The Bezalel Institute

Written By: Prof. Boris Schatz

It is a long time now since we lived in the golden age when we were not blessed with all sorts of “ists,” who attack one another and treat one another as the greatest enemies. We all had only one place of meeting then, the Beth Hamidrash. There were indeed various groups, according as they studied the Talmud or the Mishna or simply offered up Psalms. The only difference was based upon learning and not upon one’s purse. We all had a Chalukah-box, we called out with one voice “Next year in Jerusalem!” and in the dreary autumn we would pray together for dew and rain, though not for our own little town, which was always raining and in which one sank knee-deep into the muddy ground.

At that time I was still an innocent cheder boy and listened to the words of my maggid.

It was one Saturday afternoon after the third Sabbath meal. Our Beth Hamidrash was crowded with the people of the little town who were packed together like herrings. We all pressed forward to the reader’s desk at which the maggid stood. With open mouth and wide-open eyes we swallowed in every word. Not a sound was heard but the voice of the maggid. We all held our breath, and only now and again could one hear a sigh from the listeners who, in the gloom of the chamber, seemed like dumb shadows from another world.

The Beth Hamidrash was wrapped in the deepest darkness, and one could only see the faint reflection of the perpetual lamp upon the gold-embroidered curtain, which my Aunt Rachel had presented when her only little son died. One also saw something of the florid “ Mizrach ” which I had drawn in an access of piety as an atonement for my grievous sins. A gentle melancholy filled my heart as we were about to usher out the dear and holy Sabbath, and in my glowing imagination the Beth Hamidrash almost assumed a fantastic appearance.

And the maggid spoke. He spoke of sorrow, longing and sweet hope, all in the same tone. He skillfully answered all the questions which he had cleverly propounded before. But what threw the greatest spell over us was that which he told us about the Land of Israel. For he was a messenger of the Collecting-box Organization of Rabbi Meir Bal Ness in Palestine.

I sat crouched in a corner and saw nothing of the people around me. I listened to the words, as though they came from another world. I saw with my mind’s eye the gigantic Wailing Wall, the two-thousand-year- old tombstone of our people streaming with the tears of the Jews who flock from all the four corners of the earth to pour out their hearts. I heard the weeping of our Mother Rachel in her lonely grave on the road to Bethlehem, weeping for her children who had been driven away and who came not home. I saw our land sown with holy graves and also covered with splendid gardens, in which oranges bloom in winter and fragrant citrons blossom, and the sweet Johannisbread is eaten by goats.

The week-day “Wehu-Rahum” which my Cousin Berl suddenly struck up in a melancholy tone banished me at once from dreamland, and I found myself again in our dreary and dirty little town. I felt, so far as I remember, an irresistible need to see something of that beautiful magic land at least for a little while, to handle with my own fingers some object that had come from there. And soon after the “Havdalah” I went with my old father, who apparently had a similar feeling, to the inn in which the emissary from Palestine was staying, even at the risk of being mud-bound in the street. I still remember the pain that seized my child-heart when I saw a little carved box, upon which there was a sort of potato-shaped figure, with the inscription—“Tomb of our Mother Rachel.” There was also the picture of a wall with four brooms standing behind it and designated the “Wailing Wall.” I regarded this as a profanation of our sanctuary, and I swore within my heart that as soon as I should be grown up and become a good artist, I would betake myself to Jerusalem and draw the sacred places so beautifully that all Jews would have a delight therein.

Many years passed. I grew up and learned how to paint and make sculptures, but I did not journey to Jerusalem, nor paint the tomb of our Mother Rachel and the Wailing Wall, nor give any delight to my fellow Jews. Strangers, non-Jews, taught me art and gave me their ideal: and for this I worked and wrought all manner of beautiful things. I looked upon art as a temple and upon artists as its priests. I dreamed that I should become a high priest in the service of sacred art, that I would teach mankind the ideal of the great and the beautiful, to love the good and to hate the evil. Art was the language of my soul which every man of feeling can understand, no matter to what nation he belongs or what language he speaks. I wished to put my art to the service of all mankind and to bring joy to all.

But again the years rolled by and brought disappointments. I saw how the sanctity of art is dragged into the dirt and sold for filthy lucre. The golden calf stands upon a high pedestal and all the priests of art bow low before it. I felt cold and ill at ease in the world of artists. I lost my god, and with a soul rent in twain and a vacant heart I turned my back upon the magnificence of Paris.

Among the cloud-capped Pyrenees, on the silent shore of the deep blue Mediterranean, I had a new dream. I dreamed of a group of enthusiastic artists far from the bustling world and its crowd of art critics, surrounded only by the charms of Nature. We are all robust in health, keen in thought, with ambitious designs filling our mind.

We win our bread by the labour of our hands, but we do not sell our creations, the products of our mind, for any money in the world. We all live as one family and have only one task among us all: to show our fellow-creatures how fine and beautiful is God’s world, and how happily men could live if they would only begin to live humanely. And I already then looked upon the land of Israel as the land in which I would be able to realize this dream.

