Freedom illuminated

we initial met Arthur Szyk (1894-1951) and detected his Haggadah in 1975. In hunt of a present for any member of my marriage party, we wandered into Bloch’s Judaica bookstore on Manhattan’s West Side and purchased several copies of a blue velvet-covered 1956 initial Israeli book of The Szyk Haggadah. Thus was kindled my insinuate attribute with a passed and probably mislaid once-famous artist and a hint to revitalise both his bequest and his roughly equally mislaid Haggadah.

First published in London in 1940, The Haggadah (later, The Szyk Haggadah) was printed on vellum in an book of 250 copies. At 500 dollars per duplicate on publication, it was a many costly new book in a universe – this during a time when a Battle of Britain was distracted in a skies over London. Almost mislaid in a fume and extinction widespread by a Wehrmacht’s allege opposite Europe was a commend accorded to Szyk’s masterpiece by The Times of London, that hailed it as “worthy to be placed among a many pleasing of books that a palm of male has produced.”

What The Times did not know during a time, and what Jews of a universe currently are still not wakeful of, is how entirely and closely firm adult Szyk’s Haggadah was with delivering a warning to Europe’s Jews about a rising hazard of Nazism and Hitler’s designed genocide opposite them and what they and a nations of a universe should do about it.

My goal over some-more than dual decades has been to vaunt to new audiences a forlorn beauty and energy of Szyk’s illustrated narrative, and in doing so, to number what Cecil Roth, a eminent Oxford historian and editor of Szyk’s Haggadah, meant when he wrote: To call Arthur Szyk a biggest illuminator given a 16th century is no flattery. It is a elementary law that becomes perceptible to any chairman who studies his work with a caring that it deserves.
This essay is a record of my debate with Szyk and his Haggadah, a debate deeply enriched by my tighten reciprocity with his daughter, Alexandra Szyk Bracie. Since a mid-1990s, she has sanctified my friendship to her father’s memory and my work with his magnum opus. In her after years she would mostly contend to me, “Irvin, my father’s essence is in you, he speaks by you.”

The “official” commencement of my debate with Szyk took place on Jun 3, 1994, in Jerusalem. As we stepped to a lectern to broach my initial open speak about Szyk during a International Seminar on Jewish Art during a Hebrew University, it was as if some enchanting book had been combined for me. For that day was, in fact, a 100th anniversary of a unequivocally day Arthur Szyk was innate in 1894!

Immediately following my presentation, David Moss, a distinguished Jerusalem artist, asked if we had ever seen a strange watercolor and gouache paintings of Szyk’s Haggadah, and did we devise to furnish a new book that would showcase his art some-more brilliantly than any before reproduction. we confessed that we had not seen Szyk’s strange Haggadah book illuminations though stored divided David’s suggestion. What has remained with me was how wise it was that my initial critical review about enchanting with a Haggadah art took place in Jerusalem on Szyk’s miracle birthday.

This seems even some-more conspicuous to me when we cruise a difference of a psalmist who wrote, “If we forget you, O Jerusalem…” Indeed, these are a unequivocally initial difference on a enlightenment Szyk chose to deliver his Haggadah and a unequivocally final difference on a enlightenment that resolved his masterwork!

I went on to both curate and deliberate on several museum exhibitions of Szyk’s strange art. In credentials for dual of a beginning of these exhibitions – “Justice Illuminated: The Art of Arthur Szyk” during a Spertus Museum, Chicago (1998) and “The Art and Politics of Arthur Szyk” during a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC (2002) – we was absolved to inspect firsthand a strange Haggadah art. To see all 48 bright book leaves as Szyk had combined them was, unnecessary to say, breathtaking.

At that time, this overwhelming collection was secretly owned by Dick and Lois Janger of Chicago. The Jangers had purchased a strange Haggadah art during a New York Sotheby’s auction in 1982. This sale of a finish bright Szyk Haggadah book was reported to have set a universe record for “any Judaica work of art, for any Twentieth Century Judaica bright manuscript, and for any work by Arthur Szyk.” Would we like to theory a date of a sale? Jun 3 – Szyk’s birthday.

In 2004, in my ability as an antiquarian bookseller, we instituted discussions with Janger about his skeleton for a Haggadah manuscript. Was he formulation to give it to his children, we asked, or competence he be meddlesome in offered it? He answered by seeking me what did we consider it was value and did we unequivocally trust we could sell it during that level. Recalling Moss’s idea of 10 years earlier, we also began to try a probability of book a new book of a Haggadah formed on a strange artwork. After months of behind and onward we sealed a agreement for me to offer as his disdainful agent. When my initial dual prospects declined to squeeze a Haggadah during a seeking cost and a agreement tenure was about to expire, we went behind to Janger and asked for an prolongation of a contract. It was afterwards that we looked some-more delicately during a accurate date of a initial agreement to sell a Haggadah and it was, certain enough, Jun 3.
Two years after we successfully brokered a sale of a finish Haggadah book to Szyk lovers and collectors, Paul and Sheri Robbins of Palo Alto, California. Knowing Paul and Sheri as we did, we knew how vehement they were about display a Haggadah book to their 3 grown children, though there were countless delays in removing a family together during a same time. Finally, Paul let me know that his whole family had collected on a past Shabbat to perspective a Haggadah for a initial time.

“Paul, do we know what date that was?” we asked.

“No,” he responded. And again, we could frequency trust it myself when we sensitive him, “That was Jun 3!”

Since then, a Robbinses and my mother and we have distinguished Szyk’s birthday together any year on or around Jun 3.

