Israel Museum

Jewish Poland in 1932

This photo, called “Generations,” was taken by Tim Gidal in Tel Aviv in 1935. (courtesy Zack Gallery)

The current show at the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery, Invisible Curtain: The 1932 Polish Photographs of Nachum Tim Gidal, was organized in partnership with the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival, which runs Feb. 20-25. Gidal (better known as Tim Gidal or Tim N. Gidal) was a renown photojournalist of the last century and the exhibit’s images come from the new book Memories of Jewish Poland: The 1932 Photographs of Nachum Tim Gidal. (For a review, click here.)

The driving force behind the book’s publication was Yosef Wosk, who wrote its preface. Wosk approached Zack Gallery director Hope Forstenzer and Jewish Book Festival director Dana Camil Hewitt about a year ago, Forstenzer told the Independent. “He suggested we have a Tim Gidal show at the gallery to coincide with the festival and his newly published book,” she said.

Both Wosk and Forstenzer curated the exhibit. “Together, we chose about 50 images for the show, as many as the gallery could fit. It couldn’t include all the images in the book, of course,” said Forstenzer.

photo - A self-portrait by photographer Tim Gidal, taken in 1974 — A self-portrait by photographer Tim Gidal, taken in 1974. *(courtesy Zack Gallery)*

The history of the photographs is best described by the photographer himself in the book’s introduction. In 1932, Gidal, then 23, traveled with two friends to Poland from his hometown of Munich, Germany. It was his first trip abroad. “My knowledge of the political, economic and social conditions of the Jews in Poland didn’t seem to square with my feelings about their spiritual life,” he wrote. “So I decided to go and see for myself.”

Gidal, who passed away in 1996, took numerous photographs of people and places, as he went from shtetl to shtetl on his three-week “little odyssey.” He wrote: “I encountered spiritual and material heights and depths: material well-being and abject poverty, rejuvenation and dissolution. Some were rich, but many more were very poor. It was a hopeless poverty, endured with an incredible humility. I met men of faith and hypocrites … atheists, socialists and communists, Zionists and Bundists, Orthodox and assimilationists. We also experienced the all-pervading Jewish humor.”

photo - Tim Gidal’s cousin Gershon in the doorway of the family’s rope shop, in Lowicz, Poland. The photo was taken by Gidal in 1932 — Tim Gidal’s cousin Gershon in the doorway of the family’s rope shop, in Lowicz, Poland. The photo was taken by Gidal in 1932. *(courtesy Zack Gallery)*

Everything the young photographer experienced was reflected in his images, including those now on display at the Zack. We see children laughing and women looking far older than their real years. We see ancient eyes and tired, worn hands. We see educated men reading in front of a synagogue, and broken windows and peeling walls the next street over. And we know something Gidal didn’t know at the time, which makes this book and the show all the more poignant: not many years later, most of these people would be murdered in the Holocaust, and they and their entire way of life would be lost. But, in Gidal’s photos, his subjects remain alive. According to Wosk, “Each photograph is a monument, a letter in light.”

Gidal’s 1932 Polish photo essay comprises only a small portion of the master’s body of work. His photography journey spanned almost seven decades and encompassed most major players and momentous events of the 20th century.

One of the pioneers in the field of modern photography, Gidal made his debut in 1929 with his first published photo report. He was a proponent of the style of the “picture story” and he captured most of his subjects unaware, instead of staging elaborate scenes. Very few of his subjects posed for his photos, and every image tells a story.

Four years after his trip to Poland, Gidal moved to Palestine. During the Second World War, he served as a staff reporter for a British army magazine. A wanderer and a chronicler of life, he traveled a lot and lived in the United States for awhile. He taught and illustrated books. He exhibited widely.

photo - Tim Gidal took this photograph of Buchenwald survivors arriving in Palestine in 1945. It is one of the images featured in the exhibit Invisible Curtain, on display until Feb. 25 — Tim Gidal took this photograph of Buchenwald survivors arriving in Palestine in 1945. It is one of the images featured in the exhibit Invisible Curtain, on display until Feb. 25. *(courtesy Zack Gallery)*

A portion of the Zack exhibition is dedicated to Gidal’s artistic photography after 1932. The pictures demonstrate his technical progress, as well as his breadth of interests and subjects. There is a lyrical photo, “Generations,” taken in Tel Aviv in 1935 and another – a dramatic portrait of the youngest survivors of Buchenwald, taken in 1945 upon their arrival in Palestine. There is a photo of Mahatma Gandhi at the All-India Congress in Bombay in 1940 and the fascinating picture called “Handshake,” taken in Florence in 1934, which shows two men shaking hands in front of a wall covered with multiple posters of Mussolini.

