Agnon House Museum, Jerusalem. Nobel Prize winner!

What was a relatively uneducated young man from the Ukraine, Shmuel Yosef Czaczkes, doing winning a Nobel Prize for literature? Shmuel who?

Shmuel Yosef Czaczkes(1887-1970), a rabbi’s son, learned Hebrew texts from his father and European literature from his mother. In 1908 the family emigrated to Israel, but as soon as he could leave his parents’ Jaffa home, he pursued his studies in Germany in 1912. Germany was where Shmuel Yosef laid eyes on Esther Marx, argued with her father about whether a writer could make a reliable and supportive husband, married her anyhow and had two children. And Germany was where the would-be author had his first book published.

Agnon House Museum, Jerusalem

Shmuel Yosef was writing constantly in Germany and, without gainful employment, might have starved in his writer’s garret. Fortunately he met the successful publisher Salman Schocken (1877-1959) in Berlin during the war, a man who solved the entire publishing dilemma. Only one early manuscript was not published; a completed novel was destroyed in a fire in Shmuel and Esther's home in 1924.

Devastated by the loss of his own writings and by the destruction to his library, Agnon decided to return to Jerusalem alone, intending to bring his family along at some stage in the future. Shmuel Yosef Czaczkes was a difficult name to carry around, so when he returned to live in Israel in 1924, he changed it to the much simpler and more literary Shai Agnon. I bet Mrs Esther Czaczkes was surprised to hear her beloved husband answering to a totally new name.

Agnon's library was hit for a second time when his Jerusalem house was destroyed during the appalling Arab riots of 1929. For a writer to lose his library, twice, would be like a painter to lose his eyes or a surgeon to lose his fingers. So Agnon had no choice but to build a new house.

Agnon's upstairs study and library

I love Israel’s modernist Bauhaus architecture, built largely in Tel Aviv from 1930-WW2. But I didn’t expect the harsh, white, undecorated shape of Bauhaus architecture in Jerusalem. Thankfully Agnon never had to move from his 1931 Talpiot house for the rest of his life. He had moved enough in his life.

I don’t suppose Agnon was an easy husband or a supportive father to his wife and children. Linda Gradstein described a man who lived a modest, religious life and insisted his family did too. The author tolerated just four folding chairs for visitors, no hot water for showers, no meat and no access to the one big library room upstairs to anyone other than the great man himself.

Even when Schocken was Aryanised by the Germans in 1939, Agnon got lucky. The publishing house moved to Israel under the same name and continued the role it had played in Germany. We can identify the following books as Agnon’s novels, all published of course by Schocken: The Bridal Canopy, 1932; A Simple Story, 1935; A Guest for the Night, 1939; Only Yesterday, 1946; Shira, 1971 and In Mr. Lublin's Store, 1974. He also wrote books of short stories, collected letters, novellas and non-fiction.

Throughout his career, Agnon was recognised by his literary peers. He was twice awarded the Bialik Prize for literature (1934, 1950). And he won the prestigious Israel Prize for literature, twice (1954, 1958). However the peak of Agnon's literary life was winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 1966. In fact he shared it with the wonderful German Jewish writer Nelly Sachs (1891-1970).

Shai Agnon, after winning the Nobel Prize

The City of Jerusalem bought the house in 1970, the same year that Agnon died, and eventually turned the building into a museum. In the last few years, renovations were made to restore the building to how it appeared during Agnon's lifetime. Reopened in Jan 2009, the upstairs library and study, including Agnon's large book collection, is the most interesting part of the house-museum.

Visitors and students can now inspect archival photographs, documents, recordings made by the writer, letters, manuscripts and copies of special editions of his works. Older citizens like myself can review the published material while enjoying coffee and cake on the typical Bauhaus roof terrace. Bliss.

Despite Agnon’s themes being clearly Jewish, there was also something universally appealing about them. His works have been translated into just about every language under the sun, including for societies who would never have seen a Galician-Ukranian-Israeli-German in their midst.

Israeli fashions and Israeli politics: 1934-85

At first glance there doesn’t seem to be much of a connection between the political values held by the people in a nation, and the clothes that a nation manufactures and wears. But if anyone needs to be convinced that the connection is real, consider the 1960s in the British countries that I knew well.

No self-respecting, progressive young woman in 1965 would buy her clothes in any shop other than the Handicrafts of Asia chain. The cotton clothes she bought from those shops made a clear political statement that the young woman was concerned about the following:
 1. natural (and not synthetic) materials;
 2. the rights of women workers in Third World countries;
 3. owning cheap, long lasting dresses;
 4. ignoring the dictates of fashion houses in Paris and Milan; and
 5. defying her mother’s tastes.

My Gap Year programme, 1966, Jerusalem. Dancing dresses 

In Israel, even more so than in Britain, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Consider the changes that took place in Israeli society from the 1930s (a time of mass migration from Nazi Europe) to the 1980s (when capitalism ran rampant). Just 50 years! The country’s worldview used to draw its inspiration from draining the malarial swamps via shared labour (even if most citizens had always lived in cities), and providing for the welfare and education of every citizen, regardless of his income level.

The Ata Textile Factory, that was founded in Kfar Ata near Haifa in 1934, was fascinating. It was established by the Moller family, Czech Jewish industrialists, at a time when the nation’s most important social organisations were the trade unions (Histadrut) and the Labour government. By 1946, Ata had over 900 workers living in Kiryat Ata, all enjoying the community rights that made life pleasant eg housing, childcare and subsidised groceries.

In addition to the socio-economic story, the history of Ata also relates the story of the factory and its textiles i.e the physical appearance of Israeli society. Israel’s workers and soldiers wore Ata clothing, as did members of youth movements. When every prime minister in the world would have worn a suit and tie, David Ben Gurion proudly chose khaki shirt and slacks that suggested he was a man of the people, a worker of the land. Sandals were de rigeur.

