The Seven Beggars Studio
Paintings by Moreen Greenberg
Inspired by the stories of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov
The Blind Beggars Story
A small group of young Breslov Hasidic Jews knocked on the door of our apartment almost forty years ago. They were selling books by Rabbi Nachman. They started dancing in a circle in our living room, with my husband joining them! Before they left, he bought a small book written in Hebrew: Thirteen Stories, by Rabbi Nachman of Breslov. Ted and I had been married a year and wanted a child. I opened the book to the sentence, "he remembered when they cut his umbilical cord." I had found the subject for the mural I had been commissioned to paint for the hospital. I spent the next few months reading "The Seven Beggars" in Hebrew with the commentaries and painting a model for the mural to show the hospital. This is the painting, titled "The Blind Beggar's Story." The hospital accepted it. and it became a mural two meters high and three meters long. Ever since, she has been painting the stories of each of the Seven Beggars, as well as the story "The Master of Prayer."