MARCEL JANCO Judaica HAND SIGNED Israel NUMBERED LITHOGRAPH Hebrew DADA ARTIST
Seller: judaica-bookstore ✉️ (2,810) 100%,
Location: TEL AVIV, IL,
Ships to: WORLDWIDE,
Item: 276310671850
MARCEL JANCO Judaica HAND SIGNED Israel NUMBERED LITHOGRAPH Hebrew DADA ARTIST. DESCRIPTION : Up for sale is a RARE ca 1950's original colorful HAND SIGNED ( With pencil ) and limited and numbered ( 72/200 ) STONE LITHOGRAPH by the world acclaimed Jewish Israeli DADA ARTIST of Romanian descent MARCEL JANCO. One of the founders of OFAKIM CHADASHIM - NEW HORIZONS. The piece was created and issued in a limited edition of only 200 copies. This copy is numbered 72/200. The LITHOGRAPH depicts a beautiful image of the legendary TALMUD - MISHNA figure - HONI HAMEAGEL ( Honi the circle maker ) , Also spelled as ( חוני המעגל Khoni, Choni, or Ḥoni - Honi the Circle-drawer ). The LITHOGRAPH is one of a sycle of SEVEN original
COLORFUL STONE LITHOGRAPHS on various Jewish Bibilical and Traditional themes by the DADA artist MARCEL
JANCO which was created in the 1950's . The STONE LITHOGRAPH is HAND SIGNED with pencil "MARCEL JANCO" and numbered 72/200 . Printed on an extremely thick special lithographic paper. The size of the sheet is 20"x 28" . The actual size of the painting is 15"x18". Excellent pristine condition. Perfectly clean and intact. ( Pls look at scan for accurate AS IS images ) Will be sent inside a protective tube .
PAYMENTS :
Payment method accepted : Paypal & All credit cards. SHIPPMENT : SHIPP worldwide via registered airmail is $29 . Will be sent
inside a protective tube . Handling around 5-10 days after payment. Marcel Janco (German: [maɐ̯ˈsɛl ˈjaŋko], French: [maʁsɛl ʒɑ̃ko], common rendition of the Romanian name Marcel Hermann Iancu[1] pronounced [marˈt͡ʃel ˈherman ˈjaŋku], last name also Ianco, Janko or Jancu; May 24, 1895 – April 21, 1984) was a Romanian and Israeli visual artist, architect and art theorist. He was the co-inventor of Dadaism and a leading exponent of Constructivism in Eastern Europe. In the 1910s, he co-edited, with Ion Vinea and Tristan Tzara, the Romanian art magazine Simbolul. Janco was a practitioner of Art Nouveau, Futurism and Expressionism before contributing his painting and stage design to Tzara's literary Dadaism. He parted with Dada in 1919, when he and painter Hans Arp founded a Constructivist circle, Das Neue Leben. Reunited with Vinea, he founded Contimporanul, the influential tribune of the Romanian avant-garde, advocating a mix of Constructivism, Futurism and Cubism. At Contimporanul, Janco expounded a "revolutionary" vision of urban planning. He designed some of the most innovative landmarks of downtown Bucharest. He worked in many art forms, including illustration, sculpture and oil painting. Janco was one of the leading Romanian Jewish intellectuals of his generation. Targeted by antisemitic persecution before and during World War II, he emigrated to British Palestine in 1941. He won the Dizengoff Prize and Israel Prize, and was a founder of Ein Hod, a utopian art colony, controversially built over a deserted Palestinian Arab settlement. Marcel Janco was the brother Georges and Jules Janco, who were his artistic partners during and after the Dada episode. His brother-in-law and fellow Constructivist promoter was the writer Jacques G. Costin, known as a survivor of 1940s antisemitism.Marcel Janco was born on May 24, 1895 in Bucharest to an upper middle class Jewish family.[2] His father, Hermann Zui Iancu, was a textile merchant. His mother, Rachel née Iuster, was from Moldavia.[3] The couple lived outside Bucharest's Jewish quarter, on Decebal Street.[4] He was the oldest of four children. His brothers were Iuliu (Jules) and George. His sister, Lucia, was born in 1900.[4] The Iancus moved from Decebal to Gândului Street, and then to Trinității, where they built one of the largest home-and-garden complexes in early 20th century Bucharest.[5] In 1980, Janco revisited his childhood years, writing: "Born as I was in beautiful Romania, into a family of well-to-do people, I had the fortune of being educated in a climate of freedom and spiritual enlightenment. My mother, [...] possessing a genuine musical talent, and my father, a stern man and industrious merchant, had created the conditions favorable for developing all of my aptitudes. [...] I was of a sensitive and emotional nature, a withdrawn child who was predisposed to dreaming and meditating. [...] I grew up [...] dominated by a strong sense of humanity and social justice. The existence of disadvantaged, weak, people, of impoverished workers, of beggars, hurt me and, when compared to our family's decent condition, awoke in me a feeling of guilt."[6]Janco attended Gheorghe Șincai School and studied drawing art with the Romanian Jewish painter and cartoonist Iosif Iser.[7] In his teenage years, the family traveled widely, from Austria-Hungary to Switzerland, Italy and the Netherlands.[8] At Gheorghe Lazăr High School, he met several students who would become his artistic companions: Tzara (known then as S. Samyro), Vinea (Iovanaki), writers Jacques G. Costin and Poldi Chapier.[9] Janco also became friends with pianist Clara Haskil, the subject of his first published drawing, which appeared in Flacăra magazine in March 1912.[10][11]As a group, the students were under the influence of Romanian Symbolist clubs, which were at the time the more radical expressions of artistic rejuvenation in Romania. Marcel and Jules Janco's first moment of cultural significance took place in October 1912, when they joined Tzara in editing the Symbolist venue Simbolul, which managed to receive contributions from some of Romania's leading modern poets, from Alexandru Macedonski to Ion Minulescu and Adrian Maniu. The magazine nevertheless struggled to find its voice, alternating modernism with the more conventional Symbolism.[12] Janco was perhaps the main graphic designer of Simbolul, and he may even have persuaded his wealthy parents to support the venture (which closed down in early 1913).[13] Unlike Tzara, who refused to look back on Simbolul with anything but embarrassment, Janco was proud of this moment in life, depicting it as his first participation in artistic revolution.[14]After the Simbolul moment, Marcel Janco worked at Seara daily, where he took further training in draftsmanship.[15] The newspaper took him in as illustrator, probably as a result of intercessions from Vinea, its literary columnist.[10] Their Simbolul colleague Costin joined them as Seara 's cultural editor.[10][16] Janco was also a visitor of the literary and art club meeting at the home of controversial politician and Symbolist poet Alexandru Bogdan-Pitești, who was for a while the manager of Seara.[17]It is possible that, during those years, Tzara and Janco first came to hear and be influenced by the absurdist prose of Urmuz, the lonesome civil clerk and amateur writer who would later become the hero of Romanian modernism.[18] Years later, in 1923, Janco drew an ink portrait of Urmuz.[19] In maturity, he also remarked that Urmuz was the original rebel figure in Romanian literature.[20] In the 1910s, Janco was also interested in the parallel development of French literature, and read passionately from such authors as Paul Verlaine and Guillaume Apollinaire.[21] Another immediate source of inspiration for his attitude on life was provided by Futurism, an anti-establishment movement created in Italy by poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and his artists' circle.[22]Swiss journey and Dada eventsJanco eventually decided to leave Romania, probably because he wanted to attend international events such as the Sonderbund exhibit, but also because of quarrels with his father.[15] In quick succession after the start of World War I, Marcel, Jules and Tzara left Bucharest for Zurich. According to various accounts, their departure may have been either a search for new opportunities (abundant in cosmopolitan Switzerland)[23] or a discreet pacifist statement.[24] Initially, the Jancos were registered with the University of Zurich, where Marcel took Chemistry courses, before applying to study Architecture at the Federal Institute of Technology.[25] His real ambition, later confessed, was to pursue more training in painting.[6][26] The two brothers were soon joined by younger Georges Janco, but all three were left without any financial support when the war began hampering Europe's trade routes; until October 1917, both Jules and Marcel (who found it impossible to sell his various paintings) earned a living as cabaret performers.[26][27] Marcel was noted for performing selections from Romanian folklore and playing the accordion,[28] as well as for his rendition of chansons.[10][26] It was during this time that the young artist and his brothers began using the consecrated version of the surname Iancu, probably in hopes that it would sound more familiar to foreigners.[29]In this context, the Romanians came into contact with Hugo Ball and the other independent artists plying their trade at the Malerei building, which soon after became known as Cabaret Voltaire. Ball later recalled that four "Oriental" men introduced themselves to him late after a show—the description refers to Tzara, the older Jancos and, probably, the Romanian painter Arthur Segal.[30] Ball found the young painter especially pleasant, and was impressed that, unlike his peers, Janco was melancholy rather than ironic; other participants remember him as a very handsome presence in the group, and he allegedly had the reputation of a "lady-killer".[31]Accounts of what happened next differ, but it is presumed that, shortly after the four new participants were accepted, the performances became more daring, and the transition was made from Ball's Futurism to the virulent anti-art performances of Tzara and Richard Huelsenbeck.[32] With help from Segal and others, Marcel Janco was personally involved in decorating the Cabaret Voltaire.[28] Its hectic atmosphere would inspire Janco to create an eponymous oil painting, dated 1916 and believed to have been lost.[33] He was a major contributor to the cabaret's events: he notably carved the grotesque masks worn by performers on stilts, gave "hissing concerts" and, in unison with Huelsenbeck and Tzara, improvised some of the first (and mostly onomatopoeic) "simultaneous poems" to be read on stage.[34]His work with masks became especially influential, opening up a new field of theatrical exploration for the Dadaists (as the Cabaret Voltaire crew began calling themselves), and earning special praise from Ball.[35] Contrary to Ball's later claim of authorship, Janco is also credited with having tailored the "bishop dress", another one of the iconic products of early Dadaism.[36] The actual birth of "Dadaism", at an unknown date, later formed the basis of disputes between Tzara, Ball and Huelsenbeck. In this context, Janco is cited as a source for the story according to which the invention of the term "Dada" belonged exclusively to Tzara.[37] Janco also circulated stories according to which their shows were attended for informative purposes by communist theorist Vladimir Lenin[38] and psychiatrist Carl Jung.[26]His various contributions were harnessed by Dada's international effort of self-promotion. In April 1917, he welcomed the Dada affiliation of Switzerland's own Paul Klee, calling Klee's contribution to the Dada exhibit a "great event".[39] His mask designs were popular beyond Europe, and inspired similar creations by Mexico's Germán Cueto, the "Stridentist" painter-puppeteer.[40] The Dadaist popularization effort received lukewarm responses in Janco's native country, where the traditionalist press expressed alarm at being confronted with Dada precepts.[41] Vinea himself was ambivalent about the activities of his two friends, preserving a link with poetic tradition which made his publication in Tzara's press impossible.[42] In a letter to Janco, Vinea spoke about having personally presented one of Janco's posters to modernist poet and art critic Tudor Arghezi: "[He] said, critically, that you cannot say whether a person is talented or not on the basis of only one drawing. Rubbish."[43]Exhibited at the Dada group shows, Janco also illustrated the Dada advertisements, including an April 1917 program which features his sketches of Ball, Tzara and Ball's actress wife Emmy Hennings.[44] The event featured his production of Oskar Kokoschka's farce Sphinx und Strohmann, for which he was also the stage designer, and which was turned into one of the most notorious among Dada provocations.[45] Janco was the director and mask designer for the Dada production for another one of Kokoschka's plays, Job.[46] He also returned as Tzara's illustrator, producing the linocuts to The First Heavenly Adventure of Mr. Antipyrine, having already created the props for its theatrical production.[47]"Two-speeds" Dada and Das Neue LebenAs early as 1917, Marcel Janco began taking his distance from the movement he had helped to generate. His work, in both woodcut and linocut, continued to be used as the illustration to Dada almanacs for another two years,[48] but he was more often than not in disagreement with Tzara, while also trying to diversify his style. As noted by critics, he found himself split between the urge to mock traditional art and the belief that something just as elaborate needed to take its place: in the conflict between Tzara's nihilism and Ball's art for art's sake, Janco tended to support the latter.[49] In a 1966 text, he further assessed that there were "two speeds" in Dada, and that the "spiritual violence" phase had eclipsed the "best Dadas", including his fellow painter Hans Arp.[50]Janco recalled: "We [Janco and Tzara] couldn't agree any more on the importance of Dada, and the misunderstandings accumulated."[51] There were, he noted, "dramatic fights" sparked by Tzara's taste for "bad jokes and scandal".[52] The artist preserved a grudge, and his retrospective views on Tzara's role in Zurich are often sarcastic, depicting him as an excellent organizer and vindictive self-promoter, but not truly a man of culture;[53] a few years into the scandal, he even started a rumor that Tzara was illegally trading in opium.[54] As noted in 2007 by Romanian literary historian Paul Cernat: "All the efforts by Ion Vinea to reunite them [...] would be in vain. Iancu and Tzara would ignore (or banter) each other for the rest of their lives".[55] With this split, there came a certain classicization in Marcel Janco's discourse. In February 1918, Janco was even invited to lecture at his alma mater, where he spoke about modernism and authenticity in art as related phenomena, drawing comparisons between the Renaissance and African art.[56] However, having decided to focus on his other projects, Janco nearly abandoned his studies, and failed his final exam.[57]In this context, he moved closer to the cell of post-Dada Constructivists exhibiting collectively as Neue Kunst ("New Art")—Arp, Fritz Baumann, Hans Richter, Otto Morach.[58] As a result, Janco was made a member of Das Neue Leben faction, which supported an educational approach to modern art, coupled with socialist ideals and Constructivist aesthetics.[59] In its art manifesto, the group declared its ideal of "rebuild[ing] the human community" in preparation for the end of capitalism.[60] Janco was even affiliated with Artistes Radicaux, a more politically inclined section of Das Neue Leben, where his colleagues included other former Dadas: Arp, Hans Richter, Viking Eggeling.[61] The Artistes Radicaux were in touch with the German Revolution, and Richter, who worked for the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, even offered Janco and the others virtual teaching positions at the Academy of Fine Arts under a workers' government.[62]Between Béthune and BucharestJanco made his final contribution to the Dada adventure in April 1919, when he designed the masks for a major Dada event organized by Tzara at the Saal zur Kaufleutern, and which degenerated into an infamous mass brawl.[63] By May, he was mandated by Das Neue Leben to create and publish a journal for the movement. Although this never saw print, the preparations placed Janco in contact with the representatives of various modernist currents: Arthur Segal, Walter Gropius, Alexej von Jawlensky, Oscar Lüthy and Enrico Prampolini.[64] This period also witnessed the start of a friendly relationship between Janco and the Expressionist artists who published in Herwarth Walden's magazine Der Sturm.[65]A little more than a year after the end of war, in December 1919, Marcel and Jules left Switzerland for France. After passing through Paris, the painter was in Béthune, where he married Amélie Micheline "Lily" Ackermann, in what was described as a gesture of fronde against his father. The girl was a Swiss Catholic of lowly condition, who had first met the Jancos at Das Neue Leben.[66] Janco was probably in Béthune for a longer while: he was listed as one of those considered for helping to rebuild war-affected French Flanders, redesigned the Chevalier-Westrelin store in Hinges, and was perhaps the co-owner of an architectural enterprise, Ianco & Déquire.[67] It is not unlikely that Janco followed with curiosity the activities of Dada's Parisian cell, which were overseen by Tzara and his pupil André Breton, and he is known to have impressed Breton with his own architectural projects.[68] He was also announced, with Tzara, as a contributor to the post-Dada magazine L'Esprit Nouveau, published by Paul Dermée.[69] Nevertheless, Janco was invited to exhibit elsewhere, rallying with Section d'Or, a Cubist collective.[68]Late in 1921, Janco and his wife left for Romania, where they had a second marriage to seal their union in front of familial disputes.[70] Janco was soon reconciled with his parents, and, although still unlicensed as an architect, began receiving his first commissions, some of which came from within his own family.[71][72] His early contributions, officially registered as the work of one I. Rosenthal, are the rather traditional seven buildings on Hermann Iancu's property, at Trinității Street, 29—one of them became his new home.[73] The site, extended in later years, was completed with new buildings by Janco down to the mid-1930s; this pet project resulted in some of the most experimental buildings in the history of Romanian architecture, in striking contrast with the antique design prevalent in the surrounding Hala Traian quarter.[71] Together with Jules, Janco eventually opened up his own business venture, Birou de Studii Moderne (Office of Modern Studies). It was housed in a building of their own design, at the junction ofCaimatei and Trinității, and officially run by a fictitious person, Marcel Iuliu Iancu.[74]Soon after making his comeback, Marcel Janco reconnected himself with the local avant-garde salons, and had his first Romanian exhibits, at the Maison d'Art club in Bucharest.[75] His friends and collaborators, among them actress Dida Solomon and journalist-director Sandu Eliad, would describe him as exceptionally charismatic and knowledgeable.