Half a century before Photoshop was invented, Gidal experimented with his images, compiling them in different combinations and creating something unique, like his triptych of Winston Churchill of 1948 or the Rhomboid photomontage of 1975.

As a photo reporter, Gidal used his camera to record the 20th century in all its glorious and painful contradictions, and his early 1932 Polish photographs serve as a symbol of his multifaceted canon.

Invisible Curtain opened on Jan. 5 and the exhibit will continue until Feb. 25. To see the show’s digital equivalent, visit online.flippingbook.com/view/891736. To book an appointment to see it at the gallery, email Forstenzer at [email protected]. To attend the virtual book launch on Feb. 11, 7 p.m., and to see the full book festival lineup, visit jccgv.com/jewish-book-festival.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].

Gidal’s photos speak volumes

The book Memories of Jewish Poland: The 1932 Photographs of Nachum Tim Gidal lets the photos do most of the talking. And they speak strongly and with passion of a lively, bustling and diverse community, the vast majority of whom were killed in the Holocaust.

“Of the 3.3 million Jewish residents of Poland before World War II, only 380,000 were still alive by 1945,” notes the book’s curator, local scholar, writer and philanthropist Yosef Wosk, in the preface. Wosk will help launch the release of Memories of Jewish Poland on Feb. 11, in a “prologue” event of the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival, which opens Feb. 20. He also helped organize Invisible Curtain, the current exhibit of Gidal’s work that is being co-presented by the festival with the Zack Gallery.

photo - Yosef Wosk will launch the book Memories of Jewish Poland: The 1932 Photographs of Nachum Tim Gidal on Feb. 11 at a virtual Jewish Book Festival event — Yosef Wosk will launch the book Memories of Jewish Poland: The 1932 Photographs of Nachum Tim Gidal on Feb. 11 at a virtual Jewish Book Festival event. *(photo by Joshua Berson)*

Wosk was friends with Gidal, who he met in Jerusalem, where Gidal lived. Born in Munich in 1909, Gidal had made aliyah in 1936, but then lived in various places before returning to Jerusalem in 1970; he passed away in 1996. It was not only Gidal’s dying wish that the 1932 Polish photos be published in book form, but that they be allowed to “speak for themselves.” And that request has been honoured. In addition to Wosk’s brief preface, the book opens with some notes written by Gidal for a 1984 exhibit and includes an introduction to Gidal’s work by photography historian, researcher, author and curator Nissan N. Perez, founder of the Israel Museum’s photography department. At the end, there is a list of the plates included in the book and a brief biography of Gidal. A map of Poland, indicating the locations in which the photos were taken, bookends the commentary and photographs.

“This book illustrates the largest number of photographs from Gidal’s Polish photo essay ever assembled. It is not, however, a catalogue raisonné: more than 20 images are not included,” writes Wosk. The reproductions included in the volume are taken from prints in Wosk’s collection and that of the Israel Museum. Wosk thanks Diane Evans, “master teacher, photographer, bookseller and friend in photography,” for serving “as a patient, experienced and disciplined midwife in giving birth to this book.”

Gidal – born Ignaz Nachum Gidalawitsch – was motivated to travel to Poland “by his desire to know more about his family’s background,” writes Perez. The photographs Gidal took were “actually a rather small chapter of his oeuvre at the beginning of his outstanding career, an exercise in perfecting his vision.”

“He gains the interest of the viewer not by staging elaborate scenes, but by capturing expressions and gestures that can only be described as both intimate and straightforward,” explains Perez. “As he said in one of the many meetings conducted toward the exhibition in 1995, ‘My photographs, I like to think, are variations on the everlasting tragicomedy of human life.’”

The images in Memories of Jewish Poland are prime examples of Gidal’s ability to capture images of life as it is happening, in all its unromantic but beautiful distinction.

“In the heterogenous assembly of the Polish galut (diaspora), I myself became immersed in the flow of Jewish life from the past to the future,” wrote Gidal for the 1984 exhibit. “When we left Poland after three weeks, I had passed through an invisible curtain, which had separated East and West. Now the curtain had opened, and I was made to feel the unifying presence of Jewry.”