We competence contend dayyeinu to my personal enchanting visionary debate were The Szyk Haggadah account to finish here, though it continues. In 2008, with a team-work of a Robbins family and a blessing of Szyk’s daughter, we constructed a oppulance singular book of The Szyk Haggadah. With a new interpretation and explanation by Rabbi Byron Sherwin, a uninformed design, excellent alien materials, consultant craftspeople via a United States, and a growth of aloft fortitude ink-jet printing, we set out to emanate for a 21st century what Szyk and his publisher had achieved in a 20th century.

Copies of this oppulance book – a Deluxe and Premier versions – now reside in some of a world’s excellent museums and educational institutions including a Metropolitan Museum of Art, a Morgan Library Museum, a Vatican Library, a British Library, a Library of Congress, a National Library of Israel, and many universities including Yale, Princeton, Georgetown, Oxford, and Cambridge.

To accompany a Haggadah, we published a messenger volume patrician Freedom Illuminated: Understanding The Szyk Haggadah, a entirely illustrated and extensive consult of Szyk’s masterpiece with erudite essays including Hebrew University Professor Shalom Sabar’s research of any work of art within a Haggadah. This book also draws courtesy to progressing Haggadah-related pattern that Szyk embellished while vital in Paris in a 1920s for his first, though unpublished, Haggadah, as good as pattern embellished for a Haggadah in Poland and England during a 1930s though never enclosed in a 1940 vellum book – 3 unpublished loyalty pages among them.

Working with Los Angeles filmmaker Jim Ruxin, we also constructed a brief 17-minute documentary film about a origination of a new singular book patrician “In Every Generation – Remaking The Szyk Haggadah.” It might be noticed on my website www.szyk.com or on Youtube.

On one of my several visits to Israel in a 1990s, we met an aged Tel Aviv proprietor named Joseph Horowitz, whose father, Herman Horowitz, headed a mild that upheld Szyk’s work in Poland in a 1930s. In 1937, Herman and other financial backers determined a Beaconsfield Press in London. Together with a Sun Engraving Company and a Sangorski and Sutcliffe bindery, a Beaconsfield Press set out to tell usually one book – The Haggadah. After completing a strange pattern in Poland between 1934 and 1936, Szyk relocated to London with his mother and daughter, art in hand, to manipulate a printing. He was to sojourn there until mid-1940, when he immigrated to a United States.

In his tiny walk-up Tel Aviv unit Joseph Horowitz told me a following story: When we was a immature child flourishing adult in Lwów, we remember Arthur Szyk entrance from Łódź to my father’s home one evening. While sleeping, we was awakened by organisation surrounding Szyk and articulate in a vital room. we came down a stairs from my bedroom and saw before them on a list a strange Haggadah book leaves. we could see swastikas embellished on a Egyptians and on snakes.”

For Szyk, it was transparent that a Nazis were a “new Egyptian taskmasters” focussed on a obliteration of his people – his prophetic warning to European Jewry. The artist embellished over all of a swastikas before to publication, many expected due to vigour from his publishers to get The Haggadah printed though controversy. No swastikas can be seen on possibly a printed editions or a strange pattern – no doubt a unpleasant concede done by Szyk.

I after told Horowitz’s story to a curatorial organisation during a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as they were scheming their Szyk muster in 2002. Included among a countless touching and absolute World War II domestic caricatures and cartoons by this anti-Nazi artist were several strange leaves of The Haggadah manuscript. One famous as Avadim Hayinu, definition “We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt,” featured a blonde, blue-eyed Egyptian taskmaster forcing a Hebrew worker to paint an Egyptian God before him. In another vignette on this same bright root sits a god-like Pharaoh on a bench surrounded by his attendants, all wearing armbands.

The curatorial organisation examined this strange work in a charge lab of a museum regulating a microscope with special lighting designed to vaunt art underneath layers of paint. Swastikas were indeed found on a chest of a Egyptian taskmaster and on a armbands of Pharaoh and his court.

A few years later, we came opposite a singular working lithographic facsimile printed in 1935 of Szyk’s “Four Questions” illustration. Made before to a artist’s revisions of his work for publication, this stipple clearly shows swastikas on a behind of a lizard aggressive a Israelites on their Exodus from Egypt. Horowitz was right on both depends – there were swastikas on snakes and Egyptians. Additionally, he reported that he even saw a swastika on a “Wicked Son” of “Szyk’s Four Sons” painting.

In 2011, we combined a renouned trade book of The Szyk Haggadah for a Abrams Books book company, one of a largest distributors of art and illustrated books in a US. Based on a 2008 singular edition, this new book defended all of a Haggadah pattern and a explanation blending from Rabbi Sherwin’s progressing work, though during a cost designed for use during a Passover meal. Equipped with unsentimental instructions on Seder use and Passover customs, as good as transliterations of comparison Hebrew passages, this Haggadah serves as an invitation to acquire Szyk into each Jewish home on Seder night.

Three years later, a initial open muster of a finish 48 paintings of a Haggadah in over 40 years non-stop during San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum. Curating this uncover and heading dozens of private and organisation tours by a vaunt was probably a dream come loyal for me and my roving companion, Arthur Szyk.

Next on my bulletin is a revised and updated renouned book of Freedom Illuminated: Understanding The Szyk Haggadah, blending from a 2008 singular edition. And some-more is planned! The list is set for a whole new era to knowledge a “second coming” of Arthur Szyk’s Haggadah and a narrative. Don’t be astounded if it happens on Jun 3! Stay tuned for Part II of this story.

For serve information or questions, contact: Irvin Ungar, ungar@historicana.com or 650-343-9578. Burlingame, California

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