[76] In December 1926, he was present at the Hasefer Art Show in Bucharest.[77] Around that year, Janco took commissions as an art teacher at his studio in Bucharest—in the words of his pupil, the future painter-photographer Hedda Sterne, these were unimpressive: "We were given easels, etc. but nobody looked, nobody advised us."[78]Contimporanul beginnings From his position as Constructivist mentor and international artist, Janco proceeded to network between Romanian modernist currents, and joined up with his old colleague Vinea. Early in 1922, the two men founded a political and art magazine, the influential Contimporanul—historically, the longest-lived venue of the Romanian avant-garde.[79] Janco was abroad that year, as one of guests at the First Constructivist Congress, convened by Dutch artist Theo van Doesburg in Düsseldorf.[80] He was in Zurich around 1923, receiving the visit of a compatriot, writer Victor Eftimiu, who declared him a hard-working artist able to reconcile the modern with the traditional.[81] Contimporanul followed Janco's Constructivist affiliation. Initially a venue for socialist satire and political commentary, it reflected Vinea's strong dislike for the ruling National Liberal Party.[82] However, by 1923, the journal became increasingly cultural and artistic in its revolt, headlining with translations from van Doesburg and Breton, publishing Vinea's own homage to Futurism, and featuring illustrations and international notices which Janco may have handpicked himself.[83] Some researchers have attributed the change exclusively to the painter's growing say in editorial policy.[84][85] Janco was at the time in correspondence with Dermée, who was to contribute the Contimporanul anthology of modern French poetry,[86] and with fellow painter Michel Seuphor, who collected Janco's Constructivist sculptures.[87] He maintained a link between Contimporanul and Der Sturm, which republished his drawings alongside the contributions of various Romanian avant-garde writers and artists.[88] The reciprocal popularization was taken up by Ma, the Vienna-based tribune of Hungarian modernists, which also published samples of Janco's graphics.[89] Owing to Janco's resentments and Vinea's apprehension, the magazine never covered the issuing of new Dada manifestos, and responded critically to Tzara's new versions of Dada history.[90] Marcel Janco also took charge of Contimporanul 's business side, designing its offices on Imprimerie Street and overseeing the publication of postcards.[91] Over the years, his own contributions to Contimporanul came to include some 60 illustrations, some 40 articles on art and architectural topics, and a number of his architectural designs or photographs of buildings erected from them.[92] He oversaw one of the journal's first special issues, dedicated to "Modern Architecture", and notably hosting his own contributions to architectural theory, as well as his design of a "country workshop" for Vinea's use.[93] Other issues also featured his essay on film and theater, his furniture designs, and his interview with the French Cubist Robert Delaunay.[94] Janco was also largely responsible for the Contimporanul issue on Surrealism, which included his interviews with writers such as Joseph Delteil, and his inquiry about the publisher Simon Krà.[95] Together with Romanian Cubist painter M. H. Maxy, Janco was personally involved in curating the Contimporanul International Art Exhibit of 1924.[96] This event reunited the major currents of Europe's modern art, reflecting Contimporanul 's eclectic agenda and international profile. It hosted samples of works by leading modernists: the Romanians Segal, Constantin Brâncuși, Victor Brauner, János Mattis-Teutsch, Milița Petrașcu, alongside Arp, Eggeling, Klee, Richter, Lajos Kassák and Kurt Schwitters.[97] The exhibit included samples of Janco's work in furniture design, and featured his managerial contribution to a Dada-like opening party, co-produced by him, Maxy, Vinea and journalist Eugen Filotti.[98] He was also involved in preparing the magazine's theatrical parties, including the 1925 production of A Merry Death, by Nikolai Evreinov; Janco was the set and costume designer, and Eliad the director.[99] An unusual echo of the exhibit came in 1925, when Contimporanul published a photograph of Brâncuși's Princess X sculpture. The Romanian Police saw this as a sexually explicit artwork, and Vinea and Janco were briefly taken into custody.[100] Janco was a dedicated admirer of Brâncuși, visiting him in Paris and writing in Contimporanul about Brâncuși's "spirituality of form" theories.[101] In their work as cultural campaigners, Vinea and Janco even collaborated with 75 HP, a periodical edited by poet Ilarie Voronca, which was nominally anti-Contimporanul and pro-Dada.[102] Janco was also an occasional presence in the pages of Punct, the Dadaist-Constructivist paper put out by the socialist Scarlat Callimachi. It was here that he notably published articles on architectural styles and a lampoon, in French and German, titled T.S.F. Dialogue entre le bourgeois mort et l'apôtre de la vie nouvelle ("Cablegram. The Dialogue between a Dead Bourgeois and the Apostle of New Living").[84][103] In addition, his graphic work was popularized by Voronca's other magazine, the Futurist tribune Integral.[104] Janco was also called upon by authors Ion Pillat and Perpessicius to illustrate their Antologia poeților de azi ("The Anthology of Present-Day Poets"). His portraits of the writers included, drawn in sharply modernist style, were received with amusement by the traditionalist public.[105] In 1926, Janco further antagonized the traditionalists by publishing sensual drawings for Camil Baltazar's book of erotic poems, Strigări trupești lîngă glezne ("Bodily Exhortations around the Ankles").[106] Profiting from the building boom of Greater Romania, and the rising popularity of functionalism, Janco's Birou was in much demand. Compared with mainstream functionalist architects like Horia Creangă, Arghir Culina, Rudolf Fränkel or Marcel Locar, the Jancos received commissions that were sparse and small-scale, but they had a decisive role in popularizing the functionalist versions of Constructivism or Cubism.[107] Heralding the change of architectural tastes with his articles in Contimporanul, Marcel Janco described Romania's capital as a chaotic, inharmonious, backward town, in which the traffic was hampered by carts and trams.[108] A major breakthrough was his Villa Jean Fuchs, built in 1926 on Negustori Street. Its cosmopolitan owner allowed the artist complete freedom in designing the building, purportedly the first Constructivist structure in Bucharest,[109] and a budget of 1 million lei.[71] The result caused a stir in the neighborhood, while the press found it to be reminiscent of a "morgue" and a "crematorium".[71] The architect and his patrons were undeterred by such reactions, and the Janco firm received commissions to build similar villas, as well as the Philippe Suchard pavilion at the Obor fair of 1926.[71] Until 1934, when Marcel Janco finally received his certification, his designs continued to be officially recorded under different names, most usually attributed to a Constantin Simionescu.[71] This had little effect on the Birou 's output: before 1937, Janco and his brother designed some 40 permanent or temporary structures in Bucharest, all of them located in the northern and central areas (the "Yellow" and "Black" sectors, as they were known at the time).[71] These and other projects also involved the 1924 exhibit's Milița Petrașcu, who is herself better known as a modernist sculptor.[110] Several other Bucharest homes result from this creative collaboration: the Maria Lambru Villa of 1928, on Popa Savu Street; the Florica Chihăescu house on Șoseaua Kiseleff (1930); the Jean Juster and Paul Wexler Villas, on Silvestru and Grigore Mora streets, respectively (1931).[71] Janco also designed a house for his Simbolul friend Poldi Chapier. Located on Ipătescu Alley and finished in 1929,[71] this was occasionally described as "Bucharest's first Cubist lodging".[111] These projects are joined by a private sanatorium of Predeal, which is the principal of Janco's Constructivist designs outside of Bucharest.[109] Janco had one daughter from his marriage to Lily Ackermann, who signed her name Josine Ianco-Starrels (b. 1926), and was raised a Catholic.[112] Her sister Claude-Simone had died in infancy.[113] By the mid-1920s, Marcel and Lily Janco were estranged: already by the time of their divorce (1930), she was living by herself in a Brașov home designed by Janco.[113] The artist remarried to Clara "Medi" Goldschlager, the sister of his old friend Jacques G. Costin. The couple had a girl, Deborah Theodora ("Dadi" for short).[113] With his new family, Janco lived a comfortable life, traveling throughout Europe and spending his summer vacations in the resort town of Balcic.[113] In 1931, Janco built himself a new family home, the blockhouse known as "Clara Iancu Building", on Caimatei.[71] The Jancos and the Costins also shared ownership of a country estate: known as Jacquesmara,[114] it was located in Budeni-Comana, Giurgiu County.[6][10] The house is especially known for hosting Clara Haskil during one of her triumphant returns to Romania.[10] Between Contimporanul and Criterion Janco was still active as the art editor of Contimporanul during its final and most eclectic series of 1929,[115] when he took part in selecting new young contributors, such as publicist and art critic Barbu Brezianu.[116] At that junction, the magazine triumphantly published a "Letter to Janco", in which the formerly traditionalist architect George Matei Cantacuzino spoke about his colleague's decade-long contribution to the development of Romanian functionalism.[71][117] Beyond his Contimporanul affiliation, Janco rallied with the Bucharest collective Arta Nouă ("New Art"), also joined by Maxy, Brauner, Mattis-Teutsch, Petrașcu, Nina Arbore, Cornelia Babic-Daniel, Alexandru Brătășanu, Olga Greceanu, Corneliu Michăilescu, Claudia Millian, Tania Șeptilici and others.[118] Janco and some other regulars of Contimporanul also reached out to the Surrealist faction at unu review—Janco is notably mentioned as a "contributor" on the cover of unu, Summer 1930 issue, where all 8 containing pages were purposefully left blank.[119] Janco prepared woodcuts for the first edition of Vinea's novel Paradisul suspinelor ("The Paradise of Sobs"), printed with Editura Cultura Națională in 1930,[120][121] and for Vinea's poems in their magazine versions.[122] His drawings were used in illustrating two volumes of interviews with writers, compiled by Contimporanul sympathizer Felix Aderca,[123] and Costin's only volume of prose, the 1931 Exerciții pentru mâna dreaptă ("Right-handed Exercises").[120][124] Janco attended the 1930 reunion organized by Contimporanul in honor of the visiting Futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, and gave a welcoming speech.[125] Marinetti was again praised by the Contimporanul group (Vinea, Janco, Petrașcu, Costin) in February 1934, in an open letter stating: "We are soldiers of the same army."[126] These developments created a definitive split in Romania's avant-garde movement, and contributed to Contimporanul 's eventual fall: the Surrealists and socialists at unu condemned Vinea and the rest for having established, through Marinetti, a connection with the Italian fascists.[127] After the incidents, Janco's art was openly questioned by unu contributors such as Stephan Roll.[128] Although Contimporanul went bankrupt, an artistic faction of the same name survived until 1936.[129] During the interval, Janco found other backers in the specialized art and architecture magazines, such as Orașul, Arta și Orașul, Rampa, Ziarul Științelor și al Călătoriilor.[71] In 1932, his villa designs were included by Alberto Sartoris in his guide to modern architecture, Gli elementi dell'architettura razionale.[71][130] The early 1930s also witnessed Janco's participation with the literary and art society Criterion, whose leader was philosopher Mircea Eliade. The group was mostly a venue Romania's intellectual youth, interested in redefining the national specificity around modernist values, but also offered a venue for dialogue between the far right and the far left.[131] With Maxy, Petrașcu, Mac Constantinescu, Petre Iorgulescu-Yor, Margareta Sterian and others, Janco represented the art collective at Criterion, which, in 1933, exhibited at Dalles Hall, Bucharest.[132] The same year, Janco erected a blockhouse for Costin (Paleologu Street, 5), which doubled as his own working address and the administrative office of Contimporanul.[71] From 1929, Janco's efforts to reform the capital received administrative support from Dem. I. Dobrescu, the left-wing Mayor of Bucharest.[133] 1934 was the year when Janco returned as architectural theorist, with Urbanism, nu romantism ("Urbanism, Not Romanticism"), an essay in the review Orașul. Janco's text restated the need and opportunity for modernist urban planning, especially in Bucharest.[71] Orașul, edited by Eliad and writer Cicerone Theodorescu, introduced him as a world-famous architect and "revolutionary", praising the diversity of his contributions.[71] In 1935, Janco published the pamphlet Către o arhitectură a Bucureștilor ("Toward an Architecture of Bucharest"), which recommended a "utopian" project to solve the city's social crisis.[71][76] Like some of his Contimporanul colleagues, he was by then collaborating with Cuvântul Liber, the self-styled "moderate left-wing review" and with Isac Ludo's modernist magazine, Adam.[134] He was at the time completing work on the Bazaltin Company headquarters on Jianu Square, the Solly Gold tenement on Hristo Botev Avenue, the Frida Cohen tower on Stelea Spătarul Street (the tallest among Janco's buildings) and the highrise on Ștefan Luchian Street (Janco's largest), the Iluță Laboratory on Olari Street, the Florica Reich Villa on Grigore Mora, and another home for Poldi Chapier.[71] Probably commissioned by Mircea Eliade, Janco also began work on the "Alexandrescu Building", a tenement for Eliade's sister and her family.[71] Together with Margareta Sterian, who became his disciple, Janco was working on artistic projects involving ceramics and fresco.[135] In 1936, some works by Janco, Maxy and Petrașcu represented Romania at the Futurist art show in New York City.[136] Throughout the period, Janco was still on demand as a draftsman: in 1934, his depiction of poet Constantin Nissipeanu opened the first print of Nisspeanu's Metamorfoze;[137] in 1936, he published a posthumous portrait of writer Mateiu Caragiale, to illustrate the Perpessicius edition of Caragiale's poems.[138] His prints also served to illustrate Sadismul adevărului ("The Sadism of Truth"), written by unu founder Sașa Pană.[139] Persecution and departure By that moment in time, the Janco family was faced with the rise of antisemitism, and alarmed by the growth of fascist movements such as the Iron Guard. In the 1920s, the Contimporanul leadership had sustained a xenophobic attack from the traditionalist review Țara Noastră. It cited Vinea's Greek origins as a cause for concern,[140] and described Janco as the "painter of the cylinder", and an alien, cosmopolitan, Jew.[141] That objection to Janco's work, and to Contimporanul in general, was also taken up in 1926 by the anti-modernist essayist I. E. Torouțiu.[142] Criterion itself split in 1934, when some of its members openly rallied with the Iron Guard, and the radical press accused the remaining ones of promoting pederasty through their public performances.[143] Josine was expelled from Catholic school in 1935, the reason invoked being that her father was a Jew.[144] For Marcel Janco, the events were an opportunity to discuss his own assimilation into Romanian society: in one of his conferences, he defined himself as "an artist who is a Jew", rather than "a Jewish artist".[144] He later confessed his dismay at the attacks targeting him: "nowhere, never, in Romania or elsewhere in Europe, during peacetime or the cruel years of [World War I], did anyone ask me whether I was a Jew or... a kike. [...] Hitler's Romanian minions managed to change this climate, to turn Romania into an antisemitic country."[6] The ideological shift, he recalled, destroyed his relationships with the Contimporanul poet Ion Barbu, who reportedly concluded, after admiring a 1936 exhibit: "Too bad you're a kike!"[6] At around that time, pianist and fascist sympathizer Cella Delavrancea also assessed that Janco's contribution to theater was the prime example of "Jewish" and "bastard" art.[145] When the antisemitic National Christian Party took power, Janco was coming to terms with the Zionist ideology, describing the Land of Israel as the "cradle" and "salvation" of Jews the world over.[6][146] At Budeni, he and Costin hosted Betar paramilitaries, who were attempting to organize a Jewish self-defense movement.[6] Janco subsequently made his first trip to British Palestine, and began arranging his and his family's relocation there.[6][114][146][147] Although Jules and his family emigrated soon after the visit, Marcel returned to Bucharest and, shortly before Jewish art was officially censored, had his one last exhibit there, together with Milița Petrașcu.[114] He was also working on one of his last, and most experimental, contributions to Romanian architecture: the Hermina Hassner Villa (which also hosted his 1928 painting of the Jardin du Luxembourg), the Emil Petrașcu residence,[71] and a tower behind the Atheneum.[148] In 1939, the Nazi-aligned Ion Gigurtu cabinet enforced racial discrimination throughout the land, and, as a consequence, Jaquesmara was confiscated by the state.[114] Many of the Bucharest villas he had designed, which had Jewish landlords, were also taken over forcefully by the authorities.[71] Some months after, the National Renaissance Front government prevented Janco from publishing his work anywhere in Romania, but he was still able to find a niche at Timpul daily—its anti-fascist manager, Grigore Gafencu, gave imprimatur to sketches, including the landscapes of Palestine.[147] He was also finding work with the ghettoized Jewish community, designing the new Barașeum Studio, located in the vicinity of Caimatei.[147] During the first two years of World War II, although he prepared his documents and received a special passport,[149] Janco was still undecided. He was still in Romania when the Iron Guard established its National Legionary State. He was receiving and helping Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe, and hearing from them about the concentration camp system, but refused offers to emigrate into a neutral or Allied country.[6] His mind was made up in January 1941, when the Iron Guard's struggle for maintaining power resulted in the Bucharest Pogrom. Janco himself was a personal witness to the violent events, noting for instance that the Nazi German bystanders would declare themselves impressed by the Guard's murderous efficiency, or how the thugs made an example of the Jews trapped in the Choral Temple.[150] The Străulești Abbatoir murders and the stories of Jewish survivors also inspired several of Janco's drawings.[151] One of the victims of the Abbatoir massacre was Costin's brother Michael Goldschlager. He was kidnapped from his house by Guardsmen,[6] and his corpse was among those found hanging on hooks, mutilated in such way as to mock the Jewish kashrut ritual.[146][152] Janco later stated that, over the course of a few days, the pogrom had made him a militant Jew.[6][153] With clandestine assistance from England,[6] Marcel, Medi and their two daughters left Romania through Constanța harbor, and arrived in Turkey on February 4, 1941. They then made their way to Islahiye and French Syria, crossing through the Kingdom of Iraq and Transjordan, and, on February 23, ended their journey in Tel Aviv.[154] The painter found his first employment as architect for Tel Aviv's city government, sharing the office with a Holocaust survivor who informed him about the genocide in occupied Poland.[6] In Romania, the new regime of Conducător Ion Antonescu planned a new series of antisemitic measures and atrocities (see Holocaust in Romania). In November 1941, Costin and his wife Laura, who had stayed behind in Bucharest, were among those deported to the occupied region of Transnistria.[154] Costin survived, joining up with his sister and with Janco in Palestine, but later moved back to Romania.[155] In Israel During his years in British Palestine, Marcel Janco became a noted participant in the development of local Jewish art. He was one of the four Romanian Jewish artists who marked the development of Zionist arts and crafts before 1950—the others were Jean David, Reuven Rubin, Jacob Eisenscher;[156] David, who was Janco's friend in Bucharest, joined him in Tel Aviv after an adventurous trip and internment in Cyprus.[157] In particular, Janco was an early influence on three Zionist artists who had arrived to Palestine from other regions: Avigdor Stematsky, Yehezkel Streichman and Joseph Zaritsky.[158] He was soon recognized as a leading presence in the artist community, receiving Tel Aviv Municipality's Dizengoff Prize in 1945, and again in 1946.[159] These contacts were not interrupted by the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and Janco was a figure of prominence in the art scene of independent Israel. The new nation enlisted his services as planner, and he was assigned to the team of Arieh Sharon, being tasked with designing and preserving the Israeli national parks.[160] As a result of his intervention, in 1949 the area of Old Jaffa was turned into an artist-friendly community.[160] He was again a recipient of the Dizengoff Prize in 1950 and 1951, resuming his activity as an art promoter and teacher, with lectures at the Seminar HaKibbutzim college (1953).[159] His artwork was again on show in New York City for a 1950 retrospective.[146] In 1952 he was one of three artists whose work was displayed at the Israeli pavilion at the Venice Biennale, the first year Israel had its own pavilion at the Biennale. The other two artists were Reuven Rubin and Moshe Mokady.[161] Marcel Janco began his main Israeli project in May 1953, after he had been mandated by the Israeli government to prospect the mountainous regions and delimit a new national park south of Mount Carmel.[162] In his own account (since disputed by others),[160] he came across the deserted village of Ein Hod, which the Palestinian Arabs had largely discarded during the 1948 exodus. Janco felt that the place should not be demolished, obtaining a lease on it from the authorities, and rebuilt the place with other Israeli artists who worked there on weekends;[163] Janco's main residence continued to be in the neighborhood of Ramat Aviv.[148] His plot of land in Ein Hod was previously owned by the Arab Abu Faruq, who died in 1991 at the Jenin refugee camp.[164] Janco became the site's first mayor, reorganizing it into a utopian society, art colony and tourist attraction, and instituted the strict code of requirements for one's settlement in Ein Hod.[165] Also in the 1950s, Janco was a founding member of Ofakim Hadashim ("New Horizons") group, comprising Israeli painters committed to abstract art, and headed by Zaritsky. Although he shared the artistic vision, Janco probably did not approve of Zaritsky's rejection of all narrative art and, in 1956, left the group.[166][167] He continued to explore new media, and, together with artisan Itche Mambush, he created a series of reliefs and tapestries.[148][168] Janco also drew in pastel, and created humorous illustrations to Don Quixote.[149] His individual contributions received further praise from his peers and his public: in 1958, he was honored with the Histadrut union's prize.[159] Over the next two decades, Marcel Janco had several new personal exhibits, notably in Tel Aviv (1959, 1972), Milan (1960) and Paris (1963).[146] Having attended the 1966 Venice Biennale,[169] he won the Israel Prize of 1967, in recognition of his work as painter.[146][159][160][168][170] In 1960, Janco's presence in Ein Hod was challenged by the returning Palestinians, who tried to reclaim the land. He organized a community defense force, headed by sculptor Tuvia Iuster, which guarded Ein Hod until Israel Police intervened against the protesters.[171] Janco was generally tolerant of those Palestinians who set up the small rival community of Ein Hawd: he notably maintained contacts with tribal leader Abu Hilmi and with Arab landscape artist Muin Zaydan Abu al-Hayja, but the relationship between the two villages was generally distant.[172] Janco has also been described as "disinterested" in the fate of his Arab neighbors.[160] For a second time, Janco reunited with Costin when the latter fled Communist Romania. The writer was a political refugee, singled out at home for "Zionist" activities, and implicated in the show trial of Milița Petrașcu.[124][173] Costin later left Israel, settling in France.[10][174] Janco himself made efforts to preserve a link with Romania, and sent albums to his artist friends beyond the Iron Curtain.[175] He met with folklorist and former political prisoner Harry Brauner,[169] poet Ștefan Iureș, painter Matilda Ulmu and art historian Geo Șerban.[148][149] His studio was home to other Jewish Romanian emigrants fleeing communism, including female artist Liana Saxone-Horodi.[148][168] From Israel, he spoke about his Romanian experience at length, first in an interview with writer Solo Har and then in a 1980 article for Shevet Romania magazine.[6] A year later, from his home in Australia, the modernist promoter Lucian Boz headlined a selection of his works with Janco's portrait of the author.[176] Also in 1981, a selection of Janco's drawings of Holocaust crimes was issued with the Am Oved album Kav Haketz/On the Edge.[6] The following year, he received the "Worthy of Tel Aviv" distinction, granted by the city government.[159] One of the last public events to be attended by Marcel Janco was the creation of the Janco-Dada Museum at his home in Ein Hod.[71][146][148][168][170] By then, Janco is said to have been concerned about the overall benefits of Jewish relocation into an Arab village.[177] Among his final appearances in public was a 1984 interview with Schweizer Fernsehen station, in which he revisited his Dada activities.[26] Work From Iser's Postimpressionism to Expressionist Dada The earliest works by Janco show the influence of Iosif Iser, adopting the visual trappings of Postimpressionism and illustrating, for the first time in Janco's career, the interest in modern composition techniques;[178] Liana Saxone-Horodi believes that Iser's manner is most evident in Janco's 1911 work, Self-portrait with Hat, preserved at the Janco-Dada Museum.[168] Around 1913, Janco was in more direct contact with the French sources of Iser's Postimpressionism, having by then discovered on his own the work of André Derain.[15] However, his covers and vignettes for Simbolul are generally Art Nouveau and Symbolist to the point of pastiche. Researcher Tom Sandqvist presumes that Janco was in effect following his friends' command, as "his own preferences were soon closer to Cézanne and cubist-influenced modes of expression".[179] Futurism was thrown into the mix, a fact acknowledged by Janco during his 1930 encounter with Marinetti: "we were nourished by [Futurist] ideas and empowered to be enthusiastic."[22] A third major source for Janco's imagery was Expressionism, initially coming to him from both Die Brücke artists and Oskar Kokoschka,[180] and later reactivated by his contacts at Der Sturm.[65] Among his early canvasses, the self-portraits and the portraits of clowns have been discussed as particularly notable samples of Romanian Expressionism.[181] The influence of Germanic Postimpressionism on Janco's art was crystallized during his studies at the Federal Institute of Technology. His more important teachers there, Sandqvist observes, were sculptor Johann Jakob Graf and architect Karl Moser—the latter in particular, for his ideas on the architectural Gesamtkunstwerk. Sandqvist suggests that, after modernizing Moser's ideas, Janco first theorized that Abstract-Expressionistic decorations needed to an integral part of the basic architectural design.[182] In paintings from Janco's Cabaret Voltaire period, the figurative element is not canceled, but usually subdued: the works show a mix of influences, primarily from Cubism or Futurism, and have been described by Janco's colleague Arp as "zigzag naturalism".[183] His series on dancers, painted before 1917 and housed by the Israel Museum, moves between the atmospheric qualities of a Futurism filtered through Dada and Janco's first experiments in purely abstract art.[184] His assimilation of Expressionism has led scholar John Willett to discuss Dadaism as visually an Expressionist sub-current,[185] and, in retrospect, Janco himself claimed that Dada was not as much a fully-fledged new artistic style as "a force coming from the physical instincts", directed against "everything cheap".[186] However, his own work also features the quintessentially Dada found art, or everyday objects rearranged as art—reportedly, he was the first Dadaist to experiment in such manner.[187] His other studies, in collage and relief, have been described by reviewers as "a personal synthesis which is identifiable as his own to this day",[188] and ranked among "the most courageous and original experiments in abstract art."[71] The Contimporanul years were a period of artistic exploration. Although a Constructivist architect and designer, Janco was still identifiable as an Expressionist in his ink-drawn portraits of writers and in some of his canvasses. According to scholar Dan Grigorescu, his essays of the time fluctuate away from Constructivism, and adopt ideas common in Expressionism, Surrealism, or even the Byzantine revival suggested by anti-modernist reviews.[189] His Rolling the Dice piece is a meditation on the tragedy of human existence, which reinterprets the symbolism of zodiacs[190] and probably alludes to the seedier side of urban life.[191] The Expressionist transfiguration of shapes was especially noted in his drawings of Mateiu Caragiale and Stephan Roll, created from harsh and seemingly spontaneous lines.[180] The style was ridiculed at the time by traditionalist poet George Topîrceanu, who wrote that, in Antologia poeților de azi, Ion Barbu looked "a Mongolian bandit", Felix Aderca "a shoemaker's apprentice", and Alice Călugăru "an alcoholic fishwife".[105] Such views were contrasted by Perpessicius' publicized belief that Janco was "the purest artist", his drawings evidencing the "great vital force" of his subjects.[192] Topîrceanu's claim is contradicted by literary historian Barbu Cioculescu, who finds the Antologia drawings: "exquisitely synthetic—some of them masterpieces; take it from someone who has seen from up close many of the writers portrayed".[193] Primitive and collective art As a Dada, Janco was interested in the raw and primitive art, generated by "the instinctive power of creation", and he credited Paul Klee with having helped him "interpret the soul of primitive man".[39][194] A distinct application of Dada was his own work with masks, seen by Hugo Ball as having generated fascination with their unusual "kinetic power", and useful for performing "larger-than-life characters and passions."[195] However, Janco's understanding of African masks, idols and ritual was, according to art historians Mark Antliff and Patricia Leighten, "deeply romanticized" and "reductive".[196] At the end of the Dada episode, Janco also took his growing interest in primitivism to the level of academia: in his 1918 speech at the Zurich Institute, he declared that African, Etruscan, Byzantine and Romanesque arts were more genuine and "spiritual" than the Renaissance and its derivatives, while also issuing special praise for the modern spirituality of Derain, Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse; his lecture rated all Cubists above all Impressionists.[197] In his contribution to Das Neue Leben theory, he spoke about a return to the handicrafts, ending the "divorce" between art and life.[198] Art critic Harry Seiwert also notes that Janco's art also reflected his contact with various other alternative models, found in Ancient Egyptian and Far Eastern art, in the paintings of Cimabue and El Greco, and in Cloisonnism.[199] Seiwert and Sandqvist both propose that Janco's work had other enduring connections with the visual conventions of Hassidism and the dark tones often favored by 20th-century Jewish art.[200] Around 1919, Janco had come to describe Constructivism as a needed transition from "negative" Dada, an idea also pioneered by his colleagues Kurt Schwitters and Theo van Doesburg, and finding an early expression in Janco's plaster relief Soleil jardin clair (1918).[201] In part, Janco's post-Dadaism responded to the socialist ideals of Constructivism. According to Sandqvist, his affiliation to Das Neue Leben and his sporadic contacts with the Art Soviet of Munich meant that he was trying to "adjust to the spirit of the age."[202] Historian Hubert F. van der Berg also notes that the socialist ideal of "a new life", implicitly adopted by Janco, was a natural peacetime development of Dada's discourse about "the new man".[203] The activity at Contimporanul cemented Janco's belief in primitivism and the values of outsider art. In a 1924 piece, he argued: "The art of children, folk art, the art of psychopaths, of primitive people are the liveliest ones, the most expressive ones, coming to us from organic depths, without cultivated beauty."[204] He ridiculed, like Ion Vinea before him, the substance of Romania's academic traditionalism, notably in a provocative drawing which showed a grazing donkey under the title "Tradition".[205] Instead, Janco was publicizing the idea that Dada and various other strands of modernism were the actual tradition, for being indirectly indebted to the absurdist nature of Romanian folklore.[206] The matter of Janco's own debt to his country's peasant art is more controversial. In the 1920s, Vinea discussed Janco's Cubism is a direct echo of an old abstract art that is supposedly native and exclusive to Romania—an assumption considered exaggerated by Paul Cernat.[207] Seiwert suggests that virtually none of Janco's paintings show a verifiable contact with Romanian primitivism, but his opinion is questioned by Sandqvist: he writes that Janco's masks and prints are homages to traditional Romanian decorative patterns.[208] Beyond Constructivism For a while, Janco rediscovered himself in abstract and semi-abstract art, describing the basic geometrical shapes as pure forms, and art as the effort to organize these forms—ideas akin with the "picto-poetry" of Romanian avant-garde writers such as Ilarie Voronca.[209] After 1930, when Constructivism lost its position of leadership on Romania's artistic scene,[84][210] Janco made a return to "analytic" Cubism, echoing the early work of Picasso in his painting Peasant Woman and Eggs.[180] This period centered on various semi-figurative cityscapes, which, according to critics such as Alexandru D. Broșteanu[77] and Sorin Alexandrescu,[211] stand out for their objectification of the human figure. Also then, Janco worked on seascape and still life canvasses, in brown tones and Cubist arrangements.[168] Diversification touched his other activities. His theory of set design still mixed Expressionism into Futurism and Constructivism, calling for an actor-based Expressionist theater and a mechanized, movement-based, cinema.[212] However, his parallel work in costume design evidenced a toning down of avant-garde tendencies (to the displeasure of his colleagues at Integral magazine), and a growing preoccupation with commedia dell'arte.[213] In discussing architecture, Janco described himself and the other Artistes Radicaux as the mentors of Europe's modernist urban planners, including Bruno Taut and the Bauhaus group.[214] The ideals of collectivism in art, "art as life", and a "Constructivist revolution" dominated his programmatic texts of the mid-1920s, which offered as examples the activism of De Stijl, Blok and Soviet Constructivist architecture.[215] His own architectural work was entirely dedicated to functionalism: in his words, the purpose of architecture was a "harmony of forms", with designs as simplified as to resemble crystals.[216] His experiment on Trinității Street, with its angular pattern and multicolored facade, has been rated one of the most spectacular samples of Romanian modernism,[71] while the buildings he designed later came with Art Deco elements, including the "ocean liner"-type balconies.[175] At the other end, his Predeal sanatorium was described by Sandqvist as "a long, narrow white building clearly signaling its function as a hospital" and "smoothly adapting to the landscape."[109] Functionalism was further illustrated by Janco's ideas on furniture design, where he favored "small heights", "simple aesthetics", as well as "a maximum of comfort"[217] which would "pay no tribute to richness".[71] Scholars have also noted that "the breath of humanitarianism" unites the work of Janco, Maxy and Corneliu Michăilescu, beyond their shared eclecticism.[218] Cernat nevertheless suggests that the Contimporanul group was politically disengaged and making efforts to separate art from politics, giving positive coverage to both Marxism and Italian fascism.[219] In that context, a more evidently Marxist form of Constructivism, close to Proletkult, was being taken up independently by Maxy.[84] Janco's functionalist goal was still coupled with socialist imagery, as in Către o arhitectură a Bucureștilor, called an architectural tikkun olam by Sandqvist.[76] Indebted to Le Corbusier's New Architecture,[220] Janco theorized that Bucharest had the "luck" of not yet being systematized or built-up, and that it could be easily turned into a garden city, without ever repeating the West's "chain of mistakes".[71] According to architecture historians Mihaela Criticos and Ana Maria Zahariade, Janco's creed was not in fact radically different from mainstream Romanian opinions: "although declaring themselves committed to the modernist agenda, [Janco and others] nuance it with their own formulas, away from the abstract utopias of the International Style."[221] A similar point is made by Sorin Alexandrescu, who attested a "general contradiction" in Janco's architecture, that between Janco's own wishes and those of his patrons.[211] Holocaust art and Israeli abstractionism Soon after his first visit to Palestine and his Zionist conversion, Janco began painting landscapes in optimistic tones, including a general view over Tiberias[168] and bucolic watercolors.[170] By the time of World War II, however, he was again an Expressionist, fascinated with the major existential themes. The war experience inspired his 1945 painting Fascist Genocide, which is also seen by Grigorescu as one of his contributions to Expressionism.[222] Janco's sketches of the Bucharest Pogrom are, according to cultural historian David G. Roskies, "extraordinary" and in complete break with Janco's "earlier surrealistic style"; he paraphrases the rationale for this change as: "Why bother with surrealism when the world itself has gone crazy?"[153] According to the painter's own definition: "I was drawing with the thirst of one who is being chased around, desperate to quench it and find his refuge."[6] As he recalled, these works were not well received in the post-war Zionist community, because they evoked painful memories in a general mood of optimism; as a result, Janco decided to change his palette and tackle subjects which related exclusively to his new country.[223] An exception to this self-imposed rule was the motif of "wounded soldiers", which continued to preoccupy him after 1948, and was also thematically linked to the wartime massacres.[224] During and after his Ofakim Hadashim engagement, Marcel Janco again moved into the realm of pure abstraction, which he believed represented the artistic "language" of a new age.[225] This was an older idea, as first illustrated by his 1925 attempt to create an "alphabet of shapes", the basis for any abstractionist composition.[84] His subsequent preoccupations were linked to the Jewish tradition of interpreting symbols, and he reportedly told scholar Moshe Idel: "I paint in Kabbalah".[226] He was still eclectic beyond abstractionism, and made frequent returns to brightly colored, semi-figurative, landscapes.[168] Also eclectic is Janco's sparse contribution to the architecture of Israel, including a Herzliya Pituah villa that is entirely built in the non-modernist Poble Espanyol style.[160] Another component of Janco's work was his revisiting of earlier Dada experiments: he redid some of his Dada masks,[168] and supported the international avant-garde group NO!art.[227] He later worked on the Imaginary Animals cycle of paintings, inspired by the short stories of Urmuz.[168][209] Meanwhile, his Ein Hod project was in various ways the culmination of his promotion of folk art, and, in Janco's own definition, "my last Dada activity".[198] According to some interpretations, he may have been directly following the example of Hans Arp's "Waggis" commune, which existed in 1920s Switzerland.[55][148] Anthropologist Susan Slyomovics argues that the Ein Hod project as a whole was an alternative to the standard practice of Zionist colonization, since, instead of creating new buildings in the ancient scenery, it showed attempts to cultivate the existing Arab-style masonry.[228] She also writes that Janco's landscapes of the place "romanticize" his own contact with the Palestinians, and that they fail to clarify whether he thought of Arabs as refugees or as fellow inhabitants.[229] Journalist Esther Zanberg describes Janco as an "Orientalist" driven by "the mythology surrounding Israeli nationalistic Zionism."[160] Art historian Nissim Gal also concludes: "the pastoral vision of Janco [does not] include any trace of the inhabitants of the former Arab village".[167] Legacy Admired by his contemporaries on the avant-garde scene, Marcel Janco is mentioned or portrayed in several works by Romanian authors. In the 1910s, Vinea dedicated him the poem "Tuzla", which is one of his first contributions to modernist literature;[230] a decade later, one of the Janco exhibits inspired him to write the prose poem Danțul pe frânghie ("Dancing on a Wire").[231] Following his conflict with the painter, Tzara struck out all similar dedications from his own poems.[55] Before their friendship waned, Ion Barbu also contributed a homage to Janco, referring to his Constructivist paintings as "storms of protractors".[120] In addition, Janco was dedicated a poem by Belgian artist Émile Malespine, and is mentioned in one of Marinetti's poetic texts about the 1930 visit to Romania,[232] as well as in the verse of neo-Dadaist Valery Oisteanu.[233] Janco's portrait was painted by colleague Victor Brauner, in 1924.[120] According to Sandqvist, there are three competing aspects in Janco's legacy, which relate to the complexity of his profile: "In Western cultural history Marcel Janco is best known as one of the founding members of Dada in Zurich in 1916. Regarding the Romanian avant-garde in the interwar period Marcel Hermann Iancu is more known as the spider in the web and as the designer of a great number of Romania's first constructivist buildings [...]. On the other hand, in Israel Marcel Janco is best known as the 'father' of the artists' colony of Ein Hod [...] and for his pedagogic achievements in the young Jewish state."[234] Janco's memory is principally maintained by his Ein Hod museum. The building was damaged by the 2010 forest fire, but reopened and grew to include a permanent exhibit of Janco's art.[168] Janco's paintings still have a measurable impact on the contemporary Israeli avant-garde, which is largely divided between the abstractionism he helped introduce and the neorealistic disciples of Michail Grobman and Avraham Ofek.[235] The Romanian communist regime, which cracked down on modernism, reconfirmed the confiscation of villas built by the Birou de Studii Moderne, which it then leased to other families.[71][130] One of these lodgings, the Wexler Villa, was assigned as the residence of communist poet Eugen Jebeleanu.[130][236] The regime tended to ignore Janco's contributions, which were not listed in the architectural who's who,[237] and it became standard practice to generally omit references to his Jewish ethnicity.[6] He was however honored with a special issue of Secolul 20 literary magazine, in 1979,[148] and interviewed for Tribuna and Luceafărul journals (1981, 1984).[238] His architectural legacy was affected by the large-scale demolition program of the 1980s. Most of the buildings were spared, however, because they are scattered throughout residential Bucharest.[175] Some 20 of his Bucharest structures were still standing twenty years later,[237] but the lack of a renovation program and the shortages of late communism brought steady decay.[71][160][175][237] After the Romanian Revolution of 1989, Marcel Janco's buildings were subject to legal battles, as the original owners and their descendants were allowed to contest the nationalization.[71] These landmarks, like other modernist assets, became treasured real estate: in 1996, a Janco house was valued at 500,000 United States dollars.[175] The sale of such property happened at a fast pace, reportedly surpassing the standardized conservation effort, and experts noted with alarm that Janco villas were being defaced with anachronistic additions, such as insulated glazing[237][239] and structural interventions,[130] or eclipsed by the newer highrise.[240] In 2008, despite calls from within the academic community, only three of his buildings had been inscribed in the National Register of Historic Monuments.[237] Janco was again being referenced as a possible model for new generations of Romanian architects and urban planners. In a 2011 article, poet and architect August Ioan claimed: "Romanian architecture is, apart from its few years with Marcel Janco, one that has denied itself experimentation, projective thinking, anticipation. [...] it is content with imports, copies, nuances or pure and simple stagnation."[241] This stance is contrasted by that of designer Radu Comșa, who argues that praise for Janco often lacks "the recoil of objectivity".[157] Janco's programmatic texts on the issue were collected and reviewed by historian Andrei Pippidi in the 2003 retrospective anthology București – Istorie și urbanism ("Bucharest. History and Urban Planning").[242] Following a proposal formulated by poet and publicist Nicolae Tzone at the Bucharest Conference on Surrealism, in 2001,[243] Janco's sketch for Vinea's "country workshop" was used in designing Bucharest's ICARE, the Institute for the Study of the Romanian and European Avant-garde.[244] The Bazaltin building was used as the offices of TVR Cultural station.[237] In the realm of visual arts, curators Anca Bocăneț and Dana Herbay organized a centennial Marcel Janco exhibit at the Bucharest Museum of Art (MNAR),[245] with additional contributions from writer Magda Cârneci.[175] In 2000, his work was featured in the "Jewish Art of Romania" retrospective, hosted by Cotroceni Palace.[246] The local art market rediscovered Janco's art, and, in June 2009, one of his seascapes sold in auction for 130,000 Euro, the second largest sum ever fetched by a painting in Romania.[247] There was a noted increase in his overall market value,[248] and he became interesting to art forgers.[249] Outside Romania, Janco's work has been reviewed in specialized monographs by Harry Seiwert (1993)[250] and Michael Ilk (2001).[120][251] His work as painter and sculptor has been dedicated special exhibits in Berlin,[120] Essen (Museum Folkwang) and Budapest,[251] while his architecture was presented abroad with exhibitions at the Technical University Munich and the Bauhaus Center.[160] Among the events showcasing Janco's art, some focused exclusively on his rediscovered Holocaust paintings and drawings. These shows include On the Edge (Yad Vashem, 1990)[6] and Destine la răscruce ("Destinies at Crossroads", MNAR, 2011).[252] His canvasses and collages went on sale at Bonhams[170] and Sotheby's.[188] .
Honi HaMe'agel
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Gravestone of Honi
Honi HaMe'agel (חוני המעגל Khoni, Choni, or Ḥoni; lit. Honi the Circle-drawer) was a Jewish scholar of the 1st-century BC, during the age of the tannaim, the scholars from whose teachings the Mishnah was derived.
During the 1st century BC, a variety of religious movements and splinter groups developed amongst the Jews in Judea. A number of individuals claimed to be miracle workers in the tradition of Elijah and Elisha, the ancient Jewish prophets. The Babylonian Talmud, and the Jerusalem Talmud both provide some examples of such Jewish miracle workers, including Honi.[citation needed]
Contents
1 Circle drawing incident
2 Extended sleep story
2.1 In the Babylonian Talmud (Carob tree story)
2.2 In the Jerusalem Talmud
3 Death
4 See also
5 References
Circle drawing incident[edit]
Tomb of Honi HaMe'agel in Hatzor HaGlilit, Galilee
His surname is derived from an incident in which, according to the Babylonian Talmud, his prayer for rain was miraculously answered. On one occasion, when God did not send rain well into the winter (in Israel, it rains mainly in the winter), Honi drew a circle in the dust, stood inside it, and informed God that he would not move until it rained. When it began to drizzle, Honi told God that he was not satisfied and expected more rain; it then began to pour. He explained that he wanted a calm rain, at which point the rain calmed to a normal rain.[1]
He was almost put into herem (excommunication) for the above incident in which he showed "dishonor" to God. However, Shimon ben Shetach, the brother of Queen Shlomtzion, excused him, saying that Honi had a special relationship with God.
Two variations of this story appear in the Talmud, in Taanit 19a[2] and 23a.[3]
Extended sleep story[edit]
Two variations of a story are recorded—in the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds—in which Honi fell asleep for decades before awaking. The story provides a Jewish version on the theme of a person or persons (as the Seven Sleepers) sleeping for many decades and waking to find a changed world—a theme originating in the story of Epimenides—found in many divergent cultures and traditions, and in modern times associated especially with the Rip Van Winkle story.
In the Babylonian Talmud (Carob tree story)[edit]
The Babylonian Talmud tells the following story, in which Honi slept for 70 years, before awaking and then dying:
Rabbi Yohanan said: "This righteous man [Honi] was troubled throughout the whole of his life concerning the meaning of the verse, 'A Song of Ascents: When the Lord brought back those that returned to Zion, we were like dreamers' (Psalms 126:1). [Honi asked] Is it possible for seventy years to be like a dream? How could anyone sleep for seventy years?"
One day Honi was journeying on the road and he saw a man planting a carob tree. He asked, "How long does it take [for this tree] to bear fruit?" The man replied: "Seventy years." Honi then further asked him: "Are you certain that you will live another seventy years?" The man replied: "I found [already grown] carob trees in the world; as my forefathers planted those for me so I too plant these for my children."
Honi sat down to have a meal and sleep overcame him. As he slept a rocky formation enclosed upon him which hid him from sight and he slept for seventy years. When he awoke he saw a man gathering the fruit of the carob tree and Honi asked him, "Are you the man who planted the tree?" The man replied: "I am his grandson." Thereupon Honi exclaimed: "It is clear that I have slept for seventy years." He then caught sight of his ass which had given birth to several generations of mules, and he returned home. There he inquired, "Is the son of Honi the Circle-Drawer still alive?" The people answered him, "His son is no more, but his grandson is still living." Thereupon he said to them: "I am Honi the Circle-Drawer," but no one would believe him.
He then repaired to the beit hamidrash [study hall] and there he overheard the scholars say, "The law is as clear to us as in the days of Honi the Circle-Drawer," for whenever he came to the beit hamidrash he would settle for the scholars any difficulty that they had. Whereupon he called out, "I am he!" But the scholars would not believe him nor did they give him the honor due to him. This hurt him greatly and he prayed for mercy, and he died. Raba said: "Hence the saying, 'Either companionship or death.'"[4]
The lesson that is taken away from this story is that if you give something you will not be alive to see, you are still giving.
In the Jerusalem Talmud[edit]
In the Jerusalem Talmud, the circle drawing story is notably missing, and the sleep theme does not manifest as the carob tree story. Instead, the story is about Honi sleeping in a cave for seventy years, then returning to the Temple, where he was able to prove his identity:
Said R. Yudan Giria: "This is Honi the Circle Maker [of M. Ta. 3:9], the grandson of Honi the Circle Maker. Near the time of the destruction of the Temple, he went out to a mountain to his workers. Before he got there, it rained. He went into a cave. Once he sat down there he fell asleep. He remained sound asleep for seventy years, until the Temple was destroyed and it was rebuilt a second time. At the end of the seventy years he awoke from his sleep. He went out of the cave, and he saw a world completely changed. An area that had been planted with vineyards now produced olives, and an area planted with olives now produced grain. He asked the people of the district, "What do you hear in the world?" They said to him, "And don't you know what the news is?" He said to them, "No." They said to him, "Who are you?" He said to them, "Honi the Circle Maker." They said to him, "We heard that when he would go into the Temple courtyard, it would be illuminated." He went in and illuminated the place and recited the following verse of Scripture, "When the Lord restored the fortune of Zion, we were like those who dream" (Ps. 126:1).[5][6]
Unlike the Babylonian Talmud story, the Jerusalem Talmud story does not describe Honi's death. This more closely resembles the Epimenides sleep story in which Epimenides is able to pass on his message. According to one source, this difference could be specifically because of the two pieces this story is based on: Honi's death in Josephus (described below), and the Epimenides sleep theme. The idea would be that in the Jerusalem Talmud's case, the author more closely followed the Epimenides story to get their point across, while in the Babylonian Talmud, the author had a more metaphorical approach to his death in Josephus.[5]
Death[edit]
According to Josephus, in Antiquities of the Jews, Honi met his end in the context of conflict between the Hasmonean brothers Hyrcanus II, backed by the Pharisees and advised by Antipater the Idumaean, and Aristobulus II, backed by the Sadducees. Around 63 BC, Honi was captured by the followers of Hyrcanus besieging Jerusalem and was asked to pray for the demise of their opponents. Honi, however, prayed: "Lord of the universe, as the besieged and the besiegers both belong to Your people, I beseech You not to answer the evil prayers of either." After this, the followers of Hyrcanus stoned him to death.[7]
The Babylonian Talmud records a different story of his death, as part of the aforementioned carob tree story. The Maharsha explains the discrepancy between the Talmud and Josephus by stating that Honi was "presumed" killed by Hyrcanus II's men, but in reality was put into a deep sleep or coma for 70 years, and only then died.[4]
Honi's grave is found near the town of Hatzor HaGlilit in northern Israel. ******
The Death of Honi the Circle Maker
In: Review of Rabbinic Judaism
Author: Zvi Ron 1
View More
Online Publication Date:03 Aug 2017
In: Volume 20: Issue 2
Article Type: Research Article
Page Count: 235–250
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1163/15700704-12341328
Keywords: Honi; Circle Maker; Josephus; long sleeper
Full Access
Download PDF
Get Permissions
Abstract/Excerpt
Full Text
PDF
Abstract
Ancient literature preserves two accounts of the death of Honi the Circle Maker. One is in Josephus, where Honi is murdered by Jews after failing to participate in the Hasmonean civil war; the other is found in B. Ta. 23a, where Honi prays for death when nobody recognizes him after he awakes from sleeping for seventy years. While these two accounts seem to have no relation to each other, upon comparing the Bavli story to other tales of saintly long sleepers it appears that the Bavli story is a negative twist on the classic plot. The Bavli story is now understood as an aggadic version of the Josephus story, in the same category as the Bar Kamtza story and other similar explanatory narratives meant to highlight the reasons for tragedies in Jewish history.
Keywords: Honi; Circle Maker; Josephus; long sleeper
Honi the Circle Maker (Honi haMeagel) is a well known figure in Jewish folklore. He is named after an episode recounted in M. Ta. 3:8,1 where during a severe drought he drew a circle and, placing himself within it, prayed: “Creator of the Universe! Thy children have always looked up to me as being like a son of Thy house before Thee. I swear, therefore, by Thy Great Name, that I will not move from this place until Thou wilt have compassion on Thy children.” It began raining lightly, and Honi prayed for a strong rain. When the rain was too forceful, Honi prayed for rain of blessing. Subsequently, due to flooding, he had to pray for the rain to stop. Additional details appear in the versions at B. Ta. 23a and Y. Ta. 3:9, but the story is fundamentally the same.2
There are two accounts of the death of Honi the Circle Maker.3 The earlier version is found in Josephus (Antiquities 14:2:1) and takes place during the struggle for power between Hyrcanus ii and Aristobulus ii, sons of the Hasmonean Queen Alexandra Salome:
The followers of Hyrcanus laid siege to the Temple, where Aristobulus had fled, and sought assistance from Honi: Now there was a certain Honi (called Onias in Josephus), who, being a righteous man and dear to God, had once in a rainless period prayed to God to end the drought and God heard his prayer and sent rain.4 This man hid himself when he saw that the civil war continued to rage, but he was taken to the camp of the Jews and was asked to place a curse on Aristobulus and his fellow rebels, just as he had by his prayers put an end to the rainless period. But when in spite of his refusals and excuses he was forced to speak by the mob, he stood up in their midst and said, “O God, King of the Universe, since these men standing beside me are Thy people, and those who are besieged are Thy priests, I beseech Thee not to hearken to them against these men nor to bring to pass what these men ask Thee to do to those others.” And when he had prayed in this manner, the villains among the Jews who stood round him stoned him to death.5
A later account6 is found in B. Ta. 23a:
R. Yohanan said: This righteous man [Honi] was throughout the whole of his life troubled about the meaning of the verse, “A Song of Ascents, When the Lord brought back those that returned to Zion, we were like unto them that dream” (Ps. 126:1). Is it possible for a man to dream continuously for seventy years? One day he was journeying on the road and he saw a man planting a carob tree; he asked him, “How long does it take [for this tree] to bear fruit?” The man replied: “Seventy years.” He then further asked him: “Are you certain that you will live another seventy years?” The man replied: “I found [ready grown] carob trees in the world; as my forefathers planted these for me so I too plant these for my children.” Honi sat down to have a meal and sleep overcame him. As he slept a rocky formation enclosed upon him which hid him from sight and he continued to sleep for seventy years. When he awoke he saw a man gathering the fruit of the carob tree and he asked him, “Are you the man who planted the tree?” The man replied: “I am his grandson.” Thereupon he exclaimed: “It is clear that I slept for seventy years.” He then caught sight of his ass who had given birth to several generations of mules; and he returned home. He there enquired, “Is the son of Honi the Circle Drawer still alive?” The people answered him, “His son is no more, but his grandson is still living.” Thereupon he said to them: “I am Honi the Circle Drawer,” but no one would believe him. He then repaired to the study hall and there he overheard the scholars say, “The law is as clear to us as in the days of Honi the Circle-Drawer,” for whenever he came to the study hall he would settle for the scholars any difficulty that they had. Whereupon he called out, “I am he;” but the scholars would not believe him nor did they give him the honor due to him. This hurt him greatly and he prayed [for death] and he died. Rava said: “Hence the saying, ‘Either companionship or death.’”7
The Josephus story of the death of Honi during the civil war between Hyrcanus ii and Aristobulus ii (64 bce) is clearly talking about the same Honi as M. Ta. 3:88 and fits within the reported timeframe of that episode, which ended with Shimon b. Shetah’s speaking to Honi.9 It is generally understood that there is no parallel to the Josephus version in the rabbinic literature10 or anywhere else.11 The two accounts of the death of Honi are understood to be contradictory.12
Y. Ta. 3:9 tells of an earlier Honi the Circle Maker, grandfather of the Honi from M. Ta. 3:8, who lived right before the destruction of the First Temple. He fell asleep in a cave for seventy years and woke up once the Second Temple had been built.13 When he awoke people did not believe who he was until he proved his identity:
Said R. Yudan Giria: This is Honi the Circle Maker [of M. Ta. 3:9], the grandson of Honi the Circle Maker. Near the time of the destruction of the Temple, he went out to a mountain to his workers. Before he got there, it rained. He went into a cave. Once he sat down there he fell asleep. He remained sound asleep for seventy years, until the Temple was destroyed and it was rebuilt a second time. At the end of the seventy years he awoke from his sleep. He went out of the cave, and he saw a world completely changed. An area that had been planted with vineyards now produced olives, and an area planted with olives now produced grain. He asked the people of the district, “What do you hear in the world?” They said to him, “And don’t you know what the news is?” He said to them, “No.” They said to him, “Who are you?” He said to them, “Honi the Circle Maker.” They said to him, “We heard that when he would go into the Temple courtyard, it would be illuminated.” He went in and illuminated the place and recited the following verse of Scripture, “When the Lord restored the fortune of Zion, we were like those who dream” (Ps. 126:1).14
This story has many elements in common with the Talmudic story: a protagonist named Honi, the same verse from Psalms, a seventy year sleep, the pastoral setting, and questioning the sleeper’s identity. This suggests that the Babylonian Talmud presented a reworking of a Palestinian tradition.15 There are a number of differences between the Bavli’s and Yerushalmi’s narratives, for example, the emphasis on the beit midrash and study in the Bavli and emphasis on the Temple in the Yerushalmi,16 but, even more significantly, the tragic ending in the Bavli, where Honi dies alone and unrecognized, and the happy ending in Yerushalmi, where Honi sees the Temple, illuminates it, and is recognized for who he is. If we compare these two Honi long sleep stories to other stories of this genre, it emerges that the Yerushalmi version follows the classic resolution of the story, and the Bavli’s version radically diverges from it.
In the Pseudepigrapha, in 4 Baruch, we find a story of Abimelech the Ethiopian servant, who sleeps for sixty six years.17 There Jeremiah prays that Abimelech be spared seeing the destruction of Jerusalem (4 Bar. 3:13), because he had earlier saved Jeremiah’s life (Jer. 38:4–13). After awakening and praying to God, Abimelech was brought by an angel to Baruch who recognized him and was happy to see him (4 Bar. 6:1–6). This story in 4 Baruch has many literary parallels with the Honi sleeping story.18
Another example of this motif is the story of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus,19 who fall asleep in a cave during the persecution of Christians under the Roman emperor Decius and awake almost four centuries later to find that Christianity has become the official religion of the Roman Empire.20 They were awakened by God to help the Christians of that time, “to confirm their faith in the resurrection of the dead.”21 They were ultimately recognized through the ancient coins that they tried to use to buy food.
In these stories, the character sleeps through the troubled times and awakens to discover that the “terrible dream has passed.”22 The Islamic version of the Seven Sleepers, the “Companions of the Cave,” contains the same elements of sleeping through a time of paganism and religious persecution to awaken when that time is over.23 This story is also ultimately based on 4 Baruch and contains many parallels to it.24
The Koran (Sura 2:259), in another narrative containing many parallels to the story of Abimelech in 4 Baruch, tells of Ezra’s sleeping for a hundred years.25 In this story, Ezra falls asleep in a time when “the people had long been lost,” and he is awakened by an angel a century later, after “there had been changes in Israelite affairs.” Ezra’s long sleep demonstrates that God revives the dead. As with the long sleepers in the other stories, Ezra returns home and proves his identity by performing a miracle.26
The archetype for all of these stories27 is the Greek legend of the long sleep of Epimenides, recorded by Diogenes Laertius in the early third-century bce:28
He once, when he was sent by his father into the fields to look for a sheep, turned out of the road at mid-day and lay down in a certain cave and fell asleep and slept there fifty-seven years; and after that, when he awoke, he went on looking for the sheep, thinking that he had been taking a short nap; but as he could not find it he went on to the field and there he found everything changed, and the estate in another person’s possession, and so he came back again to the city in great perplexity, and as he was going into his own house he met some people who asked him who he was, until at last he found his younger brother who had now become an old man, and from him he learnt all the truth. And when he was recognized he was considered by the Greeks as a person especially beloved by the gods, on which account when the Athenians were afflicted by a plague, and the priestess at Delphi enjoined them to purify their city, they sent a ship and Nicias the son of Niceratus to Crete to invite Epimenides to Athens; and he, coming there in the forty-sixth Olympiad, purified the city and eradicated the plague for that time…. And the Athenians passed a vote to give him a talent and a ship to convey him back to Crete, but he would not accept the money, but made a treaty of friendship and alliance between the Gnossians and Athenians.29
As in all later versions except for the Bavli Honi story, Epimenides was ultimately recognized for who he really was, and while this story does not have Epimenides sleeping through a period of disaster or tragedy, the long sleep has positive results for Epimenides, being “considered by the Greeks as a person especially beloved by the gods.” As in the later versions of this story, “the long sleep is regarded as a divine gift, as a sign of favor on the part of heaven.”30
Even the well known story of Rip van Winkle follows this pattern;31 his long sleep enables him to avoid the Revolutionary War and wake up once the colonies have gained their independence. His long sleep also allows him to escape his wife’s nagging.32 He too was recognized, by his now adult daughter.
The Honi stories are ultimately based on the legend of Epimenides, providing “evidence for knowledge of Greek classical traditions and their reuse in Jewish circles.”33 The Epimenides story provided the folkloric motif that the rabbis attached to Honi,34 which was used also in the story of Abimelech and from there made its way into the Christian legend of the Seven Sleepers and later to Islamic versions.35 Even some rabbinic writers recognized that the Honi story was not intended to be understood literally.36
While all these tales stem from one basic motif, the Bavli Honi story is the only one that has a sad ending: nobody recognizes Honi and he prays for death. All the other stories have the sleeping character ultimately recognized and accepted by others,37 as was Epimenides in the archetypal legend. Even Ezra, who is portrayed in the Koran in a negative light and is caused to sleep by God because he questioned God’s ability to revive the dead,38 ultimately is recognized by others and lives on with a positive resolution to his story. Only in the Honi story does the sleeper die at the end. Even more jarring, in all the other stories, the sleeping character was spared witnessing a great calamity or time of trouble, and so the long sleep is seen as a divine blessing. In 4 Baruch the sleep even comes as the response of God to the prayer of Jeremiah. Yet, in the Bavli Honi narrative, the long sleep does not save Honi from any negative events and at the end actually leads to his death. In all the other stories, sleep preserves life; only in the Bavli Honi story, it leads to death.39 It is for this reason that scholars assume that the Yerushalmi Honi story preceded the Bavli version, since it adheres more closely to the earlier source material.40
Up until the end of the story, there is no departure from the classic paradigm. It is only when Honi returns home and goes to the study hall, where in the archetypal story he would in some fashion be recognized, that the account varies from the standard happy resolution. Scholars have understood that this part of the narrative “appears to be a Stammaitic supplement that shifts again the thrust of the earlier tradition” and reflects Stammaitic concerns.41 However, since without this addition the story is missing an ending and important plot element—the return home/recognition—it is reasonable to understand that the ending cannot completely be a later creation; it was, at least in some form, part of the original Bavli version of this story. By having a radically different ending than the expected long sleep story, the Bavli Honi story is structured as a negative twist on the other, fundamentally positive, familiar folkloric motif of a person sleeping through troubled times to awaken in a different era and ultimately be recognized and accepted. The Bavli Honi story should then be seen as an intentional twist on a classic paradigm. Today most readers of B. Ta. 23a are unfamiliar with the other versions of the long sleep stories and so do not recognize that it is an intentional subversion of the classic plot.
Why create a jarring and negative version of the long sleep story and attribute it to Honi? It would seem that the tale is in fact an aggadic retelling of the more historical account of the death of Honi as found in Josephus.42
Yohanan is mentioned hundreds of times in the Talmud. Attributed to him are many stories and statements regarding tragic historical events from the Second Temple period. Yohanan makes the famous statement, “The destruction of Jerusalem came through a Kamza and a Bar Kamza; the destruction of Tur Malka came through a cock and a hen; the destruction of Betar came through the shaft of a litter” (B. Git. 55b) and proceeds to tell stories of particular episodes that led to destruction in Roman times. He also relates that Jerusalem was destroyed “because they based their judgments [strictly] upon biblical law and did not go beyond the requirements of the law” (B. B.M. 30b).
The stories attributed to Yohanan recounting episodes that led to destruction are meant to convey the lessons to be learned from these tragedies. The story of Bar Kamza uses a case of personal animosity to teach that “political factionalism caused the destruction of Jerusalem.”43 The destruction of Tur Malka and Beitar both involve Roman ignorance and disregard towards Jewish customs and the Jews’ misunderstanding the intentions of the Romans. The lesson here seems to be that “the key to avoiding war is knowledge and appreciation of the culture of the other” and “trivial matters snowball into serious violence.”44
The Bavli Honi story should be seen as part of this genre of aggadic explanatory stories attributed to Yohanan, an aggadic retelling of the more historical account of the death of Honi in Josephus. The Josephus account already contains one plot element from the long sleeper stories, Honi “hid himself when he saw that the civil war continued to rage.”45 This parallels the sleeper’s being hidden from view as he sleeps through the period of crisis. In Epimenides, Yerushalmi Honi, and later the Seven Sleepers, this is always a cave. Seeing as the Bavli Honi story is understood to be a reworking of the Yerushalmi story, we now can understand that the author of the Bavli version, noting parallel elements in the historical version, created an ironic play on the Yerushalmi Honi story. In Josephus Honi hides but cannot avoid death, leading to the Bavli version where Honi sleeps for a long time only to die.
More significantly, the lesson of both the Bavli and Josephus accounts is the same. In Josephus, Honi tries in vain to avoid the raging civil war, and in his prayer asks God not to aid either side, effectively asking for the conflict to end. The Jews refuse to accept this and murder Honi. This is paralleled in the Talmudic account by the concluding statement of Rava, emphasizing the moral of the story, “Either companionship or death.” In recounting Pompey’s conquest of Israel as a result of the power struggle between Hyrcanus iiand Aristobulus ii, Josephus writes of the Jewish casualties, “The greatest part of them were slain by their own countrymen of the adverse faction.”46 It was the civil war between the Hasmonean brothers that brought in Pompey and Roman rule in Israel, ending the Hasmonean dynasty. The companionship Rava notes in the legendary account in Bavli is not meant to refer to Honi personally, but to the Jewish People as a whole, just as the animosity between the host and guest in the Bar Kamza story represents the rampant factionalism throughout the nation.