And years again passed by and brought new disappointments. The beautiful dream vanished as a dream. Real life taught me the bitter reality. There is no lack of art, but there is a lack of bread and freedom. The unfettered mind of man has invented clever machines, and the machines and factories have turned man into an unthinking slave. The machine has estranged him from the beautiful world of Nature, it has torn him from his family and driven him from his home. It demands from the labourer neither thought nor understanding, but his flesh and blood. It has even robbed him of his last consolation, the pleasure of creation, for in the factory he never creates a complete article and often does not see how it looks when finished. He has only one task: to hurry after the machine with maddening speed, to drive it ever onward, and to be always on the guard that it does not tear his fingers away. The factory poisons the workman with its foul air, it petrifies his soul by its cold precision, it shortens his days by its cruel haste. The healthy type of workman of a former age, who thought over his work with love and with care, who gave to mankind objects of art, is now no more. Hence in modern manufacture there is no individual taste, because the workman has been robbed of it. The iron devil hammers away and whizzes along with maddening speed, and the workman who flits around it like one confused is animated by only one thought: when will the factory whistle give the signal that he may hasten away as quickly as possible from this inferno and its ministering demons? This is how life is lived in God’s beautiful world. The greatest and healthiest portion of humanity is crushed and crippled in body and soul.

And naturally the Jews suffer more than everybody else. Not because they comprise mostly artisans and labourers, but because the unfortunate Jew must suffer more than the unfortunate non-Jew, inasmuch as he is everywhere an unbidden guest, without a home of his own, and must pay for the hospitality he receives with the lives of the best of his children. He has a bill payable at a very distant date: when all men will become human. . . . But until that golden age, he will perish not merely as a people but even as a man.

And then I had a new dream. In the land of Israel, the land whither my grandfather went to die, and whence my good and pious mother obtained a handful of earth for her grave, our fellow-Jews are beginning once again to show a revival. The erst barren hills are covered again with plantations, the valleys are decked again with flowers; a new and healthy life is again awakening, a new life without any smoky chimneys above and grimy labourers below. The labourer is free — he creates only such things in which his intelligence and individual taste can find expression, things which assume ever new and more beautiful forms. The women are famous for the carpets, lace and embroideries which they make. The Palestinian faience, majolica, glass, carvings, and the beautiful copper and silver work enjoy a renown throughout the world. They have a specifically Jewish Palestinian style, which reflects the beauty of the Biblical age and the fantasy of the Orient.

Our workman in Palestine has become an ideal for his comrade in civilized Europe. He knows nothing of barrack-like dwellings, without light or air, in which the European workmen with their families pine away. He has his bright cottage in a green garden, and his secure employment in the cooperative society to which he belongs. He is not embittered by an eternal and fruitless hatred against a manufacturer and his assistants. He is his own master and comrade in the workshop, in which all work together like brothers. His family life is not afflicted by constant cheese-paring and by gnawing care for the morrow. He is insured against accidents and old age by his society. The education of his children is attended to by its schools, and the intellectual recreation of the workmen is provided for by the Beth Haam, where they hear lectures and concerts and witness dramatic performances. The ideal of the workman is work, knowledge and art. He represents the renaissance of his people, and offers a new ideal to all nations, as his ancestors once did in Palestine.

Among these workmen there is also a small number of aristocrats—not blue-blooded or purse-proud aristocrats, but the chosen ones of God, blessed with a God-like genius for art. They do not sell their gifts for empty honours or filthy lucre, and do not look down upon the people as creatures of a lower order. They are real children of their people which has brought them up and endowed them with a portion of its generous soul. They live for their people, help it in the fight for existence, and enrich its mind with ever new ideals.

There are a number of great artists among them. The Jews had always a gift for art, but in their dispersion they had maimed souls, and their talents could not develop naturally. The Jewish boy who studied among strangers had to suppress his inborn feelings and instincts and lose his own individual self. His creations always reflected alien sentiments, and thus we had more virtuosi than creative artists. But in the Jew who spends his best years, the time of schooling, in Palestine, in the land where every little stone tells him long-forgotten legends and where every hill awakens the memory of the former freedom of his people, where as an artist he draws the real Jewish types beneath the blue skies of his own land—in that Jew there awakens the slumbering spirit of the Jewish prophet of old.

The new generation of Jewish artists have brought modern technique to the aid of the ancient Jewish spirit, they have introduced a new note into the artistic world, and opened up a new epoch in Jewish history. All this has been accomplished by the school founded there, in which work and amity are united.

For many years I dreamed this beautiful dream awake. To bring about its fulfillment I travelled through many lands. I studied everything bearing upon the subject, and when I thought myself sufficiently endowed with ability, and felt within me the strength to give up everything in order to devote myself wholly to the sacred cause, I went to Theodor Herzl. I approached the man who had the courage to tell the whole world openly what he felt, and who had the power to attempt to realize his ideas. I spoke to him of my ideals with glowing enthusiasm for a full hour. He wanted to be informed about every detail. His handsome presence inspired me. Upon his majestic brow there were deep thoughts to read, and in his sorrowful eyes the noble Jewish soul, the soul which gazes upon a fantastic world and yet beholds the bitter reality of to-day. And after I had finished speaking and wondered with beating heart: What answer will he give me ?

“Good, we shall do that,” he said, quietly and resolutely. And after a brief pause he asked : “What name will you give to your school?”

“Bezalel,” I answered, “after the name of the first Jewish artist who once built us a temple in the wilderness.”

“A temple in the wilderness,” he repeated slowly, and the beautiful sad eyes seemed to look into an endless vista, as though he felt that he would never see it himself.

Zionist Work in Palestine

By Various Authorities, with a Foreword by David Wolffsohn, President of the Zionist Organization.

Edited by Israel Cohen