One of the primary values behind ATA clothing was national solidarity. The factory's fashionable products in its early years included a drill fabric called Army and a cotton satin called Officer. There were only four colours available - khaki, white, black and blue.
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David Ben Gurion, prime minister from 1949-1963 (except for 2 years).

How do I remember this so clearly? I lived in Israel in the middle 1960s.

In the 1960s, Ata realised the company needed to modernise its image so they established a female apparel division called Splendid Model. They started creating fashionable dresses in bright colours, not hippy but certainly reflecting the 1960s zeitgeist. But the times were changing faster than Ata was. The State of Israel was moving towards a capitalist model, raising the threat of privatisation, cutting the economy off from governmental management and making large cuts in welfare budgets. It was a tragedy for workers, but a great boon to industrialists. Soon urban and bourgeois Israelis preferred more stylish clothing from abroad, and they wouldn’t touch the old Ata lines with a barge pole.

The history of the Ata Company has been displayed at the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv, revealing the economic, political and social changes that took place in Israeli society during the most important decades in the state’s short history. The exhibition is called Factory, Fashion and Dream. It displays these national memories in a broad historical context, moving FROM pioneering spirit, workers’ rights, concern for the community and a commitment to basic, somewhat utilitarian clothes. It moves TO a rolling back of workers’ rights, modernity, private greed and lack of interest in the history of the state.

Ata: Factory, Fashion and Dream exhibition, Tel Aviv Museum

It was no wonder that the Ata factory closed down in 1985. Yet even then, the 3,000 Ata workers thought the government would save them from unemployment and poverty. It did not. The government stood aside, allowing a core part of Israeli society to close and workers to be cut adrift. For decades ATA had symbolised prosperous Israeli industry, proletarian pride and a struggle for the work place. Its closure meant that the sense of idealism, always a core part of Israeli identity, ended as well.

House Museum of Anna Ticho (1894-1980)

I have always liked the idea of an artist’s work being shown in the family home that the artist once lived in. Consider, for example, Rembrandt’s home in Amsterdam, Durer’s home in Nuremberg or Ruben’s home in Antwerp. The idea of a house-museum seems more authentic than a multi-artist, multi-era gallery built decades after the artist’s death. I say “seems” more authentic because who is to say that this family home was the only house, or even the most important house that the artist lived in, during his adult career?

Ticho House, Jerusalem

Anna Ticho was born in Moravia in 1894. It was then then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and today is in the Czech Republic. She moved with her family to Vienna when she was still in primary school and later enrolled in art school in Vienna. Anna married opthal­mologist Dr Albert Abraham Ticho just before war broke out, and moved to Damascus with her husband who served in the Austrian Army.

When Dr Ticho was discharged after war ended, they emigrated to Israel. Pride of place was given in her new home to drawings she had brought with her from Vienna’s young and talented artists: Klimt, Schiele and Kokoschka. The Tichos bought this house in 1924, one of the first Ottoman houses in Jerusalem built outside the old city walls. It was not huge, but it was perfectly suited to the climate and landscape of the city. They converted the lower storey into an eye clinic which was busy until Dr Ticho died.

Ticho House garden restaurant

Anna Ticho was busy running her husband’s medical practice and running the home, so there didn’t seem to be as much time for art as she would have liked. Her drawings of figures and Jerusalem landscape were done from nature, using the familiar hills, rocks and olive trees around the city as source material. Perhaps the barren Jerusalem landscape encouraged Ticho to turn to sketching and water colours, not oil painting. The stony Judean Hills, treeless and human-free, lent themselves to rather austere sketches.

Only later, said Irit Salmon, did Ticho treat subjects such as dissolution and abandonment, depicting trees, houses, and aging people. She drew the maze of rooftops of the houses of the Old City stretching to the horizon above their opaque windows, creating a delicate interplay between stones and windows interwoven with domed roofs. She moved to earthy tones.

The Jerusalem house had to be comfortable and elegant. The Tichos were always active in Jerusalem’s social and cultural life, including involving themselves in the foundation of Bezalel Art School. After her husband’s death, Anna continued to live and work in the same house until her own death in 1980.

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Galleries
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Anna bequeathed the house, its library and its collections to the city, for use as a public art gallery of her own work. And it’s not just Ticho’s own work on display. The museum wanted ex­hib­­itions that would fit in and be inspired by Anna Ticho and Ticho House. So they chose a range of media, including painting, photo­gr­aphy and video to explore issues of living spaces and women in art. I enjoyed "A Room of Her Own", an exhibition of women in portraiture from the 19th century on.

Ticho, Jerusalem Hills .......... Vuillard, Misia on Chaise Longe

Inter-war landscapes: amazing international comparisons

"The South Downs stand like a line of gigantic beached whales guarding the southern foreshore of England. Rounded and rolling, they merge into each other to create a series of graceful forms. Modest in height yet possessing an undeniable grandeur, the Downs can be bleak. But even when the prevailing wind blows sudden storms across the summits, they are never forbidding. The Downs were never a frontier, but a pastoral range and crossing place, their easy gradients, dry tracks and firm grasslands making them a natural highway for Man and his herds".

Nash, Wood on the Downs, 1929, Aberdeen Art Gallery, 72 x 92 cm

How did artists depict the South Downs during the inter-war era? Examine Paul Nash’s painting Wood on the Downs, 1929, Aberdeen Art Gallery. Paul Nash (1889-1946) was trained at the Slade School before serving in the First World War with the Artists' Rifles at Ypres on the Western Front. He was invalided home in 1917 and appointed as a war artist for the last two years of the war. This painting, from the inter-war years, had cool yet strong colours that were replicated just a few years later by Ravilius. The trees added a geometric boldness and exaggerated perspective that made the work somewhat mysterious.

Ravilius, Chalk Paths 1935, Pallant House Gallery Bookshop

And think about Chalk Paths, done by Eric Ravilius (1903-42) a London artist, designer and illustrator.  Ravilius' artist friend Peggy Angus (1904–93) lived in a house near Firle on the Sussex Downs, just outside Brighton - it was here that Ravilious painted Chalk Paths and John Piper painted as well. Ravilius' South Downs landscapes were almost always of the land having been well used: the paths had been regularly stamped down by people, the fences zigzaged their way across the canvas. The springy hills left almost no space in the painting for sky!

Ravilious was an official war artist in World War II and received a commission as a Captain in the Royal Marines. Tragically he was killed in 1942 while accompanying a Royal Air Force air sea rescue mission off Iceland. Ravilius was still in his 30s.

As I examined rounded and rolling forms with firm grass lands, other landscapes started to emerge in the inter-war era, landscapes that had nothing to do with South Downs.

Harry Epworth Allen (1894-1958) was born in Sheffield in the UK and did his art studies at the Sheffield Technical School of Art. In 1915 Allen enlisted in the British Army and soon after was posted to France where he sketched troops and equipment in the battlefields. After WW1, he painted with a number of art societies, including the Sheffield Society of Artists. His name may not be very well known to most art historians but he exhibited at the Royal Academy over 23 years from 1933, and he had dozens of paintings accepted by those scholarly academicians. Fortunately Allen created many fine landscapes which survive till now, in public and private collections.

Allen, Crowlink Sussex, 37 x 55 cm, date?

Allen, Haddon Hall Derbyshire, date?

Reuven Rubin (1893-1974) was born in Romania into dire poverty. In 1912, still in his teens, he travelled to Palestine to study art at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem. Since Paris was the centre of the art world, Rubin took himself to France in 1913 to pursue his studies at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts.

In 1921, this well travelled young man went to the USA and met the well known and well connected artist Alfred Stieglitz, who played an important role in organising Rubin’s first art exhibition in the USA. In 1923, Rubin finally emigrated to Palestine, permanently. There his paintings often depicted the biblical and modern landscape, dotted with agricultural workers on kibbutzim and Arab fishermen. Many of his paintings were sun-bathed, parched depictions of Jerusalem and the Galilee.

Rubin, Jerusalem, 1925

Rubin, Safed in Galillee, 1927

Another painter of the interwar era was Dorrit Black. Dorothea Foster Black (1891-1951) was born and raised in Adelaide, daughter of an engineer/architect and an artist. From 1909 she studied at the South Australian School of Arts and Crafts and painted landscapes in watercolours. After spending two years (1911-12) in Britain and the Continent, Dorrit returned to Australia and continued studying at Julian Ashton's Sydney Art School. By the middle of the war, she adopted oils as her main medium.

In mid-1927 Dorrit Black went to London and spent three months at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art, where she liked colour linocut printing as an original art form. Next year she studied at André Lhote's academy in Paris and at his summer school, and worked briefly with Albert Gleizes in 1929. Now a disciple of Cubism, she returned to Sydney late that year, held the first of her six one-woman shows in 1930. Dorrit exhibited with some of Australians finest inter-war painters, Roy de Maistre, Roland Wakelin and Grace Crowley. In the 1930s she ran the Modern Art Centre, Margaret Street and produced most of her linocuts in the 1930s. In 1934-35 she settled in Adelaide and painted landscapes of the Adelaide hills and the south coast.

Black, Coast Road 1942, Art Gallery of South Australia

Black, In the Foothills 1942, Queensland Art Gallery

In all these landscapes, the boldly presented hills and roads emphasised their treatment as mass and form. And like cubist painting decades earlier, the mountains became interconnecting planes of varying depth. In fact I would say that the simple, strong and bold lines were quite cubist in feeling. Bright sunlight and cast shadows in all the landscapes helped define the natural forms. And importantly, for all the artists, the springy hills left almost no space in the painting for sky.

How did it happen that the landscapes of these artists started to feel like the South Downs and like each other? Sheffield, Jerusalem and Adelaide were certainly not the most important art centres in the world. So there seem to be several possibilities.

Firstly they might have seen each other’s work, in galleries or in reproductions.

Secondly they might have both been influenced by a third party from the past. If this is true, I would suggest Paul Cezanne as the most likely candidate.

Thirdly the artists were expressing a shared passion for clean living and fitness.  Peyton Skipworth (Apollo Magazine May 2006) suggested that Modernism was strongly associated with the interwar cult of getting city dwellers out into the countryside, sunshine, fresh air, hiking, fitness and riding bikes.

Finally there is the possibility that the artists had nothing whatsoever in common; 80 years later, I am selecting out commonalities that didn’t really exist back then.

Art Inconnu has the finest collection of Harry Epworth Allen paintings. Art from Israel has an interesting selection of Reuven Rubin paintings. Landscape Painting References has a couple of Dorrit Black paintings. For Eric Ravilious paintings, go to That's How The Light Gets In or read Ravilious in Pictures: Sussex and the Downs by James Russell (The Mainstone Press, 2009).
A Crisis of Brilliance by David Boyd Haycock traces the lives of five British artists of this era – Stanley Spencer, Dora Carrington, Paul Nash, Mark Gertler and Richard Nevinson.

This topic continues to surprise. Let me add Rita Angus (1908–70), a New Zealand painter born in Hastings but lived mostly in Christchurch.  Her landscapes of Canterbury and Otago were somewhat cubist, clear, flat, simple and sharply-defined. It is said that Angus carefully considered every colour, line and shape, linking each detail in a design of graceful curves and interlocking forms

Angus didn't travel to England until 1958 but she could have easily seen paintings by John or Paul Nash, for example, during the 1930s and 40s.

Angus, Central Otago, 1940, Auckland Art Gallery.

Ochberg's Orphans, 1921. Dedication ceremony, 2011.