Once the thematic connection between the accounts is understood, another layer of meaning in the Bavli Honi story emerges. The murder of Honi precedes the Roman takeover of Israel and end of the Hasmonean era. Thus, in the story about Honi sleeping, rather than sleeping through the bad times and awakening in a happier era when the problems have been resolved, Honi never gets to see the positive new era. The Bavli account frames the story as a reversal of the standard tale; here the promise created by Hasmonean rule proves to have dissolved into a dream that has passed. There is no positive resolution. Instead of “A Song of Ascents, when the Lord brought back those that returned to Zion, we were like unto them that dream” (Ps. 126:1) referring to a bad dream that the Jews awaken from, as in the Yerushalmi Honi story, here the Hasmonean dynasty is a dream that ends in catastrophe for the Jewish people. A similar idea was already noted in the sixteenth century by R. Moshe ben Yitzchak of Bisenz, in his work Derash Moshe on the aggadic portions of the Talmud. He writes that since Honi lived at the time of the conflict between Hyrcanus and Aristobulus, when the story tells of Honi’s wondering about the interpretation of Ps. 126:1, it is an expression of the wonder that the Jews have learned nothing from the destruction of the First Temple and Babylonian Exile and continue their infighting and rebellion against God, the lessons of the past appearing to them as a dream.47
The seventy year duration of sleep is also used in the Bavli account in an ironic way. Whereas in the Jerusalem Talmud it represents the time between the Temples that the ancestor of Honi slept through, if we count seventy years back from the conquering of Jerusalem by the Romans under Pompey in 63 bce as a result of the conflict between Hyrcanus ii and Aristobulus ii, we arrive at the beginning of the rule of John Hyrcanus, the beginning of the second generation of Hasmonean kings. John Hyrcanus subdued Samaria and Idumea and incorporated them into his kingdom, destroyed the Samaritan temple at Mount Gerizim, and generally was seen as restoring the Israelite kingdom to its biblical heyday.48 Understanding that the Babylonian Talmud accepted the historical fact that Honi was killed during the civil war, in the tale Honi goes to sleep just as the Hasmonean kingdom was beginning its time of growth and expansion, to wake up for its dissolution.
Although there was not wholesale rabbinic criticism of the Hasmoneans,49 the dispute between Hyrcanus ii and Aristobulus ii, which led to Roman intervention, was viewed negatively and along with “the internal decline and decadence of the Hasmonean dynasty” ultimately “led some Jews to believe that the Hasmoneans were no longer worthy of the crown and only a Davidic king was acceptable.”50 The pseudepigraphic “Psalms of Solomon,” understood to have been composed about a generation after I Maccabees, considered “the subsequent Roman domination of Judea to be nothing but a recent variation on the punishment God had earlier visited on the sinners of the First Commonwealth.”51 Josephus (Antiquities 14:3:2) specifically notes that as a result of the conflict between the Hasmonean brothers, Pompey was asked by the Jews not to be ruled by kings but only by priests.52
The Honi story in Josephus has two important biblical parallels. He is approached to curse Jews, similar to Balaam. Yet while Balaam accepted the job, Honi righteously refused to do so.53 More ominously, the story parallels the murder of the prophet Zechariah:54
Then the spirit of God enveloped Zechariah son of Jehoida the priest; he stood above the people and said to them, “Thus God said: Why do you transgress the commandments of the Lord when you cannot succeed? Since you have forsaken the Lord, He has forsaken you.” They conspired against him and pelted him with stones in the court of the House of the Lord by order of the king (2 Chron. 24:20–21).55
There a prophet of the Lord is stoned to death by the Israelites when rebuking them, identical to the fate of Honi when he spoke out against the civil war. In rabbinic literature the murder of Zechariah was understood to have led up to the destruction of the First Temple. B. Git. 57b relates that when Nebuzaradan entered the area of the Temple,
He noticed the blood of Zechariah bubbling up warm and asked what it was. They said: It is the blood of the sacrifices that have been poured there. He had some blood brought, but it was different from the other. He then said to them: If you tell me [the truth], well and good, but if not, I will tear your flesh with combs of iron. They said: What can we say to you? There was a prophet among us who used to reprove us for our irreligion, and we rose up against him and killed him, and for many years his blood has not rested. He said to them: I will appease him. He brought the great Sanhedrin and the small Sanhedrin and killed them over him, but the blood did not cease. He then slaughtered young men and women, but the blood did not cease. He brought school-children and slaughtered them over it, but the blood did not cease. So he said, “Zechariah, Zechariah. I have slain the best of them; do you want me to destroy them all?” When he said this to him, it stopped.56
The aspect of blood is emphasized in the version of the Josephus account recorded in the medieval Jewish historical work Josippon, where the plague that comes after Honi is murdered is said to have been sent by God “on account of the blood of Honi.”57 Taking the Talmudic understanding of the retribution for the murder of Zechariah into account, the murder of Honi can be understood to have resulted in the destruction that followed at the hands of the Romans.
Although Honi was a righteous figure and beloved miracle worker, he was criticized by Simeon ben Shetah, who said his method of demanding rain from God was demanding and inappropriate.58 Part of the expanded critical statement of Simeon ben Shetah in B. Ta. 23a is that Honi is overstepping his bounds by demanding the Key of Rain, something only entrusted to Elijah the Prophet. In B. Ta. 2a, Yohanan states, “Three keys the Holy One blessed be He has retained in His own hands and not entrusted to the hand of any messenger, namely, the Key of Rain, the Key of Childbirth, and the Key of the Revival of the Dead.” Based on this Yohanan can be understood as sharing Simeon ben Shetah’s criticism of Honi, who overstepped his bounds to take control of the Key of Rain. The story of Honi’s death, as told by Yohanan, can be seen as a criticism as well.59 In this light, Honi in this story also functions as the overly righteous figure who helps bring about disaster, an idea found in another story of Yohanan.60 At the end of Yohanan’s story of Bar Kamtza and the destruction of the Second Temple in B. Git. 56a, we find:
He [Bar Kamtza] went and said to the Emperor, “The Jews are rebelling against you.” He said, “How can I tell?” He said to him: “Send them an offering and see whether they will offer it [on the altar].” So he sent with him a fine calf. While on the way he made a blemish on its upper lip, or as some say on the white of its eye, in a place where we [Jews] count it a blemish but they do not. The Rabbis were inclined to offer it in order not to offend the government. Said R. Zechariah b. Abkulas to them: “People will say that blemished animals are offered on the altar.” They then proposed to kill Bar Kamza so that he should not go and inform against them, but R. Zechariah b. Avkulas said to them, “Is one who makes a blemish on consecrated animals to be put to death?” R. Yohanan thereupon remarked: “Through the scrupulousness of R. Zechariah b. Avkulas our House has been destroyed, our Temple burnt and we ourselves exiled from our land.”
It may well be that Honi’s refusal of any sort of compromise position in the civil war, leading to his murder, was interpreted as an event that led to the Roman takeover. The fact that Honi’s death as a martyr was replaced by Yohanan with a miserable, lonely, and perhaps even selfish death, is itself part of the criticism of Honi.61
Although the two accounts of the death of Honi, in Josephus and in B. Taanit, were always understood to be contradictory, the Bavli account can be seen as an aggadic narrative using a twist on the folkloric long sleeper motif to frame the historical death of Honi in the Hasmonean era as a lesson regarding the necessity of Jewish unity, much as the Bar Kamtza story provides an aggadic lesson in the context of the cause of the destruction of the Second Temple. Furthermore, in this narrative, Honi is the overly righteous figure whose actions inadvertently lead to more destruction, much as the prophet Zechariah in B. Git. 57b and R. Zechariah ben Avkolos in B. Git. 56a.
We have seen that the Bavli account should not be seen as a typical sleep saga and should instead be placed in conversation with the Josephus account. In two important respects the Bavli departs from the structural pattern of all other Rip Van Winkle-like sleep stories that began with Epimenides and permeated late antique literature: all other such stories have happy endings, and a recurrent theme is that sleep is a blessing that spares the hero from witnessing a calamity. The dark twist is an intentional part of the original Bavli version and is to be understood as part of the genre of stories attributed Yohanan regarding the lessons to be learned from the destruction of the Second Temple.
1 For this derivation, see Rashi, B. Men. 94b, d’agil; Emil Schurer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (London: Bloomsbury T & T Clark, 2014), p. 235, n. 6. There is an alternative approach, that he is named after a place; see Herschell Filipowski, ed., Abraham Zacuto, Sefer Yuchsin haShalem (London: Chevrat Meorerei Yeshenim, 1858), p. 63.
2 Jacob Neusner, The Rabbinic Traditions about the Pharisees before 70 (Leiden: Brill, 1971), p. 177.
3 The early discussion of these two versions appears in Joseph Derenbourg, Essai sur l’histoire ella geographie de la Palestine (Paris: 1867), pp. 112–113.
4 For a discussion of the parallels between this episode in Josephus and the Honi story in M. Ta. 3:8, see Otto Betz, “The Death of Choni-Onias in Light of the Temple Scroll from Qumran,” in A. Oppenheimer, ed., Jerusalem in the Second Temple Period: Abraham Schalit Memorial Volume(Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1980), pp. 86–89 (Hebrew).
5 Ralph Marcus, trans., Josephus, Antiquities (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), vol. 14, pp. 13–15. The version found in the medieval Jewish historical work Josippon, based on Josephus, accepts this story of the death of Honi over the one found in the Talmud. See David Flusser, The Josippon(Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1981), vol. 1, pp. 148–149, and the discussion in vol. 2, p. 113. On the various editions of Josippon, see A.M. Haberman, “Sefer Josippon and Its New Edition,” in Sinai 85, 1978, pp. 172–184 (Hebrew).
6 It is not clear exactly when this story originated, but it is clearly between the time of Yohanan (ca. 250) and Rava (ca. 350), who tell and comment on the story. See Neusner, The Rabbinic Traditions, p. 182. Regarding the disparate elements of the story and their authorship, see Jeffrey Rubenstein, Stories of the Babylonian Talmud (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), pp. 63–68.
7 Adapted from the Soncino 1961 translation. The story is also found in Midrash Tehillim 126:1. For a discussion of the textual variants, see Henry Malter, Treatise Ta’anit (New York: The Academy for Jewish Research, 1930), pp. 98–99; Rubenstein, Stories of the Babylonian Talmud, pp. 74–76.
8 Otto Betz, “The Death of Choni-Onias,” p. 85.
9 Gad Ben-Ami Sarfati, “Chasidim v’Anshei Ma’aseh v’ha-Nevi’im haRishonim,” in Tarbiz, vol. 26:2 (1956), p. 127. Betz, “The Death of Choni-Onias,” p. 86, notes that the Josephus episode took place when Honi was already an old man.
10 Jacob Neusner, The Rabbinic Traditions about the Pharisees before 70, p. 177; Betz, “The Death of Choni-Onias,” p. 85; Yonah Fraenkel, Midrash and Agadah (Tel Aviv: The Open University of Israel, 1993), pp. 351–352 (Hebrew); Federico M. Colautti, Passover in the Works of Josephus (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 91–92.
11 Tessel Marina Jonquiere, Prayer in Josephus (Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 2007), p. 200.
12 Attempts were made in later rabbinic literature to resolve the contradictory accounts. In his commentary to B. Ta. 23a, R. Shmuel Eidels (Maharsha, 1555–1631) explains that because Honi disappeared for so long during his extended sleep, a rumor took hold that he was killed during the civil war, and this is what formed the basis of the account in Josephus. It is for this reason that nobody believed Honi when he awoke. See also the resolutions offered in Yechiel Halperin, Seder haDorot(Warsaw: 1882), vol. 2, p. 148, n. 1; Aharon Heiman, Toldot Tanaim v’Amoraim (Jerusalem: Machon Pri haAretz, 1987), vol. 1, pp. 412–413.
13 This story is also found in Midrash Tehillim 126:2, right after the Bavli Honi sleeping story. It is not entirely clear whether the Honi who falls asleep in the jt story is meant to be understood as the same Honi as in M. Ta. 3:8 (and thus a different version of the Bavli when he fell asleep), or as his grandfather (who fell asleep for seventy years as his grandson would later do as well). In terms of the time in history when the Honi from the M. Ta. 3:8 lived, it is more reasonable to understand that the Yerushalmi is talking about his ancestor. See Gad Ben-Ami Sarfati, “Chasidim v’Anshei Ma’aseh v’ha-Nevi’im haRishonim,” p. 127; Shulamis Frieman, Who’s Who in the Talmud (Northvale: Jason Aronson, Inc., 1995), p. 122. For traditional rabbinic approaches to working out the contradictions between the Bavli and Yerushalmi Honi stories and known history, see Yechiel Halperin, Seder haDorot (Warsaw: 1882), vol. 2, p. 148, n. 1; Aharon Heiman, Toldot Tanaim v’Amoraim (Jerusalem: Machon Pri haAretz, 1987), vol. 1, pp. 412–413.
14 Adapted from Jacob Neusner, ed., The Talmud of the Land of Israel, vol. 18: Besah and Taanit(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), p. 226.
15 Rubenstein, Stories of the Babylonian Talmud, p. 68.
16 Ibid., pp. 69–70.
17 Regarding the authorship of 4 Baruch, and the date of its composition, see Herzer, 4 Baruch, pp. xxx–xxxv. He concludes that it “was originally the work of a Jewish author that was given an additional ending by Christian circles.” See also Pieter W. van der Horst, “Pious Long-Sleepers in Greek, Jewish, and Christian Antiquity,” in his Studies in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity(Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 259–260; S.E. Robinson, “4 Baruch,” in James H. Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (New York: Doubleday, 1985), vol. 2, p. 414.
18 Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2003), vol. 2, p. 1091, n. 58; Gad Ben-Ami Sarfati, “Chasidim v’Anshei Ma’aseh v’ha-Nevi’im haRishonim,” pp. 152–153.
19 See the full study in Bernard Heller, “Éléments, parallèles et origines de la légende des sept dormants,” pp. 190–218. For the date of composition, see the overview in Gabriel Said Reynolds, The Qur’an and Its Biblical Subtext (New York: Routledge, 2010), p. 181, n. 628.
20 For the different versions of this story, see Robert Thomas Hampson, Medii ævi Kalendarium: or Dates, Charters, and Customs of the Middle Age (London: Henry Kent Causton and Co., 1841), vol. 2, pp. 353–354.
21 W.G. Ryan, Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 401–403.
22 Jens Herzer, 4 Baruch, p. xv.
23 Reynolds, The Qur’an and Its Biblical Subtext, p. 167–178.
24 Jens Herzer, 4 Baruch, p. 89, n. 37.
25 J. Rendel Harris, The Rest of the Words of Baruch (London: Cambridge University Press, 1889), pp. 41–42.
26 Ismail ibn Umar ibn Kathir, Stories of the Prophets (Saudi Arabia: 2015), pp. 133–134. See the discussion in Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, Intertwined Worlds: Medieval Islam and Biblical Criticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 57, n. 25.
27 William Hansen, Ariadne’s Thread: A Guide to International Tales Found in Classical Literature (New York: Cornell University Press, 2002), p. 398. Even before the story of Epimenides, Aristotle in Physicsiv (218b23) mentions the fabled Sleepers of Sardinia, but these are understood to be heroes who died in Sardinia, and after death their bodies did not corrupt, giving the appearance of sleep. See Sam Broadie, trans., Philoponus, On Aristotle Physics 4.10–14 (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011), p. 17; Carolyn Dinshaw, How Soon Is Now? Medieval Texts, Amateur Readers, and the Queerness of Time(Durham: Duke University Press, 2012), pp. 8–9.
28 For other versions of the Epimenides story and a discussion of when the tale originated, see Pieter W. van der Horst, “Pious Long-Sleepers in Greek, Jewish, and Christian Antiquity,” in his Studies in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity (Leiden: Brill, 2014), p. 251.
29 Diogenes Laertius, transl. C.D. Yonge, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (London: Henry Bohn, 1853), 1.109, pp. 50–51.
30 van der Horst, “Pious Long-Sleepers in Greek, Jewish, and Christian Antiquity,” p. 255.
31 For the literary connection between Rip van Winkle and the story of Epimenides, see Marvin L. Colker, “A Medieval Rip van Winkle Story,” in The Journal of American Folklore, vol. 76, no. 300 (April–June, 1963), pp. 131–133.
32 See the discussion in John Limon, Writing after the War: American War Fiction from Realism to Postmodernism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 9–10.
33 Herzer, 4 Baruch, p. 88.
34 Gad Ben-Ami Sarfati, “Chasidim v’Anshei Ma’aseh v’ha-Nevi’im haRishonim,” pp. 151. He charts the points of comparison and differentiation on pp. 152–153.
35 Jens Herzer, 4 Baruch, p. 90.
36 See for example, Herschell Filipowski, ed., Abraham Zacuto, Sefer Yuchsin haShalem (London: Chevrat Meorerei Yeshenim, 1858), p. 16.
37 Note that in 4 Baruch 6:1–2, the angel came in response to the prayer of Abimelech, as opposed to the prayer of Honi that brought death.
38 Lisbeth S. Fried, Ezra and the Law in History and Tradition (Columbia, University of South Carolina Press, 2014), p. 129.
39 Jens Herzer, 4 Baruch, pp. 86–87. In the later Swiss folktale of Pror Evo, he crumbles to dust when he realizes that he slept for 308 years, but even there it is only after he was recognized. See Max Luthi, Once upon a Time: On the Nature of Fairy Tales (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976), p. 44; William Hansen, Ariadne’s Thread: A Guide to International Tales Found in Classical Literature (New York: Cornell University Press, 2002), pp. 397–398.