A selection of Gidal’s 1932 Polish photos is currently on display at the Zack Gallery (for the full story, click here). The Memories of Jewish Poland book will be launched at a virtual Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival prologue event Feb. 11, 7 p.m. For tickets to the prologue and other Jewish Book Festival events, visit jccgv.com/jewish-book-festival.

Spotlight on Israeli culture

Shira Geffen shares how she met her husband, Etgar Keret, in the film Etgar Keret: Based on a True Story, which screens Nov. 14. (photo from facebook.com/etgarkeretfilm)

“I want to write stories so the readers will like mankind a little bit more,” says Israeli writer Etgar Keret in the documentary Etgar Keret: Based on a True Story. Similarly, as depicted in another film, the Israel Museum aims to uplift and educate visitors with its artistic, cultural and historical displays, and The Museum offers a glimpse into the breadth of its collections and the diversity (and quirkiness) of its employees. Both of these award-winning films screen during the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival, which started this week.

Danish filmmakers Stephane Kaas (director) and Rutger Lemm (writer) do an excellent job of introducing viewers to what makes Keret tick. They do so using a creative mix of interviews with Keret and his family, friends and colleagues; reenactments of sorts of a few key points in Keret’s life; and a few of Keret’s stories, the portrayal of which is mainly done in animation. Not surprisingly for anyone who has read Keret’s short stories, there are several laugh-out-loud moments in Etgar Keret: Based on a True Story, but there are also sombre elements, as we learn about how Keret has been impacted by tragedy, including the suicide of one of his best friends.

One of the funniest scenes is when Keret shares his first story with his brother, Rodi (Nimrod). Rodi brings his dog along for the walk and, after he finishes reading Keret’s story and praises it, he asks whether the typed copy he’s holding is the only copy. When Keret says no, Rodi uses the paper to pick up his dog’s poo. Perhaps a lesson in humility, Keret explains that it was at this moment he realized that a story is not in the piece of paper on which it has been written or typed – once a story has been read, it is in the mind of the reader. Keret calls this ability of a writer to transfer their ideas to another person a “super power.”

While many of Keret’s stories have gloomy aspects to them, the stories as a whole generally leave readers feeling good. He describes his stories as “an advertisement for life,” saying that he writes to answer the question of why he wants to live.

“I think the need to tell stories is, basically, the need to put a structure to the reality around you. And I feel that the more chaotic and the less sense it makes, the stronger the need I have to tell a story about it,” he explains in the film.

Etgar Keret: Based on a True Story screens Nov. 14, 8:45 p.m., at Fifth Avenue Cinemas (19+), following the 22-minute short Large Soldier, directed by Noa Guskov. “It’s 1973 and all that Sherry, a 15-year-old Israeli girl, wants is a boyfriend,” reads the synopsis of the film, which is in Hebrew with English subtitles. “A letter exchange with an unknown soldier makes her believe that it’s going to be her first love. But what will happen when the imaginary soldier becomes real?”

* * *

photo - A scene from The Museum, which screens Nov. 17 — A scene from *The Museum*, which screens Nov. 17. (photo from goelevent.com)

The opening of Ran Tal’s documentary The Museum grabs viewers’ attention: a black screen, the sound of footsteps, some shuffling about, then a woman asks a man, “What do we have?” “That’s a huge painting,” he begins. When the scene is revealed, we see the man and woman sitting on a bench, looking at the painting, but the woman seeing it only through his eyes, as she is blind. Later in the film, this woman is part of a group of blind people visiting the museum – she and others touch various sculptures, feeling how the works are made.

The Museum makes clear the enormous responsibility and privilege of caring for, handling and presenting art and artifacts. Over a period of one-and-a-half years, Tal interviewed several museum staff – including a security guard who is also a cantor; the institution’s kashrut inspector, who notes that “a museum doesn’t replace spirituality”; and the then-museum director, who sadly had to miss his mother’s funeral because it took place on the day the museum reopened after an extensive renovation. Tal also films visitor interactions over that time, and highlights a 50th anniversary event (in 2015) featuring Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and members of his government. Netanyahu remarks that the museum shows three things: “One is our bond to this land in a very dramatic display, and one of humanity’s most significant archeological finds, the Dead Sea Scrolls. Another is the great cultural treasure of the Jewish people in Israel and the world over, which symbolizes our contribution to humanity.”

