He soon found a mentor, a teacher and a real rabbi in Rabbi Zalman Bluming, the Chabad shaliach at nearby Duke University. It was like coming up for air after holding his breath too long under water. He had found truth.
Conversion
Josef did not immediately decide to convert. Rather, he sought to be a devout Noahide, keeping the sheva mitzvot given to bnei Noach. He regularly attended classes at the synagogue and Shabbat services. But he was not yet ready for the massive responsibility that came with following the halachos in the ShulchanAruch, from waking up in the morning to going to sleep, from birth to death. It would take a few years for him to get there.
In 2010, when he turned thirty, Yosef Sherman decided to become an authentic Jew. Dressed as a Chasidic Jew, he returned to Israel again, and waited for the Bais Din to agree to his conversion. It was a long wait.
In the meanwhile, he built a marketing and media business. He found Israeli-English organizations he could be proud to work for, including United with Israel and Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital. He learned under the direction of a rabbi appointed by the Bais Din. He kept as many mitzvot as he could – while consciously breaking Shabbos and not allowing himself to be counted as a 10th for minyan. It was three years before the Bais Din of Rav Nissim Karelitz would acquiesce.
There were some interesting situations. Once he came to the Bais Din on Erev Pesach hoping they would allow him to convert before Yom Tov. Garbed in his Chasidic long coat and hat, the Bais Din didn’t understand who he was. Since it was time to sell the chometz, they were waiting for the designated non-Jew.
“I am a non-Jew,” Yosef told them.
They made him an offer: He would be their Pesach goy, and they would agree to convert him after Pesach.
Yosef consented, recognizing it was an opportunity to learn about the laws of kinyanim up close.
“That Pesach,” Sherman says, “I scrubbed out my cabinets, kashered and covered the countertops with foil, and there wasn’t a crumb of chometz to be found. But in one corner were bags overflowing with documents that declared me the legal owner of a massive quantity of chometz belonging to thousands of residents of Jerusalem, as well as the Jewish community in Tbilisi, Georgia.” It proved to be a hard, lonely Pesach, but the last one he spent as a non-Jew.
After converting, he studied at Ohr Somayach in Jerusalem, focusing on Gemara and halacha.
Today
Yosef Yehudah Sherman has many titles. As a Chassidic avreich, fully dressed in Jerusalem garb with a breaking-out-in-chuckle personality, he has kept himself involved in teaching his special insights. Finding the deeper significance in his life’s events and making it work for him is Yosef’s modus operandi. His love for Torah and mitzvot is so part of his persona, it is hard to imagine that he was born into a different religion. He has found different avenues to express his unique path of Judaism – marketing, writing, teaching, painting and connecting to the heroism of righteous gentiles. He had found his niche and place within the Jewish people.
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Encounters With The Embassies The pouring of Yosef’s neshama onto the canvas is expressed in his oil paintings. Every brush stroke is a spark of his soul, seeking an expression.
Yosef began painting in layers: first the horrors of the Holocaust, a compilation of layers of evil and horror, but then there is the light of good, of non-Jews who risked their lives. His paintings represent those two kinds of light: one that is clear, revealed, and the other hidden, only perceived in the faint shades that soften the jagged brush strokes.
He has created the Holocaust Art Institute and through his encounters with the ambassadors, many shades of understanding were expressed.
Croatia
Sherman told the ambassador of Croatia that “World War II was a tragedy for people of all nations. Croatians suffered at the hand of the Nazi puppet state, Nezavisna Država Hrvatska. And yet, the righteous risked their lives in the midst of the worst possible circumstances to save another’s life.” Both of the paintings he gifted to the people of Croatia embody the teaching of Pirkei Avot, “In a place where there is no man, strive to be a man” (Avot 2:5).
The oil paintings depicts Purim and Chanukah. Purim’s “Bleeding Eyes on a Frame of Hope” illustrates the moment the first known righteous gentile in Persia, Charvonah, Achashverosh’s servant, risked his own safety by entering a private royal party and telling the king of Haman’s intention to hang Mordechai on a special tree. Achashverosh ordered that Haman be hung on it instead.
Chanukah’s “The Dreidel” portrays the toy being used to distract the suppressing Greeks. The outside bold stokes seem to just come up to the lines of the silhouetted dreidel, but do not enter its inner sanctum. It symbolizes what happened when the Greeks of long ago were fooled into believing that the Jews hiding in the caves were playing games and not learning Torah.
Greece After receiving Yosef’s paintings, the two Councilors of Greece reflected that “Art is a way to heal. Israel is good at facing the pain of the Holocaust – facing what happened and figuring out a way to overcome it. A lot of cultures did not do this after the war, so they still suffer.”
Alexandros Yennimatas, the current Consul at the Embassy of Greece in Tel Aviv and previously part of the Permanent Mission of Greece in the United Nations, wrote, “Having Mr. Sherman at the Embassy was very important, as he symbolizes a very strong message, of peace and unity. Through his work, Mr. Sherman reminds us all that both creation and destruction are inherently humane notions that transcend all forms of social divisions, political or other.
