The Lubavitcher Rebbe,
Sunday Dollars

Two canvases hold a single moment. On the left panel the Rebbe stands in profile, black hat, white beard, his dark coat cut in long strokes of blue and violet. The ground behind him breaks into knife marks of crimson, cobalt, yellow, and green, and a boy in a plaid shirt waits at his shoulder. His gaze travels down and across the seam between the panels. There, on the right, a small boy in a checked shirt and navy yarmulke is lifted by his father’s hands, and between the two figures passes a single dollar bill.

On Sundays the Rebbe stood for hours, placing a dollar in each visitor’s hand to give to tzedakah, meeting every Jew one at a time. Teeger paints the smallest of those meetings: a child too young to reach on his own, a tzaddik who turns his full attention toward one small hand. The paint is heavy, worked entirely with the knife, and the light gathers on the bill itself. The work now lives in a private collection.