Admittedly, The Museum only touches upon more serious concerns – there is a scene where a group of museum staff discusses a collection of traditional Palestinian clothing that is in storage, and the potential impacts of displaying (and not displaying) them – but it at least does bring up such issues, which will hopefully open the door for more in-depth discussion.

The Museum screens on Nov. 17, 6:45 p.m., at the Rothstein Theatre. For the full festival schedule and tickets, visit vjff.org.

Philistine cemetery found

The newly found Philistine cemetery in Ashkelon National Park. (photo by Leon Levy Foundation via Ashernet)

Over the past 30 years, excavations have been undertaken in the park by the Leon Levy Expedition and the cemetery was actually located in 2013, but kept secret until the excavation was complete. The cemetery is located about 10 feet below ground level on a site that was later used as a Roman vineyard, and between 150 and 200 bodies lie buried there. The findings, dated to the 11th-8th centuries BCE, may well support the claim that the Philistines were migrants from lands to the west who arrived in ancient Israel around the 12th century BCE. Some of the Philistines were buried with perfumed oil, bracelets, earrings and other jewelry. The findings are on display until February in an Israel Museum exhibit at the Rockefeller Archeological Museum in Jerusalem.

Visit Israel’s ancient water holes

An aerial view of the acropolis of Herodium. (photo from commons.wikimedia.org)

In Israel, water scarcity has long been an issue. Even the Old Testament narrates that the Hebrews complained to Moses about the lack of fresh drinking water (Exodus 17:1-7, Numbers 20:2-13) in the arid Zin Wilderness.

Whether the answer to that particular water problem came from Divine intervention or from human ingenuity or both, the fact remains that the people who populated the ancient Land of Israel figured out sustainable solutions to their water shortages. This article focuses on three historical examples of sustainable water practice.

The first of the sustainable water system to be examined takes you forward in ancient history and north of the Zin Wilderness or Desert (Midbar Tzin, in Hebrew) to Herodium, a hilltop palace and fortress built by King Herod that stood securely at the highest peak in the Judean Desert.

Herodium was constructed more than 2,000 years ago in 23-20 BCE. Needless to say, it was crucial to have access to drinking water in this semi-arid and elevated location, and four vast underground cisterns for rainwater and spring water were carved deep into the mountain. Three of the cisterns were built in close proximity, about 80 feet below the summit. The fourth was hewn slightly above, about 16 feet from the summit. The largest cistern could hold up to 400,000 gallons of water. Access to the three lower cisterns was via the northeast side of the mountain, close to Herodium’s only flight of steps.

Water traveled a few miles from the Spring of Artas to drain into the large pool of Lower Herodium. It was carried uphill on donkeys and emptied into the lower cisterns. There were two ways to obtain water from these cisterns. One, exiting the palace-fortress with empty water skins or jars via the stairs until reaching the opening to the three lower cisterns. Water would then either be carried all the way back or, two, be transported to the opening of the higher cistern, at which point water was (ingeniously) funneled into the reservoir. A bucket attached to a man-made vertical shaft then brought this water up to the palace courtyard. This method was less labor intensive and insured the privacy of the “royals.”

As the nursery rhyme states, “some like it hot and some like it cold.” At Herodium, you had both hot and cold – and more. The Roman-style bathhouse featured a below-floor heating system in both the tepidarium (warm) and the caldarium (perhaps the precursor of the hot tub?), as well as a cold bath (frigidarium), or some kind of Roman bath/Hasmonean ritual bath hybrid, according to a Stanford professor of history.

According to David Mevorah, a curator of a Herod exhibit at the Israel Museum, by installing Roman baths, the king helped spread the importance of washing to the indigenous people of ancient Israel. Moreover, at what is called Lower Herodium (apparently the high-rent district of the day), the enormous pool (referred to by local residents today as El Hammam and measuring 70×45 metres or 230 feet) functioned as a swimming pool, a water reservoir and a small lake for boating, according to historians.

Today, Herodium is no longer a hilltop palace-fortress, but an amazing national park located just south and east of Jerusalem. For directions and hours, call the Herodian National Park at 057-776-1143 or visit parks.org.il.

***

Another (though more modern) solution to water scarcity is located just across the street from the Jerusalem Theatre at 17 Marcus St. Five large cisterns once serviced the Jesus Hilfe Asyl (what later became known as the Hansen Hospital). The Herrnhut Brothers, German Christians affiliated with the Moravian Church, donated the money to build the hospital in the late 1800s. It housed and treated people who were suffering from Hansen’s disease, a bacterial disease that was misdiagnosed as leprosy.

