A positive snapshot of Israel, one frame at a time
To counter BDS and other naysayers, two college roommates merge their entrepreneurial spirit and love for Israel to start online wall art site Israel Framed
WASHINGTON — While a rising number of polls show young American Jews feeling less connected to Israel than past generations, Eric Harris and Jeff Pawlak are challenging that growing trend by converging their passion for art, entrepreneurship and the Jewish State.
They did this by founding Israel Framed, an e-commerce company that sells Israel-themed artwork.
Israel Framed sells photographs of Jaffa sunsets and Jerusalem snowfalls, oil-on-canvas paintings of Safed and other ancient cities, murals reflecting the variety of religions represented within the country. The collection is not only intended to portray Israel in a positive light, but to also display the many facets of Israeli society.
The idea for the business started six years ago, when the two were college roommates at the University of Maryland, College Park. There, they — like many pro-Israel students on American campuses — witnessed increasing enmity toward Israel through the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and campus-wide demonstrations disapproving the country’s policies directed at Palestinians.
They also felt a divide between the media depiction of Israel and the place they had each spent some time, both through a Birthright trip, and Pawlak during a semester abroad at Tel Aviv University.
“We felt very strongly about Israel and believed that it was getting an unfair picture in the media,” 24-year-old Pawlak from West Hartford, Connecticut told The Times of Israel. “We were also concerned that BDS was controlling the conversation.”
Their response was to merge their entrepreneurial spirit with a pro-Israel concept. A few months after graduating, they came up with the idea for Israel Framed while they were working at the same large commercial bank.
The play-on-words name of their business is only slightly tongue-in-cheek: Israel Framed is intended to suggest a double entendre, both that Israel is often “framed” unfairly and that art can “reframe” the Israel narrative.
“We couldn’t understand how so many educated people could have such a skewed idea of what life is like in Israel,” said 24-year old Harris from Potomac, Maryland. “We wanted to portray Israel in a different light… to offer framed art products to portray the positives of Israel, with the idea that these beautiful pieces of art could help to change the dialogue.”
‘We couldn’t understand how so many educated people could have such a skewed idea of what life is like in Israel’
“It seemed from talking to so many people that a lot of them believed Israel was a war-ridden, dangerous and hate-filled country,” Pawlak added. “While Israel certainly has its problems, like any other country, it is a [pluralistic] nation with all the complexity that that entails. So we both felt very frustrated that a part was often being taken for the whole.”
The two were also concerned with how criticism of Israeli policies could manifest into hostile gestures toward Jewish communities separate from Israel.
When Harris was in high school, he competed as a tennis player in the JCC Maccabi Games, a competitive sporting event for Jewish youth. Taking the bus into Detroit for the opening ceremonies, he was greeted by an anti-Israel protest outside the stadium.
“We were just a bunch of Jewish high school athletes competing for fun, not advocating anything political, yet there were lots of people who made it a point to interrupt our events and express their disapproval of Israel’s policies,” he said. “That was an eye-opening experience.”

Throughout college, Harris and Pawlak would often discuss ideas for how to succeed in business. After each reading “The 4-Hour Workweek” by Timothy Ferriss, a self-help book about entrepreneurship, the two aspired to conceive an idea where they could make additional income outside their full-time positions at the bank where they were working at the time, and particularly something related to Israel.
‘We saw significant demand in Christian groups – for authentic, beautiful Israeli-themed products’
Through their family and friends, together they realized many American Jewish families were interested in Israeli and Jewish artwork. Putting two and two together, they decided to dive into the art world.
“We also saw significant demand in Christian groups – for authentic, beautiful Israeli-themed products,” Pawlak said.
Israel Framed is structured through a drop-shipping model, a retail fulfillment method where a business sells products it doesn’t keep in stock. Thus, the art is bought on their website and then shipped directly from the manufacturer.

With the business only in its first year, both Harris and Pawlak are preparing for future growth, like finding new ways to spread awareness of the company through social media and other resources.
While they are focused on the business and making profits, Pawlak said the great hope for the company is to “play a role, however small, in making a contribution to the Jewish state by spreading the notion that, even with all its imperfections, it is a real achievement and a liberal, democratic society.”
Harris added that while their target market generally comprises those already invested in Israel, Israeli and Jewish art could help foster a connection to Israel for future generations of American Jews.
“I believe that having Jewish artwork in the home is a great way to instill a positive association with Israel when raising children,” he said. “It may be subtle, but it is a reminder that we, the Jewish people, have a state. It’s important for American Jews to really internalize that and care about preserving it.”
Supporting The Times of Israel isn’t a transaction for an online service, like subscribing to Netflix. The ToI Community is for people like you who care about a common good: ensuring that balanced, responsible coverage of Israel continues to be available to millions across the world, for free.
Sure, we'll remove all ads from your page and you'll unlock access to some excellent Community-only content. But your support gives you something more profound than that: the pride of joining something that really matters.

We’re really pleased that you’ve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month.
That’s why we started the Times of Israel - to provide discerning readers like you with must-read coverage of Israel and the Jewish world.
So now we have a request. Unlike other news outlets, we haven’t put up a paywall. But as the journalism we do is costly, we invite readers for whom The Times of Israel has become important to help support our work by joining The Times of Israel Community.
For as little as $6 a month you can help support our quality journalism while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE, as well as accessing exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members.
Thank you,
David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel