5 Things You Need to Know About…Ziona Tagger

Pioneering Israeli artist

1. Ziona Tagger was born in Jaffa in 1900. Her family had made aliyah from Bulgaria in 1880 and were among the founders of Tel Aviv.

2. A sabra, she was to pave the way for later female artists. She attended the Bezalel School of Art and Design in 1921 and two years later continued her studies in Paris, where she participated in the exhibition of the Salons des Independents. When she returned home, she continued working and exhibiting with other young artists, including Reuven Ruben. In 1934, she was one of the founders of the Israeli Artists and Sculptors Association.

3. When World War II broke out, she volunteered with the British and later joined the Haganah.

4. She was a figurative painter best known for her portraits and local landscapes. Her work partakes of modern art principles –  cubism, for example – but stays close to her tradition. For example, she used Plexiglass sheets, painting on the wrong side as one might paint on glass, employing the bright colors of folk art and depicting Jewish themes. Her work won her accolades and awards.

 

    “I paint instead of praying.”

 

 

5. She is considered the most important female Israeli artist from the early part of the twentieth century. To see more of her work, click here. (Do it – it’s worth the trip.) She died in 1988.

You’ll find Ziona Tagger St. in Jaffa, off Yefet St.

Thanks to Ido Biran, Telavivi, for this photograph.

10 Things You Need to Know About… Lea Goldberg

Prolific Hebrew-language poet

1. Lea Goldberg was born in 1911 to a Jewish Lithuanian family from Kovno (now Kaunas). At school she became fluent in Hebrew, even using it to write in her diaries. Ultimately she gained expertise in a number of European languages as well.

2. She began writing poetry at about age twelve; by age fifteen she was determined to be a writer – in Hebrew, despite the limitations of audience. She was still a schoolgirl when her first Hebrew verse was published.

3. She studied at a Hebrew gymnasium and at the University of Kovno; then at the universities in Bonn and Berlin, earning a Ph.D. in Semitic languages and German, with a dissertation examining the sources of Samaritan translation in the Torah. In the early 1930s her poems appeared in literary collections in Lithuania. She made aliyah in 1935, settling in Tel Aviv, where she joined a group of writers of eastern-European origin. At the same time, her first poetry collection came out – to be followed by collections published in 1939, 1942, 1944, 1948, 1955, 1964 and a final volume published posthumously.

4. Initially she worked as a high-school teacher and wrote rhyming advertisements until being hired as an editor of the Hebrew newspapers Davar and Ha’aretz as well as the journal Al HaMishmar. She wrote literary columns and theater reviews, worked as a children’s book editor and was literary consultant to the Habima theater – all the while turning out poetry, children’s stories, novels and plays. Her books for children have become classics of Hebrew children’s literature.

5. By the early 1950s she was a lecturer in Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In 1963 she was made a full professor and chaired the Department of Comparative Literature.

6. She translated into modern Hebrew great works from Russian, Lithuanian, German, French, Italian and English writers. The best-known of these is War and Peace; others included works by Rilke, Mann, Chekhov, Akhmatova, Shakespeare and Petrarch.

7. Her poetry has been described as “a system of echoes and mild reverberations, voices and whispers.” It focuses on small things – a stone, a thorn, a butterfly, a bird – to express the immense or ineffable, often involving themes of childhood, love, aging, death and nature. The language is personal and introspective with frequent references to the culture, traditions and land of her childhood. The later poems utilize classic lyric genres, including the sonnet.

8. Her work influenced Amichai, among others. Many of her poems have been set to music. For two renditions of “Will there ever come days,” follow these links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2mlV0BBrdI#t=37

and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQmMMeAddNw#t=22.