In 2005, The Jerusalem Post ran an appeal for information about South African philanthropist Isaac Ochberg. He was the man who helped to finance, and centrally participated in the rescue of Jewish children in 1921 from the Pale of Settlement (Ukraine in particular) and their resettlement in South Africa. A film called The Ochberg Orphans was the result, directed by Jon Blair in 2008.

You might know of heroic figures during WW2 eg Irena Sendler, Oskar Schindler, Raoul Wallenberg, Varian Fry and Nicholas Winton but 1921 seems very early for heroic gestures. Many thanks to my South African friends for bringing this story to my attention.

Group passport photo

In the early 1920s, reports trickled through to South Africa of tragic forces occurring in the Ukraine. Following the collapse of the old Czarist Empire in 1917, rival Red and White armies were fighting for control. Although the battles did not start out as particularly anti-Semitic, the Jews' condition deteriorated. Famine was followed by typhoid epidemics for the entire population, but it was made worse for the Jews by pogroms. Ukrainian and Polish peasants joined forces with reactionary military forces to massacre Jews wherever they found them inside the Pale of Settlement.

In despairing letters smuggled through enemy lines, Jews begged their cousins in South Africa for help. These pleas immediately stirred South Africa's Jewish communities. People asked at meetings across the country if at least the children could be rescued from the Ukraine. Before any organisation could step in, generous offers of financial and other assistance were made by Russian-born Cape Town businessman Isaac Ochberg.

Two questions became critical: How could the orphans be rescued from a war-torn region, and would the South African government create any difficulties in admitting them? Ochberg quickly met Jan Smuts, prime minister between 1919–1924, who gave the children entry visas. Smuts could have sunk the rescue plan in an instant, had he chosen to. His support was essential and warmly welcomed.

As reports of the Jews' plight continued to arrive in South Africa, the size of the tragedy became clearer. 100,000-150,000 Jewish men, women and children were slaughtered by Ukrainian nationalists and another 400,000 Jewish orphans were starving. The next step was for someone to travel to Eastern Europe and make arrangements on the spot. Ochberg agreed to go. For two months Ochberg travelled by train, wagon and on horseback around the Pale, looking for orphaned children. The Ukrainian children knew only that "The Man From Africa" was coming and he was going to take some of them away to a new home, on the other side of the world.

Ochberg's worst problem was how to select which children to take and which he had to leave in Eastern Europe. So he decided to choose eight children from each institution, until he reached a total of exactly 200. Since the South African government required that the children had to be in good physical and mental health, careful selection was essential. In addition, only those who had lost BOTH parents were accepted.

In Pinsk alone, so many children had been orphaned that 3 new orphanages had to be opened. At first, Pinsk was so isolated by the fighting that the children were dependent solely on their own resources. There were no blankets, beds or clothes. Typhus broke out in one of the orphanages and the pogroms raged for a week at a time. As order was restored, food supplies began to trickle in, first from Berlin and then from the Joint Distribution Committee.

Isaac Ochberg 1879–1938

Ochberg moved from town to town, visiting Minsk, Pinsk, Stanislav, Lodz, Lemberg and Wlodowa, collecting orphans. How did he get the children out - on wagons?

Three months later, with the 200 children in London, he wrote to the leadership in South Africa: "I have been through almost every village in the Polish Ukraine and Galicia and am now well acquainted with the places where there is at present extreme suffering. I have succeeded in collecting the necessary number of children, and I can safely say that the generosity displayed by South African Jewry in making this mission possible means nothing less than saving their lives. They would surely have died of starvation, disease, or been lost to our nation for other reasons. I am now in London with the object of arranging transport and I hope to be able to advise soon of my departure for South Africa with the children."

A tremendous reception awaited the orphans when they came ashore in Cape Town. So large was the group of children that the Cape Jewish Orphanage was unable to house them all, so 78 went on to Johannesburg.

Ochberg died in 1937 while on an ocean voyage, 59 years old. He was buried in Cape Town at one of the largest funerals ever seen there. Ochberg left what was then the largest single bequest to the Jewish National Fund. The JNF used it to redeem a piece of land in Israel called Nahalat Yitzhak Ochberg - which included the kibbutzim of Dalia and Ein Hashofet.

An Ochberg dedication ceremony will take place at Kibbutz Dalia on 19th of July this year, 90 years after the rescue project. For the thousands of descendants of his orphans, he is the reason they are alive. The original orphans'  children and grandchildren will honour Ochberg’s memory by the establishment of a JNF Memorial Park and museum that will bear his name. As the Blair film suggested, Ochberg's legacy is a reminder that a small group of people can, through their actions, make a big difference.

Ochberg orphans disembarking in Cape Town, 1921

The names of the orphans have been published in Tracing the Tribe: The Jewish Genealogy Blog. It is recognised that the list is not yet complete and that the spellings may be imperfect. 

Israel's first museum for contemporary design

In 2006 a centenary exhibition celebrated the life and work of Boris Schatz (1867-1932), founder of Bezalel Academy of Arts and Crafts in Jerusalem in 1906 and of the National Bezalel Museum (now Israel Museum). The exhibition was called The Father of Israeli Art, a retrospective exhibition celebrating the life work of Boris Schatz.

The first museum for contemporary design in Israel and one of the existing few anywhere (perhaps 10 or 15 across the world) was designed by Ron Arad Architects. Born in Tel Aviv, Ron Arad graduated from the Jerusalem Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in 1973. The link with Boris Schatz was both irresistible and now complete.

