Meet the Boca teen whose painting fundraisers have helped Parkland and Israel victims

BOCA RATON — Ayel Morgenstern is 13 years old. Yet, nearly half of her life has been spent trying to create change in the world — and succeeding.

It started when she was 6.

“I was sitting in my kitchen, and we were eating dinner,” Ayel said. “And then I saw on the news that someone knocked down tombstones and vandalized Jewish cemeteries. I felt so bad.”

The gravestones she’d seen on the news were in St. Louis. And, because in the Jewish religion it’s tradition to leave stones on a grave, Ayel had an idea. She’d need paint and some rocks. Her mom stepped in and brought home a bag of rocks from Home Depot.

“I painted ladybugs for good luck, and hearts for love,” Ayel said.

She painted hundreds of rocks in shades of pink, blue, green and purple. It was enough to send batches of them to three cemeteries that had been vandalized.

Her mother, Lauren Morgenstern, took a video of Ayel to show her grandparents what she’d been up to. She uploaded it to Facebook so friends could see, too.

“It took off,” Morgenstern said. “My phone was ringing and dinging like it never had before. And it went viral.”

Ayel was interviewed by media outlets from NBC's "Today" show to news stations across the country after the video blew up.

“Since then, she dreams of ideas and asks for things, and I never say no to her,” Morgenstern said. “Because this is just who she is now.”

They’re not the kind of asks you’d get from the average child — or, now, young teen.

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After the Parkland shooting in 2018, Ayel, a year older, once again needed paint. This time, it’d be to cover benches and seats with rays of sunlight, in honor of the 17 victims of the massacre. At the time, the Morgensterns lived in Parkland. Now, they reside in Boca Raton with Ayel and their 10-year-old son.

The benches came to be called “sunny seats.” Glitter covers their legs, and a beaming sun spills over the tops of them.

“We will dance again,” one bench reads.

The first 17 seats now sit at the Parkland Library. But since then, the benches have traversed the country, all by way of donation to other areas where similar tragedies have occurred. There’s one in Nashville, one in Uvalde, Texas, and another in Scottsdale, Arizona. More locally, one can be found at the Boynton Beach Soup Kitchen. Through other collaborations, the benches have landed in dance stores, at libraries, at Publix and at Whole Foods.

When the pandemic hit, Ayel had another idea. No paint this time.

She’d constantly ask her grandfather, a doctor, what it was like to work in his field at the time. She noticed the constant wearing of face masks was leading to bruising behind the ears of healthcare workers.

So, she created headbands with two buttons on either side, where face coverings could hook onto, rather than on the ears. “Keppy Bands,” she called them. In Yiddish, “keppy” means head.

Her most recent project started in October, in support of Israel.

“She woke up and said, ‘Mommy, I’m going to put my fingerprint on a canvas,’ ” Morgenstern said.

And with a canvas just about as big as her set on the ground before her, Ayel dipped her pinky finger into white paint, then pressed it onto the blue canvas hundreds of times, in organized rows, to create the first of what would become her “Little Finger of God” paintings. At the center of each of the pieces is a Star of David — broken, to symbolize its people, Ayel said.

“There's more than enough power in God's little fingers to answer any prayer,” Ayel said. It’s a practice in certain sects of Judaism to hold out a little finger as one prays.

Normally, the 13-year-old doesn’t ask for any compensation for her works. This time, she wanted donations to raise funds for the Jewish Federation of the Palm Beaches. Through the paintings, she raised $3,000, all of which went to the federation’s Israel Terror Relief Fund.

Her creativity goes beyond her paintings.

Ayel has been dancing since she was 2 with a focus on ballet.

“She’s a very spunky kid,” Morgenstern said. “She keeps us on our toes and will always speak up.”

In school, her favorite subject is science. She dreams of becoming a doctor or scientist. She’s not sure what kind yet, she said. There are too many to choose from.

Jasmine Fernández is a journalist covering Delray Beach and Boca Raton for The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at jfernandez@pbpost.com and follow her on X (formerly Twitter) at @jasminefernandz. Help support our work. Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Boca Raton teen's latest painting project raises funds for Israel