A legacy of artworks

CAROL SOKOLOFF

During the High Holidays, a striking display of art and Judaica has graced the social hall of Victoria’s 150-year-old Congregation Emanu-El. From the private collection of member Mike Goldstein, L’Dor V’dor: From Generation to Generation, represents various periods, places, styles and artistic media. Spanning two walls are sketches, woodcuts, paintings, etchings and textiles, along with a showcase of Judaica.

On Sunday afternoon, Oct. 21, members of the congregation and the public gathered to hear Goldstein speak about these works. He offered details about the artists, several of whom were closely connected to his family, especially his father, the late Conservative rabbi, Leonard (Aryei) Goldstein.

“This is mainly the Leonard Goldstein collection, which has been passed on to me,” he began. In 1962, Goldstein’s father had taken a sabbatical year and moved his family to Israel. There, he met artists of diverse backgrounds and began collecting their work. Many had been trained in the capitals of Europe, surviving ghettos and death camps to eventually form Jerusalem’s lively cultural community.

Mike Goldstein also lived for 25 years in Israel, working at Jerusalem’s Israel Museum. He continued the tradition of collecting art from friends and acquired Uzbeki textiles from immigrant artisans at local markets. Standing near specific pieces, Goldstein helped the audience understand the works on display.

The exhibition starts with four pieces by Alexander Bogan (1916-2010). Born and raised in Vilna, Bogan studied painting at the university until wartime, when he became a partisan, helping many Jews escape the Vilna Ghetto. Continuing to sketch despite the circumstances, he recorded the desperate world about him, using as art supplies whatever was at hand, including packing paper, charcoal from fires or leaves from the forest hideout. Two moving works remembering this period are on display. In “The Partisan,” a sketch in black paint, a warrior stands poised to defend his position. “Young Girl in the Ghetto” brings to life a ghetto child with a doll and Jewish star – someone the artist could not perhaps save, but could witness and record.

Surviving the war, Bogan emigrated to Israel in 1951, by then an esteemed Polish artist and professor. Goldstein read Bogan’s words, “I asked myself why I was drawing when I was fighting night and day.... It was something similar to biological continuity ... to leave something behind. To be creative during the Holocaust was also a protest.... The Germans could not break the (artist’s) spirit.”

Moving towards the lighted showcase cabinet, Goldstein pointed to family treasures of ornate silver Kiddush cups and spice boxes from various lands visited, including one from Holland depicting a windmill. Highlighting the showcase was the beautiful mahogany 10-stringed lyre or kinor, a model of King David’s harp that Rabbi Goldstein commissioned as a gift to then president Chaim Herzog for Israel’s 40th birthday, keeping a second one for himself. Created after extensive research by Shoshana and Misha Harrari, an Israeli lutier originally from California, it is adorned on the front with symbolic brass olive branches extending from a central crown of pomegranates containing the Star of David. On its sides are 12 different semi-precious gemstones set in silver, representing the 12 Tribes. The instrument is still playable today.

An adjacent showcase featured magnificent contemporary Judaica in the form of colorful mandala-like papercuts by Israeli artist Amalya Nini-Goldstein. Impressive detail, precision and design grace these framed home blessings, which were offered for sale to support the heritage synagogue’s restoration fund.

Goldstein next focused on a Persian carpet from the early 20th century. The shape and size of a Muslim prayer rug, it features a woven synagogue scene with pillars, lamp and menorah and the Hebrew inscription “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem.” Goldstein linked it with the Bezalel school of the pre-nation Palestine period, when early Zionists aimed to create a national style of art combining Jewish, Middle Eastern and European traditions in both paintings and decorative art objects.

Nearby hangs a Moishe Bernstein etching of a shtetl scene, whose style echoes the work of Marc Chagall. Born in Poland in 1920, Bernstein studied at the Vilna Academy before moving to Palestine as part of an illegal immigration of 1939. His work reflects his longing for a way of life now lost. Beside it is a woodblock print of a Jerusalem scene, “The Ethiopian Patriarchate,” by Jacob Otto Pins (1917-2005). Born in Germany, Pins moved to Palestine on a student visa in 1936. In Jerusalem he studied woodcut and lino-cut techniques under German-born master Jacob Steinhardt, becoming an authority on Japanese pillar prints.

Also on display are illustrations of Moses and the burning bush and Aaron’s magical staff, replica pages from the richly illuminated Sarajevo Haggadah. This ancient Haggadah, created in Barcelona around 1350, was taken out of Spain by Jews expelled in 1492. Surfacing in Italy in the 16th century and eventually purchased by the National Museum in Sarajevo, it was hidden and protected at great personal risk during both the Nazi era and the Siege of Sarajevo.

Three impressionistic paintings by René Cera and a colorful Uzbeki (Bukhari) tapestry in the Suzani tradition conclude the Goldstein collection. Cera (1895-1992) was born in Nice, France, where he studied art and architecture. As a student, Cera delivered paint and messages to Pierre-Auguste Rénoir and sketched alongside Henri Matisse. A soldier in the First World War, Cera received France’s highest military honor, the Croix de Guerre. He later moved to Paris, and then to Toronto in 1928 when he was hired to supervise architectural design for Eaton’s department store, a position he held for 32 years. Cera’s paintings, influenced by Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Paul Klee, are found in several museums. On display at Emanu-El is a colorful tryptich from 1962: “Jacob and the Angel, Moses and the Burning Bush, and Jacob’s Ladder.”

Asked why he mounted this show, Goldstein replied, “I wanted to have something nice on the walls for the High Holidays. I live with and enjoy these pieces, but it is quite different to see them displayed together for the first time.”

Carol Sokoloff is an author, songwriter and performer living in Victoria, B.C., where she serves as director of the Jewish Community Choir.

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