9. She received the Rupin Prize for her poetry in 1949 and in 1970 was awarded the Israel Prize for Literature (posthumously). In 2011, she was chosen as on of four great Israeli poets to appear on Israel’s currency. Here are two links to her poems in translation: http://poemsintranslation.blogspot.com/2010/03/leah-goldberg-pine-from-hebrew.html and http://jhom.com/topics/rivers/lea_goldberg.htm

10. Lea Goldberg died in Jerusalem in 1970 of lung cancer.

In Tel Aviv, you’ll find Lea Goldberg Street north of HaYarkon Park on the edge of Weits Garden.

Thanks to Ido Biran (telavivi) for his photograph of the street sign.

8 Things You Need to Know About… Nathan Axelrod

Pioneer of Hebrew cinema

1. Nathan Axelrod was born in Russia in 1905 and made aliyah in 1926. Finding no film industry in Palestine, he improvised some equipment and began filming.

2. He made a studio out of two wooden shacks, dubbing his creation “Eat Your Heart Out, Hollywood.” The studio began putting out films in 1927, initially as the Modelet Company. In 1934, as the Carmel Company, it began filming weekly newsreels.

3. Axelrod filmed Israeli pioneers establishing settlements, draining swamps, irrigating new farmland, developing Tel Aviv, building the land and developing cultural life. Later he filmed the founding of Nahariya, the immigration of German Jewry and the declaration of Israel’s independence. Film foot by film foot, he created a treasure trove.

4. He made some of the earliest films in the Hebrew language. In 1931, he scripted and photographed the first locally-produced feature film, a comedy set at the annual Purim carnival in Tel Aviv. It was called “Biyemei” (Once Upon a Time). He also directed films, including “Don Quishote and Sa’adia Pantsa” (1956).

5. In the 1960s he produced the film “The True Story of Palestine,” comprised mainly of excerpts from the Carmel newsreels. In the 70s, “The Pillar of Fire,” about the Zionist movement, was created by Israeli TV largely from Axelrod’s documentary footage.

6. Axelrod’s film archive is a priceless compilation documenting the years 1927-58. It includes roughly 400,000 feet (two hundred hours) of film: 150,000 before the founding of the State of Israel and 250,000 after. The story of its conservation, duplication and transfer to the Israeli State Archives is a saga in itself, covering the years 1959-87.

7. The original films are in France at the National Film Institute. The Israeli State Archive has a full set of duplicates; you can see some of them online at YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOH_oW31tWhVFHwreAxhIgA

8. Nathan Axelrod died in 1987, leaving the largest and most comprehensive collection of documentaries of Israel’s early years. The full collection is described in The Nathan Axelrod Collection, first published in 1994.

You’ll find Natan Akselrod Street in north Tel Aviv running east off Sderot Levi Eshkol, not far from Arnold Schoenberg Square.

Thanks to Ido Biran facebook.com/telavivi1909 for the street photo.

5 Things You Need to Know About… Ishtori HaParchi

Pioneering Sephardic geographer

1. Ishtori HaParchi was born in France around the year 1280. His last names means Florentine in Hebrew, so called because the family came from Florenzia, in Spain.

2. When the Jews were expelled from France in 1306, he went first to Spain, then Egypt, and finally to Eretz Yisrael. He settled in Bet She’an about the year 1313 and worked there as a physician. At the time, Bet She’an was a center of sugar cane production.

3. Under the pen name of Isaac (HaKohen) Ben Moses, he authored the first Hebrew book on the geography of Eretz Yisrael, the Sefer Kaftor Yaferech (“Button and Flower”).

4. The book was written in 1322, after HaParchi had spent seven years walking the land. It deals with the geography, topography, botany, history, astronomy and laws of the land, listing the names of towns and villages and identifying 180 ancient sites. Initially published in Venice in 1549, it was lost, then rediscovered in Egypt some 300 years later. It is of unparalleled value to scholars today.

5. His date of death is alternately given as 1355 and 1366, though the former appears the more reliable.

Many thanks to Tel-Avivi https://www.facebook.com/telavivi1909 for these photographs of Ishtori HaParchi Street today.