The USA$18 million costs were funded totally by public money and the new museum was carefully located in Holon, a cultural town of 200,000 that is virtually a southern suburb of Tel Aviv. The Museum for Contemporary Design opened in March 2010.

weathered steel ribbons wrap around the two galleries

Arad's split-level museum is made up of a pair of geometric display spaces, together with a studio design space for artists and designers. Outside, the building's massive and sinuous curved ribbons cling to the core in flowing  modernity. These sinuous ribbons are made from Corten (weathered steel), carefully fulfilling the principles of sculpture, architecture, design and art for the enjoyment of the public. As I am not instantly drawn to very modern architecture, I will look forward to exploring for myself how enjoyable it is.

The architects say that their five sinuous bands of coloured weathered steel actually form a visual key that carries visitors into the building, through it and then out, instantly becoming a string that ties the whole building together. But all good architecture should do that, I would think.

The two simple rectangular galleries are indeed there, once people get through the ribbons. Visitors move through the open-sky Upper Gallery or down the winding staircase, from the lobby to the Lower Gallery. These 750 square meters spaces will showcase exhibitions developed by international design curators. The galleries will have both contemporary and historical pieces from a range of design disciplines, including industrial, fashion, textiles, jewellery.

The museum says it is committed to pioneering a creative arena for the exploration and examination of design principles and interpretations. So the architecture is more than simply exterior walls to house a collection and keep the weather out, exactly as you would expect from an organisation interested in design.

exhibition area: The State of Things

The first exhibition in 2010 that looked very interesting was The State of Things: Design and the 21st Century. It presented 100+ products covering the contemporary practice, consumption and cultural impact of modern international design. The curators worked in 8 categories: New Essentialism, Mutant Remix, Of the Body, Social Anxiety, Beyond the Designer, Super Beauty, Craft Economy and Design Lab, showcasing objects ranging from ordinary household items to modern life-enhancing and life-saving technologies. All of the objects were utterly up to date, through either the materials employed, the concepts conveyed or the uses intended.

Will the external colours and shapes of the Contemporary Design Museum develop the same iconic status as the  Guggenheim in New York and the Sydney Opera House? I hope so.

Jewish silver art: filigree work

Jewish art has usually been considered prohibited because of the strict Second Commandment: "Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor any manner of likeness, of anything that is in the heaven above or that is in the water under the earth".

Although practices differed between countries and across generations, by the 12th century the fear of a pagan environment was no longer relevant for Western Jews. Their aversion to artistic work had long since diminished. Although rulings were not uniform, in general it was agreed that art was not an infraction of Rabbinic law whose veto only extended to complete representation of humans in the round and of God. So sculpture was the one art form that was never created by Jews.

filigreed Sabbath prayerbook cover

 Because Judaism was a way of life that sanctified everyday practices and routines, everyday articles were valid objects for craftsmen. Just as there was no area of ordinary existence that was untouched by Judaism, so there was almost no category of object that could not be decorated. For this reason Judaica was not limited to Fine Art. Indeed it is a truism that some objects were almost entirely utilitarian in purpose and were not manufactured to particularly please the eye. Even when Jewish art did achieve a level of great beauty, it still deviated from naturalism, towards a more ornamental approach.

Judaism was always enriched by a great number of ceremonies carried out by all male members of the community. When an article had a particular ritual purpose, it had to be created by a Jewish silversmith, according to the liturgy appropriate to Judaism and with the languages people spoke.

When there was no ritual purpose, the artist and the art could be very flexible. So we cannot tell, for example, whether individual burial society tankards or double wedding cups were Christian or Jewish. We can tell, however, that they were pieces of art of their time and place. Religious art might have served an eternal God, but it was subject to the same fads and fashions as were all other products.

Jewish ritual always had some purposes that it shared with Christianity, and others that Christianity did not adopt when in broke away from its mother religion. One shared value was that people of both religions were lifted above the mundane and the secular when they performed acts of piety. These acts became an expression of the relationship between the individual, or the community, and God.

People of both religions were also reminded of the historical component of their faith when they perform ancient observances. There was a powerful sense of continuity and permanence in rituals that derived from the fore fathers in ancient Israel.

Finally ritual enabled people in both religions to find an appropriate format for mobilising their emotions and thoughts on the occasion of major events in their lives such as a birth, marriage or death.

filigreed menorah/candelabra, 19th century, Polish

Thus all rituals, whether carried out in a holy building or not, could be considered religious. And all medieval art was, in that sense, religious. But medieval Jews had 613 specific commandments to fulfil throughout their life and this is what separated them from their Christian neighbours.

The didactic function of art was rarely important in Judaism because the near universal literacy amongst Jewish males, at least, made it unnecessary. Compare this to Christian medieval art when teaching the illiterate was the main purpose of stained glass windows, sculpture and precious metal work. Nonetheless art was valued; it made the achievement of the 613 commandments more pleasing and merit-worthy if they were fulfilled in a beautiful way.

But because the life of medieval Jews was precarious, only art work that could be packed up at a moment's notice would be commissioned. Fixed or heavy structures were out of the question; stained glass and frescoes were very very rare. Three dimensional sculpture was in any case banned.

filigreed mezuzah case, Israel

Filigree is a delicate and lace-like decorative style, made with twisted threads usually of gold and silver, or stitching of the same curving motifs. Filigreework was not a Jewish invention - see for example the use of gold and silver filigree in Greek, Etruscan and Indian art. But after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, Jewish silver smiths settled in North Africa and introduced filigree and cloisonné techniques to the craftsmen there. Filigree work became most popular amongst Jewish Yemenites.

Filigree work also became a very popular decorative technique in the south German silver centres in the 17th century. Beautiful examples of antique filigreed rosaries from Bavarian Christian silversmiths abounded. Soon Jewish silversmiths started using filigree on spice containers for Sabbath, Esther scrolls for Purim or any other Jewish object that they fancied. Even illuminated Jewish manuscripts could be decorated with wide borders ornamented with lush foliate forms, framing their opening pages. Initial words were often written, in gold, within very large panels embellished with filigree work.

