Nostalgia Sunday – Pre-state Passover
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Nostalgia Sunday, Travel
Rishon Le-Zion is a fast-growing metropolis and Israel’s fourth-largest city. As home to a newly-opened IKEA — the largest in the Middle East – as well as a dizzying array of malls, mega-markets and movie multiplexes, we sometimes forget the important role Rishon Le-Zion plays in our country’s history as the second Jewish farming settlement.
Fortunately, the municipality of Rishon Le-Zion does remember. It has restored and preserved some of the scenery of its past in a unique open-air museum. Located in some of the oldest buildings of the settlement (the moshava), the exhibits retell the story of the city’s pioneer past and the beginnings of modern Zionism
One permanent exhibit, “Jewish Holidays in the Moshava” is a lovely presentation of domestic life in pre-State Eretz Israel. Many of the first families came from Eastern Europe with fine porcelain place-ware and tea sets. These were not used every day, but were reserved for special occasions and holidays, and handed down from generation to generation.
“Despite difficult living and economic conditions, most [settlers] did not abandon the household customs considered acceptable in their countries of origin,” writes curator Yona Shapira.
Afternoon tea was one such custom. Michael Pohachevsky, who arrived to Rishon in 1886, described being hosted at the home of Berta and Yosef Feinberg (the family is pictured left): “The tea was set in European style, in every detail and feature, and for a moment, it was possible to forget that you were in a young colony just being established in an ancient land.”
In 1890, Haim Hissin described a holiday meal at the Drubin household: “[the table] was set not at all in country style and was set with separate plates, forks and spoons, napkins, wine-glasses, pitchers of water and wine. The courses were, naturally, simple and few but prepared well and served in good taste.”
The exhibit also includes three monogrammed pieces from a set belonging to the Baron Edmond de Rothschild, patron of Rishon Le-Zion and other early settlements.
By the way, the connection between the Passover holiday and Rishon Le-Zion is long-standing as it was for over a century the home of Matzot Rishon Le-Zion. In 2008, in a grand upset for the bread-of-our-affliction sector, the veteran company was purchased by Matzot Yerushalayim.
Although one major industry might have been lost, the city can take heart in the fact that it still headquarters Carmel Wineries, long-time producer of crap sweet wine (what we in Israel call yayin patishim or “hammer wine” because of its effect both on the palate and the brain). And Carmel can take heart in the fact that in the past few years it has shaped up and begun producing some very decent fine wines.
Rishon Le-Zion itself continues to be forward thinking. Take, for example, this video clip produced by the College of Management R&D Institute for Intelligent Robotic Systems, where even the machinery celebrate in style. Here’s wishing a chag sameach to them — and have a happy and kosher one yourselves!
Art lovers rejoice
Almost since I moved to Ma’aleh Adumim around 16 years ago, work on the Moshe Castel Museum has been going in sporadically.
Touted as the city’s first art museum, it was going to put Ma’aleh Adumim on the map as far as having something cultural to offer visitors and tourists.
Castel, who died in 1991 at age 82, was a prolific painter whose works can be found hanging in the Knesset, Beit Hanassi and the Binyanei Hauma convention center.
After he died, his widow Bilhah moved from Tel Aviv to Ma’aleh Adumim. Evidently, she said that her husband had been inspired by the desert views and that he had expressed the wish that his paintings would one day hang in a museum overlooking the desert.
Well, finally, after a dozen years of stop and start building activity, the museum, housing 100 of Castel’s works, was officially opened at the end of the month.
It’s located on a residential street in the city and indeed, it boasts a magnificent view of the landscape of the region. Bilhah built an attached home for herself next to the museum and evidently integrally involved in many aspects of the site.
Details on visiting hours can be found here. The museum will be open to the public, groups and schools from this month and includes a cafe and gift shop. If visiting me wasn’t enough of a reason, here’s another to journey the five miles from Jerusalem to Ma’aleh Adumim.
Nostalgia Sunday – Joseph Bau’s studio
Filed under: Art, General, History and Culture, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture
Tel Aviv, like many cities that are cultural centers, houses many small gems, collections of artwork which are part of modern Israel’s history and should be preserved. Intending to do a write-up on the work of painter, graphic artist, animator, author, poet and publisher Joseph Bau (1920-2002), I logged into the Joseph Bau webiste only to discover that the studio where Bau worked for 40 years may close due to financial difficulties.
The modest studio-cum-museum includes paintings by Bau, commercial advertisements, and corporate logos, including those of “Eskimo Lemon” popsicles, Shekem (the IDF equivalent of the PX), and Israeli movies including: “Kazablan”, “Salah Shabati” and others.
Bau’s remarkable story – some of which was dramatized in the film Schindler’s List – began in Poland. He was a student at the University for Plastic Arts in Krakow when World War II broke out and Jews were sent to Nazi concentration camps. During his internment at the Plashow Concentration camp, Bau fell in love with another inmate, Rebecca. They secretly married when Bau smuggled himself into the women’s camp – their love story inspired a scene in the film.