With the water collected, the 70 hospital patients (plus, in some cases, their healthy children) and the German Sisters of Mercy met all their water requirements, including medical needs, personal sanitation, in the kitchen and laundries, and for garden and farm maintenance.

Under the supervision of Jesus Hilfe builders, local workers constructed the cisterns, the largest of which was probably built in 1898. When full, it held 15×15 metres of water. In late December 1902, it even overflowed.

The other four cisterns were fed from rain gutters, which began on the hospital roof complex. Rain was collected from the staircase, the cistern roof and even from the road outside the compound’s high stone wall. Two cisterns were built near the laundry; one cistern was built near the southern garden while the others were situated within the main building, in the central courtyard or kitchen area.

With the advent of medicines to effectively treat Hansen’s disease, the in-patient hospital closed. Over the years, it has been an Israeli Ministry of Health outpatient facility and an early-childhood development centre. At present, it is being used as a Jerusalem municipal cultural centre. Inside the facility, you can visit an informative exhibit dealing with the history of the hospital and health care in Jerusalem. For visiting hours and tour arrangements, email [email protected] or call 054-744-6123.

***

Another ingenious water system is today located in a Ramla (or Ramle) city park. During the early Muslim period, in the early eighth century, Ramla was a strategically significant town, and served as the administrative centre of Palestine. Ramla was close to the road serving the holy city of Jerusalem and the port of Jaffa. Obviously, maintaining control of such an important location meant it had to be populated. This included providing inhabitants with a viable source of water.

photo - Since summer of 2013, Ramla's Pool of Arches has been used for a new purpose: concerts! — Since summer of 2013, Ramla’s Pool of Arches has been used for a new purpose: concerts! *(photo by Ron Peled from goramla.com)*

Entering the city park, you’ll catch a glimpse of some long, rounded structures peeking up from the ground. When you descend the steep, narrow metal staircase (that now covers the original stone) leading to the pool, you take a step back in time, into the early Muslim period. This building, however, was not just any old storage unit. This elaborate reservoir, built in 789, is decorated with heavy brick, stone arches and a domed roof. Down below, you’ll find yourself facing an underground dock. It could pass for a medieval fort or a house, except that the floor is missing. In its place, the different chambers are filled with water deep enough for row boating! Altogether, the place gives you a mini-taste of Venice, Italy, except that at Ramla’s Pool of Arches, you never see the sky.

Today, we know arches make the sturdiest of structures, but this was still a novel idea back in the eighth century. Indeed, this construction proved so successful that the 400-plus-metre Pool of Arches withstood the devastation of the 1068 CE earthquake. You can see five of the original six vaults that covered the pool. Fifteen square pillars and 16 cross-shaped pillars support the vaults. Pointed arches exist between each pair of pillars. To compliment the arches, the architect designed small windows above them. These windows were likewise shaped as pointed arches. Locals drew water from 24 square openings in the ceiling.

There are various theories about the reservoir’s original source of water. Some claim it was filled only with rainwater. A more compelling assertion is that water flowed 10 kilometres from Tel Gezer via Caliph Sulayman ibn Adb al-Malik’s water conduit (in Hebrew referred to as an amah). Two points are clear: (1) it wasn’t water from any adjacent spring and (2) we are talking about a part of the world that is hot and dry for months at a time. The engineering and maintenance of this cistern was so successful that archeologists believe it was actively used for 150 years.

The site has a somewhat obscure history and goes by a variety of names, including the Pool of St. Helena and the Pool of Al-Anziya. In the early 20th cenutry, the British repaired the pool, but it was the (post-statehood) Ramla Municipality that converted it for boating.

After you visit the Pool of Arches, make note of the continuation of the city’s old subterranean water system. Ancient water cisterns are located in the White Tower’s large courtyard.

Visitors aged 2 and up can take a boat ride; life jackets are provided. For hours and directions, call 08-977-1595, 08-920-7586 or 052-851-0715. A helpful map can be found at ramla.muni.il/eng.

Deborah Rubin Fields is an Israel-based features writer. She is also the author of Take a Peek Inside: a Child’s Guide to Radiology Exams published in English, Hebrew and Arabic (take-a-peek-inside.com).