewish Book Council book cover of the week.

Podwal’s jacket painting depicts works by Elie Wiesel. The works illustrated, as described by Podwal, are, from left to right and row by row:

One Generation After (a story about a watch belonging to EW that was buried in Sighet); The Oath (about a burned shtetl); The Jews of Silence (Russian Jewry); Souls on Fire (Rabbi Nachman’s chair); King Solomon and His Magic Ring (a pomegranate, based on one of Podwal’s illustrations for an edition of this work); Ani Maamin (a shofar, since one of the 10 reasons the shofar is sounded is that one day it will sound when the Messiah comes); A Beggar in Jerusalem; Night; Messengers of God (a Torah); The Golem (Prague’s Altneuschul); and A Passover Haggadah.

The original painting was commissioned by Chapman University as a gift to Elie Wiesel. It hangs framed in his home.