Bau never lost hope or a sense of humor and it was art that saved his life. At Plashow, and then Gross-Rosen, he worked as a draftsman, lettered signs in Gothic type while secretly forging documents and identity papers. According to his online biography, he saved 400 lives in the process. Bau was later transferred to to Oscar Schindler’s camp where he stayed till the end of the war. Bau then returned to Krakow to complete his university studies and work as a newspaper graphic artists and illustrator.
In 1950 Bau immigrated to Israel with his wife and oldest daughter. According to his biography, “He was recruited to a secret unit of the intelligence corps that dealt with technical covert operations that utilized his talent for art and graphics. Later he was transferred, together with other Intelligence corps personnel to a similar unit that was formed and worked as part of the intelligence community belonging to the Prime Minister’s office. Joseph never spoke of these activities.” One may assume however, that his talent as a forger was also not overlooked.
In 1956 Bau opened his studio in Tel Aviv, where he painted, worked in commercial art (including designing the famous Amisragas logo) and animation, as well as authoring and illustrating a number of humorous books – even one about his experiences during the Holocaust.
Bau’s daughters, Hadasa and Clila, want to continue keeping this special little museum alive to commemorate their father’s life, artistic achievements, and his contribution to the State of Israel. They have started a petition requesting the city of Tel Aviv provide support.
Art Show at the Museum of the Underground Prisoners
Just when we thought we’d seen all that Jerusalem has to offer, along comes a surprise in the most unusual of spaces. For weeks, the Jerusalem municipality has been running full-page ads promoting Art Jerusalem 08, an exhibition with hundreds of mostly new and unknown artists. The setting was the Underground Prisoner’s Museum just off Kikar Safra (City Hall Plaza) in the Russian Compound neighborhood.
The fair was fabulous, ranging from under appreciated impressionists like Reuven Rubin to up and coming artists such as Ra’anana-based Estee Kreisman whose paint-on-photo panoramic canvases were one of our favorites. There was also a fair sprinkling of multimedia new age video and music-centric installations.
Art was for sale too. In one gallery, you could pick up a pint-sized version of David Gerstein’s striking multi-layered metal-on-metal sculptures or gaze longingly at an authentic Agam. There was an exhibition of just Bob Dylan photographs and even a Sotheby’s gallery featuring paintings for sale (at prices jumping to the hundreds of thousands of dollars for some works).
The highlight, though, was not the art itself but the interplay between the exhibition and the museum. The Underground Prisoner’s Museum was new to us (though both of our older kids have taken school field trips there). The museum is set in and around a former British jail used to house inmates ranging from petty criminals to political prisoners from 1918 to 1948 when the British quit Palestine. The building itself dates back to 1858 when it was served as a Russian pilgrims’ hospice for women.
The exhibits depict life in the prison and tell the stories of the underground groups and their members in order to perpetuate their memories. Incarceration resulted from offenses that included putting up posters, training and possession of weapons, and physical assault. At its height, the prison population totaled 250.
There are several long corridors lined with prison cells where inmates slept 8 to a room on thin woven mattresses on the floor. We toured the solitary confinement cells, the infirmary, synagogue and death row. Prisoners from the Jewish underground were put to work making coffins and gravestones for British policemen and soldiers they had killed in combat.
In retaliation, the British executed tens of Jews from the Irgun, Hagana and Lechi brigades during the time the jail was in operation (most of the underground members were transferred to the prison in Acre for execution). Large photographs of each of the underground fighters executed are displayed in an emotionally wrenching gallery.
Shutaf
I’m a proud sister today; I just visited Shutaf, the inclusion keytana (daycamp) that my sister Beth, and her friend, Miriam, created for kids with special needs and their typically-developing peers. Held at the Ein Yael Open Museum, a great outdoor space that combines archaeology, ancient crafts, theater, music and dance — as well as some goats and horses — the kids have been attending camp for the last three weeks, doing the typical daycamp activities, from swimming and water gun fights to baking pita and feeding the goat.
Like many programs of this kind, Shutaf was created because both Miriam and Beth have special needs kids; Miriam’s 12-year-old daughter, Adina, and Beth’s son, my 11-year-old nephew, Akiva. They were both frustrated with the lack of appropriate programming for their kids during the various vacations, and got Shutaf off the ground a year ago, adding week-long Shutaf programs during the Chanukah and Pesach vacations.
Now it’s a fact on the ground, albeit requiring a lot of organization, fundraising and planning. But they’re doing it, and they’re doing it well. They have teen volunteers as well as vocational training for young adults with special needs; they have a dedicated staff of twentysomethings who also undergo training session to work at Shutaf.
We sent my 11-year-old stepdaughter to the Pesach camp and many friends are sending their kids to Shutaf as well. Not just because they want to support Beth and Miriam’s efforts, but because it’s a great camp, and one in which special needs and typically-developing kids hang out together, without really thinking about it. What’s great is that it works.
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