One painting had a haunting quality. A giant man in a black overcoat with a bulging sack slung over his shoulder was suspended in the sky diagonally over a snow-covered village and a large building that resembled the synagogue I had seen in the Marais quarter.

"Tell me about this one."

" In our Jewish upbringing, the Yiddish idiom 'goes over the houses' represents a beggar; it means a message from God could come in the form of a beggar."

" Is the message good or bad?"

" Good. Oh, so good. What you see as a stiff old beggar worn by years of deprivation and sadness is not all there is to see. It isn't his misery or exhaustion or loneliness that touches me in those paintings. It's the spiritual force that keeps him aloft despite all gravity--that's what I find moving."