40 Gad Ben-Ami Sarfati, “Chasidim v’Anshei Ma’aseh v’ha-Nevi’im haRishonim,” pp. 151. See the discussion in Bernard Heller, “Éléments, parallèles et origines de la légende des sept dormants,” in Revue des Études Juives vol. 49 (1904), pp. 206–207; Michael Huber, Die Wanderlegende von den Siebenschläfern. Eine literarische Untersuchung (Leipzig: Harrassowitz, 1910) 418–422; Jens Herzer, 4 Baruch, p 84, understands that the Honi legend emerged by “the middle of the first century.”
41 Rubenstein, Stories of the Babylonian Talmud, p. 65. The Stammaitic concerns revolve around the importance of the beit midrash and scholarship.
42 That the Josephus account is the starting point for the Talmudic legend was noted by Bernard Heller, “Éléments, parallèles et origines de la légende des sept dormants,” p. 206. Regarding parallels between stories in Josephus and the Babylonian Talmud, see the overview in Tal Ilan and Vered Noam, “Remnants of a Phariasic Apologetic Source in Josephus and in the Babylonian Talmud,” in Tradition, Transmission, and Transformation from the Second Temple Literature through Judaism and Christianity in Late Antiquity (Leiden: Brill, 2015), pp. 112–116.
43 Abraham Joshua Heschel, Heavenly Torah: As Refracted through the Generations (New York: Continuum International Publishing, 2006), p. 389.
44 Jeffery Rubenstein, Rabbinic Stories (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 2002), p. 50. See also Eli Yassaf, The Hebrew Folktale: History, Genre, Meaning (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), p. 134.
45 The element of hiding would also figure in Hanan haNichbeh (the Hidden), grandson of Honi, in B. Ta. 23b. On the theme of being hidden, see Robert Eisenman, Maccabees, Zadokites, Christians, and Qumran (Nashville: Grave Distractions Publications, 2013), p. 31, n. 82. In Josippon, it is explicit that Honi hid himself because he was righteous and would not get involved in a civil war. See Flusser, The Josippon, vol. 1, pp. 148–149, and the discussion in vol. 2, p. 113.
46 William Whiston, trans., Josephus, The Wars of the Jews (New York: Digireads Publishing, 2010), 1:7:6, p. 20.
47 Moshe ben Yitzchak of Bisenz, Derash Moshe (Cracow, 1595), p. 43a, ma’amar 125. This explanation is quoted in the classic collection of commentary on the aggadic portions of the Talmud, Ein Ya’akov, in the “Chidushei Geonim” section. On this work, see Avraham Eisen, “The Composition “Derash Moshe” by R. Moshe of Bisenz and its Place in the Interpretation of Talmudic Aggadah in the Ashkenazi-Polish Milieu in the Sixteenth Century,” thesis submitted to Ben Gurion University, May, 2010. See also Bernard Dov Cooperman, ed., Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century (Harvard: Harvard University Center for Jewish Studies, 1984), p. 160, n. 5.
48 Menahem Stern, “The Period of the Second Temple,” in H.H. Ben-Sasson, ed., A History of the Jewish People (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1969), p. 219.
49 Gedalyahu Alon, “Did the Jewish People and Its Sages Cause the Hasmoneans to Be Forgotten?” in Jews, Judaism and the Classical World (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1977), pp. 1–17.
50 Eyal Regev, The Hasmoneans: Ideology, Archaeology, Identity (Bristol: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), pp. 164–165.
51 Stuart Cohen, The Three Crowns: Structures of Communal Politics in Early Rabbinic Jewry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 92. See also Regev, The Hasmoneans, p. 96.
52 Stuart Cohen, The Three Crowns, p. 104.
53 See Federico M. Colautti, Passover in the Works of Josephus (Leiden: Brill, 2002), p. 92. The story of Honi’s praying for rain has also been compared to the Balaam episode. See Jacob Neusner, First Century Judaism in Crisis (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 1975), p. 215.
54 On the connection between Honi and other wonder workers and prophets, see Gad Ben-Ami Sarfati, “Chasidim v’Anshei Ma’aseh v’ha-Nevi’im haRishonim,” pp. 144–148.
55 Alluded to in the nt in Matthew 23:35 and Luke 11:50–51.
56 Similarly in B. San. 96b, Lamentations Rabbah 4:13.
57 Flusser, The Josippon, vol. 1 pp. 149.
58 B. Ta. 19a, 23a. For a discussion of this criticism, see Anson Laytner, Arguing with God: A Jewish Tradition (Hoboken: Jason Aronson, 1998), pp. 95–97.
59 Yonah Fraenkel, The Aggadic Narrative: Harmony of Form and Content (Tel Aviv: Ha-Kibbutz Ha-Meuchad, 2001), pp. 185–189 (Hebrew); Rubenstein, Stories of the Babylonian Talmud, p. 67.
60 It may also be implied in Yohanan’s statement that Jerusalem was destroyed “because they based their judgments [strictly] upon Biblical law, and did not go beyond the requirements of the law” (B. B.M. 30b).
61 Aharon Agus, Binding of Isaac and Messiah: Law, Martyrdom, and Deliverance in Early Rabbinic Religiosity (New York: State University of New York Press, 1988), p. 82.
2
Jacob Neusner, The Rabbinic Traditions about the Pharisees before 70 (Leiden: Brill, 1971), p. 177.
Search Google Scholar
Export Citation
5
Ralph Marcus, trans., Josephus, Antiquities (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), vol. 14, pp. 13–15. The version found in the medieval Jewish historical work Josippon, based on Josephus, accepts this story of the death of Honi over the one found in the Talmud. See David Flusser, The Josippon(Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1981), vol. 1, pp. 148–149, and the discussion in vol. 2, p. 113. On the various editions of Josippon, see A.M. Haberman, “Sefer Josippon and Its New Edition,” in Sinai 85, 1978, pp. 172–184 (Hebrew).
Search Google Scholar
Export Citation
8
Otto Betz, “The Death of Choni-Onias,” p. 85.
Search Google Scholar
Export Citation
9
Gad Ben-Ami Sarfati, “Chasidim v’Anshei Ma’aseh v’ha-Nevi’im haRishonim,” in Tarbiz, vol. 26:2 (1956), p. 127. Betz, “The Death of Choni-Onias,” p. 86, notes that the Josephus episode took place when Honi was already an old man.
Search Google Scholar
Export Citation
10
Jacob Neusner, The Rabbinic Traditions about the Pharisees before 70, p. 177; Betz, “The Death of Choni-Onias,” p. 85; Yonah Fraenkel, Midrash and Agadah (Tel Aviv: The Open University of Israel, 1993), pp. 351–352 (Hebrew); Federico M. Colautti, Passover in the Works of Josephus (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 91–92.
Search Google Scholar
Export Citation
11
Tessel Marina Jonquiere, Prayer in Josephus (Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 2007), p. 200.
Search Google Scholar
Export Citation
14
Adapted from Jacob Neusner, ed., The Talmud of the Land of Israel, vol. 18: Besah and Taanit(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), p. 226.
Search Google Scholar
Export Citation
15
Rubenstein, Stories of the Babylonian Talmud, p. 68.
Search Google Scholar
Export Citation
16
Ibid., pp. 69–70.
18
Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2003), vol. 2, p. 1091, n. 58; Gad Ben-Ami Sarfati, “Chasidim v’Anshei Ma’aseh v’ha-Nevi’im haRishonim,” pp. 152–153.
Search Google Scholar
Export Citation
19
See the full study in Bernard Heller, “Éléments, parallèles et origines de la légende des sept dormants,”pp. 190–218. For the date of composition, see the overview in Gabriel Said Reynolds, The Qur’an and Its Biblical Subtext (New York: Routledge, 2010), p. 181, n. 628.
Search Google Scholar
Export Citation
21
W.G. Ryan, Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993),pp. 401–403.
Search Google Scholar
Export Citation
22
Jens Herzer, 4 Baruch, p. xv.
Search Google Scholar
Export Citation
23
Reynolds, The Qur’an and Its Biblical Subtext, p. 167–178.
Search Google Scholar
Export Citation
24
Jens Herzer, 4 Baruch, p. 89, n. 37.
Search Google Scholar
Export Citation
25
J. Rendel Harris, The Rest of the Words of Baruch (London: Cambridge University Press, 1889), pp. 41–42.
Search Google Scholar
Export Citation
27
William Hansen, Ariadne’s Thread: A Guide to International Tales Found in Classical Literature (New York: Cornell University Press, 2002), p. 398. Even before the story of Epimenides, Aristotle in Physicsiv (218b23) mentions the fabled Sleepers of Sardinia, but these are understood to be heroes who died in Sardinia, and after death their bodies did not corrupt, giving the appearance of sleep. See Sam Broadie, trans., Philoponus, On Aristotle Physics 4.10–14 (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011), p. 17; Carolyn Dinshaw, How Soon Is Now? Medieval Texts, Amateur Readers, and the Queerness of Time(Durham: Duke University Press, 2012), pp. 8–9.
Search Google Scholar
Export Citation
29
Diogenes Laertius, transl. C.D. Yonge, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (London:Henry Bohn, 1853), 1.109, pp. 50–51.
Search Google Scholar
Export Citation
30
van der Horst, “Pious Long-Sleepers in Greek, Jewish, and Christian Antiquity,” p. 255.
Search Google Scholar
Export Citation
32
See the discussion in John Limon, Writing after the War: American War Fiction from Realism to Postmodernism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 9–10.
Search Google Scholar
Export Citation
33
Herzer, 4 Baruch, p. 88.
Search Google Scholar
Export Citation
34
Gad Ben-Ami Sarfati, “Chasidim v’Anshei Ma’aseh v’ha-Nevi’im haRishonim,” pp. 151. He charts the points of comparison and differentiation on pp. 152–153.
Search Google Scholar
Export Citation
35
Jens Herzer, 4 Baruch, p. 90.
Search Google Scholar
Export Citation
39
Jens Herzer, 4 Baruch, pp. 86–87. In the later Swiss folktale of Pror Evo, he crumbles to dust when he realizes that he slept for 308 years, but even there it is only after he was recognized. See Max Luthi,Once upon a Time: On the Nature of Fairy Tales (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976), p. 44; William Hansen, Ariadne’s Thread: A Guide to International Tales Found in Classical Literature (New York: Cornell University Press, 2002), pp. 397–398.
Search Google Scholar
Export Citation
40
Gad Ben-Ami Sarfati, “Chasidim v’Anshei Ma’aseh v’ha-Nevi’im haRishonim,” pp. 151. See the discussion in Bernard Heller, “Éléments, parallèles et origines de la légende des sept dormants,” inRevue des Études Juives vol. 49 (1904), pp. 206–207; Michael Huber, Die Wanderlegende von den Siebenschläfern. Eine literarische Untersuchung (Leipzig: Harrassowitz, 1910) 418–422; Jens Herzer, 4 Baruch, p 84, understands that the Honi legend emerged by “the middle of the first century.”
Search Google Scholar
Export Citation
41
Rubenstein, Stories of the Babylonian Talmud, p. 65. The Stammaitic concerns revolve around the importance of the beit midrash and scholarship.
Search Google Scholar
Export Citation
43
Abraham Joshua Heschel, Heavenly Torah: As Refracted through the Generations (New York:Continuum International Publishing, 2006), p. 389.
Search Google Scholar
Export Citation
44
Jeffery Rubenstein, Rabbinic Stories (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 2002), p. 50. See also Eli Yassaf, The Hebrew Folktale: History, Genre, Meaning (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), p. 134.
Search Google Scholar
Export Citation
46
William Whiston, trans., Josephus, The Wars of the Jews (New York: Digireads Publishing, 2010),1:7:6, p. 20.
Search Google Scholar
Export Citation
49
Gedalyahu Alon, “Did the Jewish People and Its Sages Cause the Hasmoneans to Be Forgotten?” inJews, Judaism and the Classical World (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1977), pp. 1–17.
Search Google Scholar
Export Citation
50
Eyal Regev, The Hasmoneans: Ideology, Archaeology, Identity (Bristol: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,2013), pp. 164–165.
Search Google Scholar
Export Citation
51
Stuart Cohen, The Three Crowns: Structures of Communal Politics in Early Rabbinic Jewry (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 92. See also Regev, The Hasmoneans, p. 96.
Search Google Scholar
Export Citation
52
Stuart Cohen, The Three Crowns, p. 104.
Search Google Scholar
Export Citation
53
See Federico M. Colautti, Passover in the Works of Josephus (Leiden: Brill, 2002), p. 92. The story of Honi’s praying for rain has also been compared to the Balaam episode. See Jacob Neusner, First Century Judaism in Crisis (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 1975), p. 215.
Search Google Scholar
Export Citation
56
Similarly in B. San. 96b, Lamentations Rabbah 4:13.
Search Google Scholar
Export Citation
59
Yonah Fraenkel, The Aggadic Narrative: Harmony of Form and Content (Tel Aviv: Ha-Kibbutz Ha-Meuchad, 2001), pp. 185–189 (Hebrew); Rubenstein, Stories of the Babylonian Talmud, p. 67.
Search Google Scholar
Export Citation
61
Aharon Agus, Binding of Isaac and Messiah: Law, Martyrdom, and Deliverance in Early Rabbinic Religiosity (New York: State University of New York Press, 1988), p. 82.
Search Google Scholar
Export Citation *****
Choni Hameagel
Choni ha-M'agel
Hebrew:
חוני המעגל
Meaning:
Choni the circle drawer
Spelling:
Honi haMeagel, Khoni, HaMa'agel, Hamegael
Kever:
Chatzor, Israel
Hillulah:
5th of Iyyar
Description:
Pre Tanaic Jewish sage known for ability to pray for rain, slept for seventy years.
Choni Hameagel was a Jewish Sage living in the 1st century BCE during the leadership of the last three sets of Zugot. When drought came upon the land, Choni drew a circle and vowed he would not step out until Hashem answered his prayers for rain. When his request was answered but Choni kept on redefining it, he was almost placed in excommunication by Shimon ben Shetach, were it not for his special relationship with Hashem.
During the war between the Hasmonean brothers, Choni Hameageal was captured by followers of Hyrcanus who demanded that he pray for the death of their opponent Aristobulus. When Choni refused, they stoned him, leaving him for dead. Choni Hameagel survived the incident and wondered off, soon falling into a deep sleep that lasted 70 years. When Choni awoke, no one believed his story. Not having any Torah scholars of his caliber left to study with, Choni Hameagel asked Hashem to take him away from this world.
Contents [hide]
1 Rain Request
2 Family
3 Kever Choni Hamagel
3.1 Hillula of Choni Hamagel
4 More Photos
[edit]
Rain Request
Once the entire month of Adar had passed and still no rain came. Messengers were sent to Choni Hamgel asking him to pray for rain. When Choni prayed and no rain came, he proceeded to draw a large circle in the dust of the ground with his staff. He then stood in middle of the circle and similar to what had been done by the prophet Chavakuk, he swore in Hashem's great name that since his sons had approached him considering him to have inside connections, he would not leave the circle until Hashem had mercy on them and it began to rain.
It began to trickle rain, his students turned to him and beseeched him to save the nation from death, saying the trickle of rain only descended to absolve his oath. Choni reissued his petition saying; "This is not what I requested, rather rain that will fill wells, pools and caves". It began to poor rain, each drop could fill the opening of a barrel. His students once again improved him saying the rain would destroy the world.
Choni once again turned to Hashem saying; "I have not requested this but rather rain of good will and blessing". Normal rain began to descend but it continued to rain on and on, until everyone had evacuate to the high Temple Mount due to the flooding. They one again sent to Choni; "Rebbe, just like you prayed and rain came down, pray that the rain should go away". Choni responded that he had a tradition that one should not pray for the removal of too much blessing. Despite this he agreed and said they should bring him an Ox which he could later offer as a thanks giving sacrifice. Choni rested his hands on the head of the ox they brought him and said "Master of the universe, your Nation Yisroel that you took out of Egypt can not survive both with an overabundance of blessing and an overabundance of suffering. When you got angry at them they could not survive. When you gave them an abundance of good they could not survive. May it be your will that the rain should stop and their should be ease in the world". Immediately the clouds broke apart and the sun came out.
Upon hearing the story Shimon ben Shetach wanted to put Choni in excommunication as he spoke disrespectfully to Hashem. He sent Choni a message saying he would have placed him in Cherm but what could he do that Hashem listens to him like a father listens to his son.
