Simon Betuel, 46, was raised in a traditional Jewish home in Ukraine. His mother was Ashkenazi and his father was Georgian. His paternal grandfather Avraham Batoshvili’s uncle, Immanuel Davidashvili, was the senior rabbi of Tbilisi until making aliyah in 1973.

“I was living in a central Ukraine town called Kirovograd, today Kropivnitzki, situated around 100 km. from Uman. It was quite a big Jewish community, with one big old synagogue and Jewish Sunday school and activities for Jewish children,” Betuel relates.

But living openly as a Jew made for a rough childhood on the streets. “I struggled each day with antisemitic expressions and antagonism. I remember that I was forced to defend myself or my Jewish friends, sometimes fighting two or three boys and confronting different kinds of violent situations.”

He was also targeted by bullies because he took violin and piano classes at a music conservatory. Fortunately, his life changed for the better when his family made aliyah in 1991, when he was 12 years old. Even at that young age, he felt that his family should have left Ukraine earlier and that they had “lost too many great years and opportunities not being in the Land of Israel,” he says.

Finally arriving in Israel “was so exciting that I decided I should create a way to provide something special and unique to this land, to this nation.”

However, first he had to contend with a new set of challenges. He greatly missed his violin teacher, who believed him to be a wunderkind. He didn’t have to fight Jew-haters, but he did have to make new friends, adjust to a new school, and learn a new language and culture.

“I think today’s olim are very updated with everyday life in Israel and Israeli routine,” he says. “In 1991, when my family came to Israel, we did not know anything about the people here, the country, the conditions for living. But our patriotism and Zionism, built up over the years, starting from my grandfather and his father, were the driver for this unknown life.”

Without his familiar and beloved music teachers, young Betuel found himself at a crossroads, drifting away from the avocation he had always assumed would be his direction in life. “All the dreams and goals that I had planned for myself were gone, and I was faced with some depression and panic. What would I do next?”

He found the answer right away – and right at home. His father, a Judaica artist, had filled the shelves of their home with a huge library of art-related literature. The very day after Betuel dropped out of music school, his father began teaching him sketching, watercolor, and oil painting. He went on to study sculpture, painting, design, and art history at Herzog Gymnasia Holon and was tutored privately in oil painting and composition.

From 1998 to 2001, Betuel served as a combat soldier in the Givati Brigade.

“My battalion was twice in the Gaza Strip and twice in Lebanon,” says Betuel, who lived for 20 years in Ariel until moving to Kiryat Ono four years ago.

Following his military service, he earned a degree in industrial design and became the manager of the family business, Romeo, which specialized in the design and production of handcrafted artworks and ritual Judaica objects. After his father died in 2011, he continued running the business until it closed in 2023.

Today, Betuel and a partner have a cosmetics production company in Yavne called Sensation Ltd. From Sunday to Thursday, Betuel manages the factory from 8 a.m. until the evening. After a short rest, he then creates artwork from 9 p.m. into the wee hours of the morning in his studio, which is in the living room of the home he shares with his wife, Regina, and their three children – two teenage boys and a 10-year-old daughter.

INFLUENCED BY the palettes of Rubens, Klimt, Vrubel, and especially El Greco (“He was Jewish and had a very colorful and very brave attitude toward the human body and unique compositions,” he says), Betuel executes deeply Jewish paintings in both figurative and abstract styles with a variety of colors, techniques, and textures. In his calligraphy series, he incorporates Hebrew letters and sometimes verses from the Torah or from the commentary of Rashi.

“My abstract compositions are partially unconscious; the hand follows the mind in spontaneous motions to create something innovative and interesting,” he says.

Betuel’s works are exhibited at venues such as Al HaAgam Gallery in Ra’anana, and will soon be displayed at a gallery in Paris. He recently had his first one-man show, held at Askila Gallery in Jaffa, which is devoted to religiously oriented art. The show was curated by Lubavitcher Hassid Itai Gabay.

“Betuel’s work seeks to revive the space of dialogue between man and his God, between man and his heritage, between man and himself.

“It preserves the longing, but also gives it a contemporary, relevant, sharp form, observing the depth of the roots with the knowledge that growth always occurs forward,” Gabay wrote in the exhibition notes.

Several of Betuel’s paintings have been purchased in Ukraine and in Israel. He’s proud to say that one of his clients is Israeli artist Eli Gross, who transformed rocket remnants and missile fragments into the giant Hanukkiah of Hope displayed in Hostage Square in Tel Aviv.

Betuel believes that his background as an immigrant has influenced his artistic expression and discipline – but, he adds, his specific style of conveying nostalgic and historic parts of Jewish history couldn’t be done anywhere else but in Israel. ■

For more information about Betuel’s art, see www.simonbetuel.com