This life-size portrait of Joel was created as part of a series of 18 portraits titled, The Prophets. The artist was inspired to create this series while reading a Bible given to him by a Christian school teacher who hid him and his wife for a time during the Holocaust. In the painting, Joel is seen entreating his people to understand that God’s punishment does not last forever.

Jacob (Judey) Barosin (1906–2001) was a Jewish artist born in Riga, Russia (now Latvia), who fled to Berlin, Germany, shortly before World War I. He was forced to flee again to Paris, France, in 1933, after Hitler rose to power. Due to anti-Jewish laws established by the Nazis, Jacob and his wife, Sonia, spent the next four years running from the Gestapo. After the war, Jacob and Sonia immigrated to the United States, where Jacob made a living as a sketch artist for NBC-TV. He also illustrated the Jewish Family Bible, created a series on Jesus called the Life of Christ for the Evangelical and Reformed Church, and held numerous exhibitions in the United States and Israel. Collections of material related to Jacob Barosin’s life and work can be found at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Yad Vashem, the Leo Baeck Institute, the Evangelical and Reformed Historical Society, and Museum of the Bible.