Giorgio Busetto and Pascal Jonnaert showed a Russian spice tower from the 19th century, made by a Jewish artist. The base was designed in the form of a three dimensional David's shield made with an impressive work of filigree. Above the base was a hidden cup with 6 large stones on its base and 5 small jade stones in the patterns of filigree flowers. The tower's base was retractable so that the cup could be used for the service to farewell the Sabbath.

A menorah/candelabra’s silver was often decorated with filigree motifs. The scrolls might contain a double-headed eagle or an arched double doorway that opened as an ark would open; to show a Torah scroll inside. Other motifs included open flowers, pillars, crowns and birds. The front was always set with eight oil-containers perhaps in the form of miniature containers, and there was also a servant light with scrolling filigree stem supporting a candleholder.

Cote de Texas blog has the most beautiful filigreed cover for a Sabbath day prayer book. It looked so ornamental and so delicate that we can assume it was made for a woman to carry. I only wish I knew which country it came from and when it was made.

filigreed spice tower and cup, 19th century, Russian

Typically a mezuzah case held the prayer parchment that was attached to the doorpost of Jewish homes. The parchment itself held the holiness of the object but the beauty of the holder could magnify the glamour of the object. In the Israeli mezuzah case (see photo), the filigreed silver was further decorated with semi precious stones.

When the Silver Department at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design was established in Jerusalem in 1908, teachers from Yemen, Germany and Poland came to teach filigree silver art to the students.

Red Cross, Red Crescent, Red Star of David

The founder of Red Cross, Henry Dunant, was a Swiss citizen who had accidentally found himself in Italy at a time when French and Austrian victims from the Battle of Solferino (in 1859) were lying around uncared for.  He quickly organised the women of the town to provide medical and transport assistance to the wounded. Dunant himself built temporary hospitals and arranged for decent medical supplies to be brought in.

Very soon after, Dunant wrote A Memory of Solferino and had it published in 1862. Its effect was quite a surprise in that many Europeans were interested. He described the carnage he had found in Soferino and described the efforts his team of volunteers had made, trying to help the wounded. Would it be possible to get an agreement between governments to give medical attention to the injured, wherever they fell (in battle or from natural disasters)?

The answer was a resounding yes! The International Committee of the Red Cross is a humanitarian institution that was formally founded in 1863 in Geneva. The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum in Geneva holds the original document of that first Geneva Convention:

Agreements reached at the first Conference, 1863.

Somehow, at that moment in time, all the nations of the world agreed to give the Red Cross authority under international humanitarian law to protect the victims of all wars! I cannot imagine the nations of the world ever agreeing to an organisation with international rights again.

In order to not force their Islamic citizens to be carried in ambulances with Christian symbols on the side, Ottoman officials in 1876 requested that a red crescent be used to mark their ambulances and that the Christian cross would be removed. Thus the red crescent emblem was first used on Islamic ambulances during the war between the Ottoman Turks and Russia (1877–8). It took a while before the crescent symbol was accepted by the Red Cross Society, but it was formally adopted in 1929, and so far 33 Islamic states have taken it up.

British women driving ambulances in France, World War I.

“National” Red Cross and Red Crescent societies have always concentrated on natural disasters within their own borders. The “International” Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Society, on the other hand, tended to concentrate on situations of warfare across borders. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies was founded in 1919 and still coordinates activities between the all the individual national societies. The Federation Secretariat is well located in neutral, central Geneva.

Ambulance and nurses, Palestine, 1940s

Jewish patients were probably not prepared to travel in ambulances marked with Christian crosses either, but they had a bigger problem than mere symbolism. There was a concern that the Jewish Legion of Palestine, a Battalion of the British Army who were fighting to liberate Israel from Turkish rule during WWI, needed medical help. A Jewish ambulance service, called Magen David Adom/Red Star of David, was organised to aid both the Jewish Legion and the ordinary citizens. It was disbanded at the end of WW1.

Magen David Adom (MDA) was not officially chartered until the vicious riots of 1929 against the Jewish citizens who had no access to professional first aid services. While still under the British Mandate, the organisation was founded in Tel Aviv in June 1930 under the care of nurse Karen Tenenbaum, seven Israeli doctors, one hut and one ambulance. They added a branch in Haifa (1931) and in Jerusalem (1934), then a nation-wide network of services was slowly introduced for Jews, Muslims and Christians, reaching a total of 600 ambulances.

During World War Two, only two MDA services were recognised by the British Authorities. It wasn’t until after the state was established that the new parliament passed a law, giving MDA the formal title of Israel's National Emergency Service. From July 1950, Magen David Adom provided services in Israel regarding:

1. emergency medical care,
2. disaster care,
3. ambulances and
4. blood bank service.
5. a tracing service, to locate the children and grandchildren of families lost in the Holocaust.

MDA currently funds c1,200 emergency medical technicians, paramedics and emergency physicians. But in Israel (as in other nations?), Magen David Adom is mainly staffed by volunteers; 10,000+ of them. Today all volunteers complete  a 60-hour course that covers a wide range of topics ranging from common medical conditions and trauma situations... to mass casualty events. Those who pass the course are then sent out across the country and work with local volunteers in ambulances.

MDA headquarters and its blood bank are located at the Tel Hashomer hospital, a place I know very well since I lived there back in 1971 and 1972. The organisation operates 95 stations over the country, with a fleet of over 700 ambulances nationwide. Air ambulance service is provided by Israeli Air Force 669 unit with MEDEVAC helicopters.

Carrying wounded civilians in the 1948 war (Life)

Naturally Magen David Adom applied for membership in the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, as soon as it was founded and fully operational. But it was too late. The "Red Star of David" symbol was not submitted to the ICRC until 1931 and membership for new organisations and symbols was closed at the 1929 conference. The conference decided that if they allowed the Jews to have a red star, instead of a cross or crescent, the Buddhists would want a symbol of their own, the Hindus might request something different etc etc. The Soviet Union avoided the problem by accepting the Red Cross as their official emblem, in order to gain entry.

