Northbrook Public Library, Jan. 7- Feb. 28, 2026

JACC member, Judith Joseph currently has a retrospective of her over 40 year-old art career at the Northbrook Public Library. It will extend to February 28, 2026. I hope you will be able to read this in time to see it. It is wonderful.

Judith’s exhibit takes up three floors of the library. It includes paintings, drawings, prints, and even an installation. Of course, it includes many ketubahs, which she began creating while still in high school. The quality and breadth of the works in so many media is stunning when seen all together. As a recent JACC member, I was only superficially aware of Judith’s art, mostly familiar with her as a ketubah artist and calligrapher. Walking through this show, there was for me, one surprise after another. Judith’s mastery of egg tempera, watercolor, print making, wood cuts and drawing revealed itself in one work after another. The influences of the ketubah format are there in bits and pieces of many of these works, but her works go far beyond them in so many ways.

On February 5, Judith was interviewed in the library auditorium by Bruce Bondy, an award-winning architectural illustrator and artist and chairperson of the Northbrook Arts Commission. It was a wonderful interview with over 100 people. During this give and take, we learned how grade school Judith’s doodling career was briefly interrupted by a teacher who confiscated her drawing on a brown paper towel and her jumbo pencil. Judith described how a chance encounter with the ketubah at age seventeen led to her being one of first ketubah artists in this area. Later she realized the importance of promoting her work on the internet and how she created an early website that allowed her to market her ketubahs around the world to engaged Jewish couples. She spoke of her initial forays into wood block print making which began with a five-foot square, Baltic birch plywood carving that was pressed by a steam roller in a Wisconsin parking lot. It holds up even today!

Personally, I loved her Golem wood block prints which were made for a show called “The Golem Comes to Brooklyn.” Attractive as they are, they also convey the dark side of the Golem. Judith explained that while much of her art has an attractive beauty, once you study her work more carefully, you begin to see that she frequently addresses dark subjects. She is a serious explorer of the Jewish experience in all its dimensions, As I let myself encounter her work not just visually but with my mind and heart, its timeless and transcendent meanings blossomed through new feelings and understandings.

On a personal note, as a former physician who loved working with his patients, I heard that same kind of enthusiasm in Judith’s description of working on commissions. It was the same collaborative spirit expressed working with people that is so evident along with her love of art.