You’ll find Ishtori HaParchi Street in Tel Aviv running north from Jabotinsky, west of Yehoshua ben Nun.

8 Things You Need to Know About…Leon Pinsker

Jewish nationalist

1. Leon Pinsker was born Yehudah Leib – or Lev – in Poland in 1821. His father was a scholar, teacher, writer and translator. The family moved to Odessa, where his father established one of the earliest Russian schools for Jews to receive secular as well as traditional education. He attended his father’s school and was one of the first Jews to attend Odessa University, where he studied law. But because of quotas on Jews, he decided to practice medicine, which he studied in Moscow. He served in the Crimean War and was decorated for his service.

2. Initially, he followed the ideas of the Haskalah, believing in Western values and holding that Jews could attain equal rights in their respective countries. Believing in assimilation, he was the founder of a Russian language Jewish weekly. Then, in 1871, came the anti-Jewish riots in the Russian Empire – followed by devastating pogroms in 1881-2 after the assassination of the tsar. Pinsker’s ideas changed radically.

3. In 1882, in Vienna, Pinsker anonymously published a highly influential pamphlet entitled “Auto-Emancipation.” Written in German, it analyzed the situation of Russian Jewry and Jewry in general. Its conclusion was that anti-Semitism was incurable throughout Europe; that Jews must organize themselves as a separate entity and establish their own national homeland, in Palestine or elsewhere.

4. He preferred the term “Judeophobia” to “anti-Semitism,” and wrote: “To the living the Jew is a corpse, to the native a foreigner, to the homesteader a vagrant, to the proprietary a beggar, to the poor an exploiter and a millionaire, to the patriot a man without a country, for all a hated rival.”

5. In 1884, with the help of Edmond James de Rothschild, he became one of the founders of Hovevei Zion. He was an organizer of a conference for the organization in what was then Prussia. Pinsker was chosen to be chair of the central bureau in Odessa, to coordinate the various groups seeking to build communities in Palestine.

6. In 1890, Russian authorities approved the establishment of the “Society for the Support of Jewish Farmers and Artisans in Syria and Palestine.” It was known as the Odessa Committee, and it was headed by Pinsker.

7. Though he traveled widely on behalf of Hovevei Zion, his activities and writings were more influential in Russia than elsewhere.

8. He died in Odessa in 1891, still unsure whether or not his vision would ever be realized. In 1934, his remains were brought to Jerusalem and re-interred in Nicanor’s Cave next to Mount Scopus. Moshav Nahalat Yehuda was named for him; built in 1913, it later became part of Rishon L’Zion.

In Tel Aviv, you’ll find Pinsker Street running off the north end of Allenby and crossing Trumpeldor and Bograshov. Look for Hovevei Zion St. right nearby.

Photos of Pinsker Street by Telavivi

https://www.facebook.com/telavivi1909

10 Things You Should Know About…Y.L. Peretz

Yiddish author and playwright

1. Isaac Leib Peretz, AKA Yitzhak Leibush Peretz and I.L. Peretz, was born in Zamosc, Poland, in 1851 and raised in orthodox Jewish surroundings. But it was a time of change, and when he was fifteen years of age, he opted to support the Haskalah, the Jewish enlightenment.

2. He learned Polish, Russian, German and French; passed an exam to become a lawyer; then took up a trade as a whiskey distiller, at which he failed. About the same time, he began to write poetry, songs and tales in Hebrew, practicing law to make a living – until the Russian government revoked his license.

3. In 1888 his first Yiddish work appeared, a ballad that was anthologized by Sholom Aleichem, about a young man who tries – unsuccessfully – to ward off the temptations of Lilith.

4. He turned out stories, folk tales and plays. In his works he rejected cultural universalism, contending that each of the world’s nations has its own unique character.