Every attempt in the decades since 1931 to have Magen David Adom included in the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement failed. Until the American Red Cross became involved. The Americans stated that unless Jews, Christians and Muslims could all use their own symbol for their own citizens, they would withhold all administrative funding from the international organisation. From May 2000, the Americans did indeed withhold millions of dollars.... until the Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies caved in. In June 2006, MDA was recognised by the ICRC and admitted as a full member of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent societies. It had taken from 1931 to 2006, 75 long long years.

Middle East Affairs Information Centre has a wonderful MDA poster from 1918 and a photo of the first modern ambulance being launched in 1931.

19th 20th Century History Images has a fine photo of Red Cross women running an ambulance service in 1928.

The artist Reuven Rubin, From Romania to Israel

Young Reuven Zelicovici  1893 - 1974 was born in Galati (in the east of Romania) and spent his childhood and adolescence in Falticeni (in Bukovina in the north of Romania). The family may have been poor, but they certainly had a horse and cart. Thus the lad was able to travel around. He was exposed to 15th and C16th art in the local monasteries and via the icons in the Bucharest Museum. Inspired by the frescoes, which were on the outside of the Bukovina churches as well as inside, Zelicovici adopted a didactic style himself.

Sucevita Monastery, exterior frescoes, Romania

Falticeni was the place where people thought that Zelicovici used the brush with a "godly grace". Yet it was a city with a small population, so I wonder why Falticeni seemed to have attracted a number of national or international celebrities, who were either born or who settled there: writers, theatre artists, painters and scientists. Did Reuven Zelicovici dream of being famous, as he might have been in the more important cities of Bucharest or Iassy?

On leaving Romania in 1912, Zelicovici changed his name to Rubin and studied briefly at Bezalel Academy of Arts in Jerusalem. Then he moved for some years to Paris, studying at Ecole des Beaux Arts and Academie Colarossi. Plus he visited Italy. Some naive works from that era survive eg Houses of Tel Aviv 1912 which is in the Israel Museum. In 1916, he returned to Falticeni, clearly missing his family and home town.

Still unsettled, Rubin went in 1920 to New York, where his work was noticed by Alfred Stieglitz. With the support of this important gallery owner, Rubin had his first one-man show at the Anderson Gallery that year, a large and successful exhibition. The painter met a young woman called Esther on the ship going back to Israel; there may have been a large age difference between them because her parents were sceptical about the union. However they married and had children, and were apparently very happy all their life.

In 1922 the Romanian-educated and French-trained Rubin finally settled in Israel and opened his Tel Aviv studio. That same year he exhibited in the first art exhibitions in Jerusalem, when he was 29. A collection of woodcuts entitled the God Seekers was published in 1923 and he painted a startling self portrait 1923. The maritime nature of his home and studio was very clear. As was his professional position in society as an artist.

Rubin, Self portrait, 1923, Israel Museum Jerusalem

His 1924 exhibit was the first one-man show in Jerusalem; his 1932 one-man show launched the Tel Aviv Art Museum. He was appointed chairman of the Association of Palestine’s Painters & Sculptors. Perhaps Rubin wasn’t at the very centre of the Bezalel movement, but he was gaining a reputation and influence as an important modern painter.

Although academically trained, Rubin's energetic depiction of a Fisherman 1922 looks naïve. It was a reflection of the artist's admiration for the hard working Arab and Jewish inhabitants of the country. Perhaps he loved their close, harmonious ties to the unspoiled world of nature, on land and sea. The bond between Arabs and Jews, and their animals, was often a motif found in Rubin's works.

Rubin continued to be enchanted with Arab and Jewish fisherman throughout the years. He depicted them on canvas spreading their nets into the waters of the Sea of Galilee, along the shores of the Mediterranean, or proudly displaying their catch with their families by their side. Goldfish Vendor late 1920s, one of his most famous, in the collection of The Jewish Museum in New York. What sets this painting apart from similar fishermen images was the single goldfish that had just been removed from the water and was flopping in the fisherman's hand. It is a typical Rubin work from the in its naïve depiction and style: the rounded forms, the flowing contours and the bright colours.

Rubin, Goldfish Vendor, late 1920s, Jewish Museum New York

His paintings from the 1920s were defined by a modern and naive style, portraying the landscape and inhabitants of Israel in quite an emotional manner. Then his style changed during the late 1920s and early 30s, from the naïve to an impressionist style. While other pre-State painters had to either earn their living as teachers, or to paint and live in poverty, Reuven Rubin was able to live entirely from his art. His paintings fetched high prices and were especially popular among wealthy American collectors. In particular there was very high demand for his landscapes paintings: The Orange Pickers, Road to Safed, the Road to Jerusalem, Tiberias and The Galilee.

Rubin, Ramparts of Jerusalem, 1924, Sotheby's

Was Rubin specifically attempting to create an indigenous style of art? Perhaps the modernising, Israelifying tradition had always been with the early Jewish settler-artists of Israel, from the early Bezalel School in Jerusalem (founded in 1906). Certainly these young artists were eager to find a new artistic language through which their unique experience could be expressed. But eventually the young Bezalel artists rebelled against their academic teachers and went to Paris in the 1920s. Reuven Rubin was one of the most important artists who reacted against Bezalel’s classic Western orientation. Instead of 19th century Orientalism, Rubin and his colleagues drew everyday visions of the Near East in a modernistic style.

It was said that Rubin’s paintings in the 1920s-1930s era retained a naive style reminiscent of Henri Rousseau. Rousseau's innocence matched the need to return to basics, because Rubin felt his generation were exiles returning to their ancient land, rediscovering its landscape and remodelling its culture. Rubin might have incorporated Rousseau's influence but I think he was even more impressed with Cezanne.

