A boy from a Paris print house who became one of
Safed's great artists and Torah scholars. He left behind
613 original works. Every one of them, hand-finished.
Paris 1960 · Jerusalem 1989 · Safed · 613 Originals
Born in Paris, 1960. Raised in a family print house. Educated in the orthodox schools of Aix-les-Bains and Luzern, Switzerland. A son of a distinguished family of Torah scholars dedicated to community service.
In 1989, he left everything in France and moved to Israel. First Jerusalem. Then Safed — the ancient city of Kabbalah — where he lived in a century-old stone house with thick walls, painting his innermost thoughts on mysticism and light. Married. Father. Grandfather. A man rooted in family and faith.
He taught himself everything. Art. Design. Music composition. Writing. Not because he had to. Because he couldn't stop.
"Light is just an experience of the dark. Night isn't the end — it's the start. It's multiple movements."
He didn't arrive at art by accident. He walked through every discipline — lead type, Xerox machines, advertising studios, government offices — until every skill converged into the hand that would create 613 originals.
At nineteen, he entered the family trade. Stagiaire typographer in Paris. He learned from lead plumb to offset films to plate making — working across multiple French print houses. He touched every stage of the process with his hands.
Hired by Xerox as a salesman. Appointed to the Xerox Documenter development team. Then, in 1986, he launched his own company — graphic design, industrial design, advertising campaigns, newspaper concepts, international art projects.
When the internet arrived, he didn't watch. He built. Web design, multimedia, high-tech visual production. He was among the first to paint with a wireless pen brush — merging centuries of craft with tools that didn't exist five years earlier.
Worked with government press offices, museums, galleries, and artists. Served as social and cultural manager for youth programs. Shaped creative education in institutions. Gave back before the world gave him anything in return.
Not a random collection. Not a series. A complete body of work — built over decades in Safed. Macro photography, digital hand painting, hundreds of micro-layers, pigment ink, colored lacquers, acrylic, varnish. Each one hand-finished. Each one singular. No editions. No copies. Ever.
Yoel called it Digital Conceptual Expressionism. Four stages: macro photography, digital hand painting with a wireless pen brush, hand brushwork with pigment ink on printed canvas, then hundreds of micro-layers of colored medium, acrylic, lacquer, and varnish. A technique he built over thirty years. A 3-D process he traced back to the 15th century — reinvented with 21st-century tools.
No agency. No PR team. Just art posted online — and millions who found it on their own.
"His combination of macro photography, digital art with over-painting techniques, and hundreds of micro-layers gives his work exceptional precision, deepness, and aesthetic quality."
"One of the great and accomplished artists of Tzfat, who is also a significant Torah scholar."
"Selected and quoted by Christie's Paris."
Yoel envisioned gathering all 613 paintings and displaying them on twelve of the most spectacular bridges on the planet. Twelve countries. One body of work. A single act of giving art back to the world.
He also wrote a book — "The Bridge: A Journey to Your Soul" — a Kabbalistic guide through the inner workings of the human mind, written for people who came to him seeking answers he never claimed to have. He just painted. He just wrote. He just gave.
The hand has stopped.
The work has not.
Yoel Tordjman is no longer here. But 613 original works are. A book is. A vision for twelve bridges across twelve countries is. His family carries it forward. The work asks to be seen.
613 originals cataloged and protected. Each one hand-finished in his Safed studio. Each one documented. None reproduced.
His dream: twelve of the world's most spectacular bridges, twelve countries, 613 works displayed where anyone can stop and look. The project continues.
His wife, his children, his grandchildren — they carry forward the man behind the work. Not as curators. As people who knew him at the kitchen table.
Fragments from a life devoted to creation