5. As opposed to Sholom Aleichem and Mendele Mokher Seforim, our two other great classical Yiddish writers, Peretz especially appealed to intellectuals in the cities. His social criticism favored the labor movement. His essays condemned anti-Semitic acts. He argued for enlightenment ideas, calling for self-determination and resistance against humiliation.

6. Still, though his outlook was secular, he respected sincere faith; the short stories highlight the superiority of honest piety over empty religiosity. Doubt mingles with faith, symbolism with realism, and tradition with modernism in tales that explore themes of forgiveness, of self-sacrifice, modesty and purity.

7. His most-known works are “Oyb Nisht Nokh Hekher” (“If Not Higher”) and “Bontshe Shvayg” (“Bontshe the Silent”). They are such beautiful stories that I’d like to transcribe them here. If you don’t know them, look them up. Right now.

8. In the last ten years of his life, as unofficial leader of the Yiddishist movement, he worked hard to foster a national cultural life for Jewry in the Diaspora. He was editor of Di Yidishe Bibliotek (The Jewish Library), which presented a broad cross-section of articles on secular subjects, especially science. He was known for his generosity in assisting other Yiddish writers. In 1908 he served as deputy chairman at a conference on Yiddish in Czernowitz, Austria-Hungary.

9. He died in Warsaw in 1915 and was buried in the Okopowa Street Jewish cemetery. A crowd of 100,000 attended the interment.

10. In addition to Tel Aviv and Haifa, streets are named for him in Hod Hasharon, Bat Yam, Kiryat Yam, Holon, Givat Shmuel and Warsaw. Peretz Square in lower Manhattan is named for him, too. His work lives on: the 1907 play A Night in the Old Marketplace was adapted in 2007 by Frank London, the great klezmerist, and Glen Berger, for a multi-media theatrical presentation. A CD is available.

Shanah tovah u’metukah!

In Tel Aviv, you’ll find Peretz Street off Allenby west of the Central Bus Station. In Haifa, look just south of the Haifa Museum.

Special thanks to Tel Avivi (Ido Biran) for the photo of the street and the sign. For more, visit https://www.facebook.com/telavivi1909.

 

8 Things You Need to Know About…Nissim Behar

Sephardi Jewish educator

1. Nissim Behar, born in Jerusalem in 1848, is considered the father of modern Hebrew language education. He was the son of Rabbi Eliezer Behar, originally of Rumania, who taught him Talmud. But he learned modern Hebrew from Eliezer ben Yehudah [see my post of 2/16/13].

2. In 1863, the Behar family moved to Constantinople. There, Adolphe Cremieux [see my post of 2/19/14] spotted him as a gifted student and in 1867 arranged for him to go to Paris to study at the Ecole Orientale.

3. Having complete his studies, Behar returned east to organize schools on behalf of the Alliance Israelite Universelle in Aleppo (1869), Bulgaria (1874) and Constantinople, where he headed the school (1873-82). In 1879 he authored a biography of Cremieux in Judaeo-Spanish (Ladino).

4. In 1882, he returned to Jerusalem, where he was involved in founding the Alliance Israelite Universelle. He both directed the school (1882-7) and taught there. He was a proponent of the “direct method” of language education, which involved submersion in the language. If you’ve studied Hebrew in an ulpan, you’re an indirect beneficiary of his work.

5. In 1901, having ended his teaching career, he moved to New York City to represent the Alliance.

6. In 1906, he founded the National Liberal Immigration League, the mission of which was to lobby against anti-immigration laws such as literacy tests. He was voluble, speaking before Congressional hearings and in other ways giving a public face to a cause that other Jewish organizations thought better handled behind the scenes. He was active in the league until 1924.

7. He was a founder of the Federation of Jewish Organizations, an editor of the Federation’s Review, and a founder, too, of the Jewish Big Brothers League.

8. Nissim Behar died and was buried in the US in 1931. The following year in Jerusalem, his remains were re-interred beside those of his father on the Mount of Olives.