[edit]
Family
Choni Hameagel was descendent of the original Choni Hameagel that slept for 70 years throughout the destruction of the First Temple and the following Babylonian exile, awaking just in time to find the first Jews returning to Eretz Yisroel.
Choni Hameagel's had two grandchildren both respected Sages who were also known for their ability to pray for rain. Aba Chilkia was a son of Choni's son and Chanan Hanecheba was the son of Choni's daughter.
[edit]
Kever Choni Hamagel
Choni Hameagel is buried in the city of Chatzor, Northern Israel. His actual grave is in the cave section of the tomb. Since the actual cave is kept locked most of the time, a Tziyun was built in the outside room where people can come and pray. There is an opinion that his two grandchildren Abba Chilkia and Chanan Hanecheba are buried with him in the cave. However most sources disagree and place them either in a cave at the foot of the hill or on top of the nearby mountain. During years of drought, prayers are carried out at Kever Choni Hamagel to beseech Hashem for rain.
Outside the kever is building containing a Kollel, Mikva and boys Cheder.
[edit]
Hillula of Choni Hamagel
The created Yortzite of of Choni Hameagel is on 5th of Iyyar. on this day Chatzor locals come to the Kever to celebrate the Hillulah. ******
Choni the Circle-Maker
Talmud, Taanit 19a
It once happened that they petitioned Choni the Circle-Maker, “Pray that rain should fall.”
Said Choni to them, “Go, bring your Passover ovens indoors, so that they should not dissolve.”
Choni prayed, but no rain fell. What did he do? He drew a circle, stood inside it, and said to G‑d: “Master of the Universe! Your children turned to me because I am like a member of Your household. I swear by Your great name that I’m not budging from here until You have compassion on Your children!”
A rain began to drizzle.
Said Choni: “That’s not what I asked for. I asked for rains to fill the cisterns, trenches and reservoirs.”
The rains started coming down in torrents.
Said Choni: “That’s not what I asked for. I asked for rains of goodwill, blessing and generosity.”
A proper rain began to fall. But it continued to fall until the Jews went out of Jerusalem up onto the Temple Mount, because of the flooding caused by the rains. So they came to Choni and said: “Just as you prayed that the rains should fall, now pray that they should go away.” Said he to them: “Go and see if the Stone of Claims1 has dissolved yet . . .”
Shimon ben Shetach sent a message to Choni: “If not for the fact that you are Choni, I would have issued a decree of excommunication against you. But what can I do against you, who nags (מתחטא לפני) the Almighty and He fulfills your wish, like a child who nags his father and his father fulfills his wish . . .”
Choni HaMe'agel
Closing the Circle, by Chana Katz
A young schoolboy returning from the gravesite of Choni HaMe'agel breathlessly exclaims: "You know what? I stood in the same circle as Choni!"
To a six-year-old -- whose Tsfat class learned the famous story of the Hasmonean-era sage -- what could be more exciting than taking a busride to nearby Hatzor and standing in Choni's circle?
Well, maybe not exactly the same circle Choni drew with a twig more than a thousand years ago. But they say it's pretty close to the spot where the pious Torah sage actually left his mark.
The child's enthusiasm is catchy. So let's visit Hatzor and hear the story again (and stand in the circle too).
To get to the gravesite of Choni by bus from Safed or Tiberias, one must first travel to Hatzor by Egged bus #459, which runs about every 40 minutes from 6 a.m. until 8:30 p.m. From Safed or Kiryat Shmona one can catch bus #511. At the "Canyon" or Hatzor's central bus depot you can catch the local #2 bus to near the gravesite. The #2 bus runs about every 20 minutes until 9 p.m.
Of course, private transportation along these routes will deliver one right up to the dirt path leading to Choni's kever. Take the main highway out of Tsfat east toward Rosh Pina, then Route 90 north for another five or ten minutes until you reach the main entrance to Hatzor. Follow the entrance road to the very end until it turns into a dirt road. The signs from there clearly mark the way to the burial site.
A devastating drought had stricken the land of Israel -- a sign, it is said, of a generation burdened by the consequences of not following the Torah. Threatened by famine, the people turned to Choni, whose purity and Torah wisdom left him untainted by the shortcomings of his generation.
"Choni," the people said, "Pray that rain should fall."
Choni prayed. But nothing happened.
Was he too confident that his prayers would be answered? Did the generation of that day not merit the immediate fulfillment of its plea? That, our sages debate.
But when a child doesn't get his way he is sometimes very obstinate. And Choni's relationship with the Creator was a lot like that of a son to a father.
Drawing a circle with a twig, the Mishnah relates, he stepped inside and took an oath not to go out until the people received rain.
It rained...
In very, very little drops -- enough to release Choni from his oath. But not enough, said the people, to fill their dried-up wells and avert famine.
So rather than step out, Choni raised his prayer (and his chutzpah) to a higher level: "G-d, this is not what I asked for!"
While the citizens held their breath to await the response, it began to rain. But the drops, our sages say, were as "big as the opening of a jug and no drop less than a log."
Choni understood that since the time of the exodus from Egypt, the Jewish people still were unable to handle either an abundance or lack of blessings. So with unprecedented chutzpah, he again dared say, "G-d, this is not what I asked for!"
And it rained a normal rain. Except that the rain continued for so long that the people began fleeing to higher elevations. Choni recognized that the people still had not merited truly proper rains, and made an offering on their behalf. And that's good for Choni, because his daring prayers almost earned him the highest form of exile from the community.
"Were you not Choni I would pronounce a ban upon you," declared Shimon ben Shetach, the head of the Sanhedrin, the highest legal body of the time. "But what shall I do to you," Shetach continued, "that you misbehave before G-d and He fulfills your wish -- like a son who misbehaves towards his father and his father fulfills his wish."
From that time on, our sages say, Choni was known as Choni HaMe'Agel (Choni the Circle-Maker).
The circle-story may have been the most famous, but since you're already at his gravesite in Hatzor, and there are no parking meters to watch out for in this serene mountainside setting, it may be worth your while to hear one more famous story, the Jewish inspiration, one could say, for Rip Van Winkle.
This famous Gemara story (Taanit 23a) about the end of Choni's life was related by the great Torah teacher R' Yochanan (although in an earlier version in the Jerusalem Talmud it is written that the story is about our Choni's grandfather of the same name).
There is a certain psalm (126) which talks about the end of the 70-year Babylonian exile. Despite the bitterness of the exile, the psalm says that when the Jews finally did return to Zion it would be as if they had all been dreamers for the entire time.
Choni wondered how anyone could sleep for 70 consecutive years.
As the saying goes: be careful what you ask for...you just might get it.
Choni met a man planting a carob tree and asked him how long it would take to grow.
"Seventy years," the man answered.
"Is it clear you will live another 70 years?" Choni asked.
"Just as my ancestors planted those trees for me," replied the man, "so too I plant for my children."
With that, Choni sat down to eat and fell into a deep sleep for....70 years.
He did awake, no one recognized him. Not his wife, or children or fellow Torah sages. As a result, Choni was not treated with the honor he had once merited. Soon thereafter he passed away.
You could say that Choni knew that his life had indeed come full circle. Because with his passing he is remembered only for his accomplishments.
That thousands and more visit his gravesite each year, indeed gives Choni the respect for the lessons he taught us all about service to G-d, devotion to Torah and mitzvot and love of his fellow Jew. *** Ofakim Hadashim Hebrew pronunciation: [(ʔ)ofaˈkim χadaˈʃim], lit. "New Horizons", is an art movement started in Tel Aviv in 1942.
Contents
1 New Horizons
2 Realism and Social art
3 Group members
4 Exhibitions
5 See also
6 References
7 Further reading
New Horizons[edit]
Joseph Zaritsky
Naan, The Painter and the Model, 1949
Israel Museum, Jerusalem
Zvi Meirovich gouache 1961 70x50 cm
Dov Feigin
Growth, 1959
Ein Harod Mueeum of Art
The Ofakim Hadashim art movement began with a group of artists who mounted an exhibition in Tel Aviv's Habima national theater in December 1942, under the name "The Group of Eight". The group evolved into a coherent artistic movement only after the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. Members of the school included Arie Aroch, Zvi Meirowitch, Avraham Naton (Natanson), Avigdor Stematsky and Yehezkel Streichman. The work of sculptor Dov Feigin also appeared in the catalog of the 1942 exhibition, though it was not displayed. In February 1947 five of the original members of the group joined Joseph Zaritsky for an exhibit called "The Group of Seven" at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.[1] Members of the group stated that "The group is based in modernism, especially French, yet seeks a unique style that expresses our own reality".[2]
For these artists, this was not only a statement of philosophy, but a practical work plan. Zaritsky, who served as chairman of the League of Painters and Sculptors in the Land of Israel, opposed the league's philosophy of equality among artists. In 1948, at the time of the opening of the artists' house that was to become the League's permanent home, he was delegated to select works for the Bienniale in Venice. His selections caused such an outrage among the members that he was ousted from his position. He walked out with a group of artists, and founded an alternative movement, the "New Horizons". On 9 November 1948, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art opened the first exhibit bearing the movement's name. Among the artists showing were Pinchas Abramovich, Marcel Janco, Aharon Kahana, Yohanan Simon, Avshalom Okashi and Moshe Castel, as well as movement founders Zaritsky, Streichman and Feigin.
The group sought a style that reflected the striving for Zionism and Modernism. This style was largely dictated by the leading artists of the group - Zaritsky, Stematsky Mairovich and Streichman. In practice, this style was a variant of European modernism. The style has been called "lyrical abstract", but in fact, there was little purely abstract art, but rather works rooted in the local visual landscape. This essentially figurative style was pushed toward the abstract by bold brush strokes, and a strong use of bright colors typical of the "Land of Israel" style, reflecting the strong Mediterranean light. Formats were generally rather small, and the style was similar to European abstract art before the second World War, akin to the art of Wassily Kandinsky, and unlike the abstract art prevalent in the United States at the time.
For example, in his series "Yehiam" (1949–1952), Zaritsky depicts scenes from the establishment of Kibbutz Yehiam in northern Israel. The early paintings in this series (mostly watercolors) depict the natural landscapes of the region, while the later paintings are (mostly oil) abstractions of these earlier scenes. This progression, contends art critic and curator Mordecai Omer, reflects Zaritsky's belief that external visual reality is the basis of artistic originality.[3]
Zvi Meirovich, a prominent members of Okakim Hadashim he painted in the abstract lyric style but unlike his colleagues Mairovich was more inclined to a German rather than a French pallette. Hs bold use of black and reds particularly in the gouaches. The big breakthrough was in oil pastels, that only he made in large format. Using a deep space photo surface rather than a flat paper was pioneering moment.
Others in the group, however, deviated from this style. Marcel Janco, of international fame for his involvement in the Dada movement in Europe in the 1930s, did not adopt this approach to abstraction; rather his art uses European Cubist and Expressionist styles to create a Jewish-Zionist narrative. Moshe Castel, also, went through a transformation during the 1950s from abstraction to expressionism characteristic of the Canaanist movement.
In the field of sculpture, the group introduced new media. Yechiel Shemi, Dov Feigin, and, after a sojourn in Britain, Itzhak Danziger, introduced welded steel as a new medium. This new form freed these artists from the figurative character of stone and wood carving, for a more purely abstract oeuvre. Here, too, however, there is frequent reference to the Canaanite figurativeness and symbolism.
Indeed, during the 1950s, the "New Horizons" group tended more and more toward the abstract, and away from reliance on the figurative. Zaritsky led this shift, which was rooted in what he saw as a guiding ideology. Some members of the group, however, rejected this ideology, and eventually quit the movement. These included Janco, Aharon Kahana and Yehiel Simon.[4]
Realism and Social art[edit]
While the abstract and secular works of the New Horizons group had profound influence on the course of art in Israel, they were nonetheless considered at the time to be on the fringes of mainstream art, which was mostly figurative and often bearing explicit Jewish and Zionist messages. This explicitly nationalist trend in Israeli art was denounced by its opponents as "regionalism".[5] New Horizon critics, who maintained that art was international and universal, were opposed by the ideology of the Bezalel School at the time. Mordechai Ardon, head of Bezalel, wrote in 1954, "Every artist, like every citizen, must serve his country in heart and in soul".[6]
New Horizons artists, too, despite their avowed adherence to a philosophy of universality, often expressed in their works sentiments of nationalism, Zionism, and socialism. For example, Zaritsky, one of the leading ideologues of the universalist school, produced series of paintings focusing on Israeli kibbutzim - his series "Yehiam", and a similar series on Naan (a kibbutz in central Israel), 1950–1952. Both these series include abstractions of the Israeli landscape. Zvi Meirovich one of the founders of New Horizons produced a series of large oil paintings called Mizpe Ramon focusing on the Israeli deseret. Sculptor Dov Feigin produced "Wheat Sheaves" in 1956, and Dadaist Janco painted "Soldiers", "Air raid Alarms" and "Maabarot" (jerry-built communities housing new Jewish immigrants in the 1950s). Some of the New Horizons artists belonged to the "Center for Advanced Culture" run by the Socialist-Zionist youth movement "Hashomer Hatzair".[7] This activity culminated in the founding of the artists' village Ein Harod by a group of artists headed by Janco. There, Janco hoped to found a new socialist and artistic utopia.
Mordechai Ardon's work stands out from that of other New Horizons artists for dealing with the mystical and historical, rather than concentrating on the present. His canvases often depict episodes from Jewish history, from Biblical scenes to the Holocaust. In 1965 Raffi Lavie founded a group called "10+", which sought an alternative to the "lyric abstraction" of the New Horizons group.
Group members[edit]
Pinchas Abramovich
Mordechai Arieli
Arie Aroch
Robert Baser
Moshe Castel
Itzhak Danziger
Kosso Eloul
Dov Feigin
Marcel Janco (Iancu)
Aharon Kahana
Chaim Kiewe
Avigdor Renzo Luisada
Zvi Meirovich
Avraham Naton (Natanson)
Avshalom Okashi
Moshe Propes
Shmuel Raayoni
Yechiel Shemi
Avigdor Stematsky
Moshe Sternschuss
Yehezkel Streichman
Jacob Wexler
Ruth Zarfati
Joseph Zaritsky
Exhibitions[edit]
Painters and Sculptors Pavilion, Jerusalem, 23 November, 1949 – 23 December, 1949
Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 11 January, 1953 – 12 January, 1953
Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 22 March, 1955 – 22 April, 1955
Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 5 June, 1956 – 6 June, 1956
Museum for Modern Art, Haifa, 1957
Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 1958
Museum of Art, Ein Harod 13 July, 2006
Museum of Art, Ein Harod, 13 October, 2009 – 11 November, 2009
Museum for Modern Art, Haifa, 27 December, 2012 – 16 January, 2013
ebay5112 folder 182
- Condition: Used
- Condition: Excellent pristine condition. Perfectly clean and intact. ( Pls look at scan for accurate AS IS images )
- Religion: Judaism
- Country/Region of Manufacture: Israel
- Handmade: Yes
PicClick Insights - MARCEL JANCO Judaica HAND SIGNED Israel NUMBERED LITHOGRAPH Hebrew DADA ARTIST PicClick Exclusive
- Popularity - 0 watchers, 0.0 new watchers per day, 77 days for sale on eBay. 0 sold, 1 available.
- Best Price -
- Seller - 2,810+ items sold. 0% negative feedback. Great seller with very good positive feedback and over 50 ratings.
People Also Loved PicClick Exclusive
MARCEL JANCO Judaica HAND SIGNED Israel FINE NUMBERED LITHOGRAPH Hebrew JEWISH
£159.02 Buy It Now 22d 16h
MARCEL JANCO Judaica HAND SIGNED Israel NUMBERED LITHOGRAPH Hebrew JEWISH BIBLE
£147.22 Buy It Now 15d 0h
Jewish HAND SIGNED Hebrew NAIVE ART Numbered LITHOGRAPH Judaica SHEINFELD Israel
£110.84 Buy It Now 2d 20h
HAND SIGNED Jewish ORIGINAL BEZEM ART LITHOGRAPH Israel MOURLOT Judaica HEBREW
£158.54 Buy It Now 4d 18h
Original HAND SIGNED Hebrew NAIVE ART OIL PAINTING Judaica ISRAEL Jewish ARTIST
£139.75 Buy It Now 8d 0h
3 watchers1949 Dada MARCEL JANCO Judaica HAND SIGNED Israel LITHOGRAPH Independence WAR
£301.19£283.12 Buy It Now or Best Offer
9 watchers1959 MARCEL JANCO ART BOOK Dada DON QUIXOTE QUIJOTE ISRAEL JUDAICA Jewish Hebrew
£95.42 Buy It Now