Rubin, Safed in the Galillee, 1927, Sotheby's

Rubin’s paintings focused on the landscape and life of Israel, but they were not fantastical. His landscape paintings in particular paid special detail to a spiritual, translucent light. It was clear that he had a great devotion to his people, his country and his religion. He may have been Romanian educated and French trained in art, but he became the distinctively Israeli artist!

Rubin put forward two of the losing designs for a national flag, just before Israel became a state in 1948. And he served as Israel's first ambassador to Romania, from 1948-1950. This was totally appropriate for the young man who had left his parents and homeland back in 1912.

Go down Bialik St in Tel Aviv to see that some of the old houses, combining European and Middle Eastern tastes, have been restored. Reuven and Esther lived here and were friendly with Jascha Haifetz, Chaim Nachman Bialik, Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Rubinstein, Isaac Stern, Edward G. Robinson, Ira Gershwin etc who dropped in on them, either in this Tel Aviv home or on their New York visits. Their Rechov Bialik home and studio has since became The Rubin Museum.

That studio is left just as it was on the day Rubin died in 1973, at the age of 81. Canvases being worked upon still lean on two easels. Everywhere pots and vases remain, filled with brushes. Mounds of hardened oil paints cover the palettes. Rubin had bequeathed his home and a selection of paintings to the city of Tel Aviv a month before his death.

Rubin’s Tel Aviv house, now a museum

This article was first written as a guest post for The Romanian Way blog.

Jewish Dutch architecture in Suriname

A newly restored C18th synagogue from Suriname is a treasure that has been transported to Israel & installed in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. The museum’s new wing, dedicated to Jewish Art and Life, was reopened to the public in July 2010. Here visitors can view the lovely South American synagogue interior, alongside synagogue interiors from Italy, Germany and India - a pilgrimage of Jewish ritual traditions from around the world, all in one day.

But why did Jews flock to Suriname in South America in the first place?  And why did they not move into Cuba, Bermuda, Jamaica or Curacao as we saw in Caribbean Jewish Communities just a few months ago?

Neve Shalom Synagogue in Paramaribo - exterior and interior

Suriname’s first European community emigrated from the Netherlands in the mid-17th century. It was then that the Jews of Spanish and Portuguese origin, who had eventually ended up in the Netherlands after the Iberian expulsions, immigrated to Dutch Guiana/Suriname. In fact the Jews were among the country’s earliest European settlers.

Some historical records refer an early, wooden synagogue in Suriname that was built in the 17th century in Thorarica, Suriname's first Capital. Certainly the numbers were there: there were 92 Portuguese Jewish families and 12 German Jewish families in the colony, giving 570 persons who had holdings of 40+ plantations. However nothing remains of Thorarica township today.

Thorarica's Jewish community eventually moved to Jodensavanne, a settlement on the Suriname River, 50 km south of the capital Paramaribo. Later another, more organised group migrated to Suriname and headed straight for the Jodensavanne area. A third group arrived in 1664, after their expulsion from Brasil. Jodensavanne (Dutch for Jewish Savanna) was specifically established as an autonomous Jewish territory, dedicated to sugar-cane plantations.

The Jodensavanne community really did acquire great internal autonomy. The Congregation Beracha ve Shalom/Blessings and Peace was founded, building a wooden synagogue for itself in the years 1665-71. A second synagogue, made of imported bricks, was constructed in 1685.  This community became the heart and soul of the entire colony of Suriname.

Sadly Jodensavanne declined during the mid C18th, and most of the Jewish community moved to Paramaribo. In any case, the remnants of the colony were destroyed by fires in 1832. All that survives today is the beautiful Jodensavanne graveyard with its marble grave stones imported from Europe; they are a silent witness to the wealth and success of a once-impressive colony.

Jodensavanne graveyard

In the newer capital city of Paramaribo, the original wooden Neve Shalom Synagogue building was constructed in 1719 by Ashkenazi Jews. But circumstances changed and, like in other New World cities, the synagogue had to be enlarged to its current size in the mid 1830s. This building is the only active synagogue today in the country, serving the entire Jewish community (now only 300 people). Suriname itself is small. The smallest independent country in South America has a total population of only 480,000 people.

Within a very short time, the local Sephardic community wanted their own synagogue and built Tzedek v' Shalom Synagogue. Tzedek v’ Shalom, built in 1736 in Paramaribo, was typical of Spanish and Portuguese synagogues in the New World. According to Jerusalem’s Israel Museum, this Suriname synagogue was directly inspired by the Esnoga, the famous Portuguese synagogue of Amsterdam.

Tzedek v Shalom Synagogue exterior, still in Paramaribo

Tzedek v Shalom’s architecture sensibly integrated traditional European design with local architectural features such as a simple, symmetrical structure; white walls and large windows that open the interior to natural light; and a sand-covered floor. Impressive brass chandeliers, sourced from the Netherlands, hung from the ceiling.

Tzedek v Shalom Synagogue interior, moved from Paramaribo to Jerusalem

Nearly one third of the entire population of Suriname emigrated back to the Netherlands in the era just before independence was declared in 1975. Apparently Suriname citizens feared that the new country would fare worse under independence than it did as distant Netherlandish colony, but it was very damaging to those who remained.

The Jewish community also lost the heart and soul of its membership in these couple of years. The two Paramaribo synagogues continued functioning but, finally, the Ashkenazi and Sephardic congregations merged in 1999. Tzedek v’ Shalom ceased to function as a place of worship and the space was rented out. The synagogue’s interior, along with its original ceremonial objects and furnishings, were transferred to Jerusalem’s Israel Museum in 1999, where it has now been restored to its original beauty.

Suriname (in green) on the north coast of South America

A reference worth pursuing is "The Synagogues of Surinam" by Gunter Bohm, in the Journal of Jewish Art, Vol 6, 1979.