 In Jerusalem, you’ll find Nissim Behar Street running north-south between Agrippas and Bezalel.

12 Things You Need to Know About… Menahem Begin

Warrior and peacemaker

1. Menahem Begin was born in Brest-Litovsk in 1913 to a mother who came from a line of rabbis and a father who was a timber merchant and ardent Zionist. He studied first in cheder and then in schools associated with the religious Zionist movement. In his teens he was sent to a Polish government school, where he gained a secular education; he studied law at the University of Warsaw, graduating in 1935.

2. From an early age, he was a member of the Zionist movement. A follower of Jabotinsky [see my post of 12/31/12], he joined the youth branch of the Betar movement, rising quickly to become head of Betar Czechoslovakia in 1936 and of all Poland – the largest branch, with 100,000 members – in 1938. In this capacity he traveled frequently to regional branches.

3. He escaped Warsaw for Vilna three days after the Nazi invasion began in 1939. In 1940, he was arrested by the NKVD, tortured and sentenced to eight years in the gulag. In 1941, he was permitted release to join the Polish army, which in 1943 was evacuated to Palestine. There he was given a leave of absence to stay and fight. He joined the Irgun though he was voluble in his criticism of their leadership as being too cooperative with the British.

4. In 1944, he assumed leadership of the Irgun, proclaiming a revolt against the British – a move that was opposed by the Jewish Agency. When in 1946 he ordered the bombing of the King David Hotel, the British placed a bounty of ten thousand pounds on his head.

5. After the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, the Irgun was disbanded. Begin founded the Herut (Freedom) party in opposition to the labor party, Mapai, and was elected to the first Knesset, with a nationalist agenda.

6. In 1977, after three decades of labor dominance, Begin became the sixth Prime Minister of Israel as a founding member of Likud, which was a consolidation of Herut and other parties.

7. As prime minister, he signed a peace treaty with Egypt and shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Anwar Sadat. Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula in the wake of the Camp David Accords. In exchange for recognition of Israel’s legitimacy, Begin gave up land. (Is it only a great warrior who can accomplish such ends? I hate to think so.)

8. During Begin’s term in office, impoverished towns and neighborhoods – occupied primarily by Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews – were upgraded; many of the measures he took moved the economy away from socialism and toward capitalism. With the prime minister’s blessing, many new settlements were built in the West Bank and Gaza, quadrupling the Jewish population there.

9. In June 1981, Begin authorized the bombing of a nuclear plant in Iraq; in 1982, the invasion of Lebanon to fight PLO strongholds – resulting in a protracted war that sucked at the life and soul of Israel’s self-identity.

10. His wife, Aliza, died in 1982, and he resigned from public life in 1983, spending the remainder of his life in seclusion. Begin died in 1992 and was buried on the Mount of Olives. An estimated 75,000 mourners turned out for his funeral.

10. His written works include The Revolt, about his days in the Irgun; and White Nights, about being a prisoner in the Soviet Union.

12. Visitors to Jerusalem may wish to visit the Menachem Begin Heritage Center. A museum of his life and legacy, it also awards an annual prize to a person or organization that has done important work for the benefit of the State of Israel and/or the Jewish people.

In Jerusalem, Sederot Menahem Begin runs from north to south just west of Hebrew University.

10 Things You Need to Know About…Stephen Wise

American reform rabbi and Zionist leader

1. Stephen Samuel Wise was born in Budapest in 1874 and brought to the United States at the age of 17 months. His maternal grandfather had created the Herend Porcelain Company. When Wise’s father tried to unionize the company, it is said that the grandfather gave the family one-way tickets to New York!

2. Young Stephen was the son and grandson of rabbis, and he wanted to be one as well. He graduated from Columbia at the age of 18 and was ordained the following year, 1893. He went on to serve as rabbi to a number of American congregations, pioneering interfaith cooperation, social service and civic leadership. He and his followers founded the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City in 1907.

3. He was a founder of the New York Federation of Zionist Societies and led in the formation of the national Federation of American Zionists in 1898. He served as secretary of the World Zionist Organization.

4. During the years 1916-19, he acted as intermediary to President Wilson on the Balfour Declaration and other matters and is said to have been instrumental in influencing Wilson to support the Balfour Declaration. At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, he spoke on behalf of Zionist aspirations.

5. He served as vice-president of the Zionist Organization of America, 1918-20, and as its president, 1936-38. He led in the organization of the American Jewish Congress, 1916-20, served as its vice-president, 1921-25, and as president or honorary president for another 24 years until his death.

6. During the 1920s and 30s, he was a friend of the Soviet Union, and for this he was known by the sobriquet “Red Rabbi.” In response to the rise of Nazism, he encouraged the formation of the World Jewish Congress and headed it until his death. In this role, he presented the Jewish cause to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, to the State Department and to the general public.

7. He was co-founder of the NAACP and the ACLU and was prominent in other liberal American causes throughout his life.

8. More about his fight against Nazism: In 1933 he urged a Jewish boycott of Germany. In November 1942, he held a press conference in Washington, DC, announcing that the Nazis had a plan to exterminate European Jewry and had already killed two million Jews. He made this statement based on a message from Switzerland that he had received in August 1942. Did the story make any front pages? No.

9. He had his share of disapprobation. He was a close friend of Franklin D. Roosevelt and was criticized for spending too much of his time trying to protect the president’s good name. And he was said to have halted relief packages to Jews in Europe, fearing accusations of providing aid to the enemy.

10. He died in New York City in 1949 at the age of 75.

In Haifa, you’ll find Stephen Wise Street in Ramat Sha’ul, west of Tchernikovsky.

8 Things You Need to Know About… Benjamin de Tudela

Medieval Jewish traveler extraordinaire

1. Benjamin de Tudela visited Europe, Asia and Africa in the 12th century, writing vivid descriptions everywhere –  including his account of western Asia a hundred years before Marco Polo.

2. He was from the Navarrese town of Tudela in what is now Spain, where a street in the former Jewish quarter is named for him. Little is known of his early life, but it is clear that he gained a broad proficiency in languages.

3. His Travels of Tudela, also known as the Book of Travels, describes the Jewish communities of his day. It is considered a reliable source of information about the geography and ethnography of his time and is consulted for information about daily life.

4. His work, written in Hebrew, was translated into Latin and then other European languages. From the  Renaissance to the present, it has been a key primary source for scholars of medieval history.

5. He started his travels sometime between 1159 and 1165 and ended around 1172 or ’73. Starting from the Iberian Peninsula, he went to France, Italy, Greece, Constantinople, Syria, Lebanon, the Land of Israel, northern Mesopotamia, Persia (Iraq and Iran), Arabia, Egypt and Northern Africa. Wherever he visited, he gave the demographic count of Jews, the names of their community leaders, their occupations and the activity of their merchants. Want to know about the intellectual life of Jewish Provence or the organization of synagogues in Egypt? Tudela is your man.

6. In all he visited over 300 cities, describing their landmarks, buildings, marketplaces and the customs of their citizens, both Jewish and gentile. He gives one of the earliest accurate accounts of the ancient site of Nineveh – near modern Mosul.

7. His style was concise and easy. Want to read it for yourself? You can do so online at Project Gutenberg. His work is still available in many languages: it’s a gold mine of information for Jewish and general history.

8. The 19th century writer Mendele Mocher Sforim wrote a kind of Jewish Don Quixote with a title inspired by Benjamin de Tudela – The Travels [or Wanderings] of Benjamin III.

Look for Binyamin miTudela Street in Jerusalem’s Rehavia neighborhood, just south of Magnes Circle.

 

 

Author’s note: OOPS! My brain was on summer vacation last week – post written, but not properly scheduled. My apologies.