Bronislaw Huberman, 1882-1947
Born in the Russian-controlled Poland, Huberman toured Europe as an acclaimed violinist at age 11. He first visited the Land of Israel in 1929 and decided to bring classical music there. In 1936 he established…
Dr. Eli Sperling, 75 Zionist/Israeli Songs for 75 Years
Dr. Eli Sperling, April 15, 2025, for CIE © Center for Israel Education, 2025 Israeli music offers a powerful lens through which we can understand the country’s cultural and political evolution, serving as both a…
Bibliography — Painting, Sculpture and Other Visual Arts
March 2025 CIE has compiled the following list of books, online exhibits and articles, including some available on our website, to guide understanding of the visual arts in Israel and during the New Yishuv. Books…
75 Zionist/Israeli Works of Art
Choosing 75 works of art to commemorate Israel’s 75th anniversary is daunting; Israel has a robust artistic scene that started well before the state’s founding. Early Zionists such as Martin Buber considered art a key element in the Jewish…
Israeli Identity and Society Through Music and Pop Culture
Dance along as waves of Jewish immigration mix with indigenous traditions to create a unique culture reflecting a world of Jewish and non-Jewish influences across Israel’s diverse society.
Jewish Cultural Life in Palestine, 1945-1946
Gerda Luft’s, “Cultural Life in Palestine,” is representative of the dozens of excellent analyses of Jewish life and politics in Palestine/Israel and the world located in the annual Palestine Yearbooks, later the Israel Yearbook, published from 1945 forward.
Israel’s 9/11 — War in Culture and Remembrance: Music, Memorials and More Artifacts (42:40)
The reactions to Hamas’ killing of 1,200 Israelis and others and abduction of more than 240 on Oct. 7 have rippled across Israeli society and left their marks on Israeli music, art and other aspects…
1923 – Triptych: First Fruits, Reuven Rubin
Reuven Rubin (1893-1974) was a well-established artist in his native Romania when he made aliyah in the 1920s. The light and atmosphere of the Land of Israel led to a striking change in his work…
1916-1925 – The Chair of Elijah, Ze’ev Raban, built at Bezalel School
This ceremonial chair in the collection of the Israel Museum, designed by Ze’ev Raban (1890-1970) and constructed over almost 10 years, epitomizes Bezalel‘s work with its eclectic combination of materials and techniques from its workshops:…
1926 (circa) – Standing Hanukkah Lamp, Ze’ev Raban and Yehiya Yemini
Boris Schatz (1866-1932) brought Yemenite silversmiths to Bezalel as part of his desire to incorporate traditional Jewish metalwork techniques in the workshops. The youngest, Yehiya Yemini (1896-1983), started at Bezalel as a young boy and…
1929 – Les Fiancées, Reuven Rubin
Reuven Rubin (1893-1974) met Esther, an American Jew who had won a prize to visit the Land of Israel and later to be his betrothed, while on a ship bound for Jaffa. In this oil…
1930 (circa) – Self-Portrait, Boris Schatz
Bezalel founder Boris Schatz (1866-1932) was a visionary but lacked managerial skills. World War I forced Bezalel to close, and after it reopened in 1919 under the British administration, the school employed the same methods…
1928-1934 – The Roaring Lion, Abraham Melnikoff
Abraham Melnikoff (1892-1960) was a well-known figure in the art scene of Mandatory Palestine, sculpting funerary stones, portrait busts and other works. This Galilee marble sculpture at Tel Hai commemorates the eight who died defending…
1929-1937 – Monument to Work and Defense, Batia Lishansky
Batia Lishansky (1899-1992) was a pioneering Zionist sculptor, and this sculpture in the Hulda Forest was the first of several memorial sculptures for which she received commissions. The Hulda agricultural station was attacked during the…
1939 – Nimrod, Yitzhak Danziger
Yitzhak Danziger (1917-1977) probed the Semitic roots of the Jewish people. Born in Germany but raised in Tel Aviv, Danziger was part of the Canaanite movement, which aspired to meld into a greater pre-Abrahamic people….
1938-1941 – Alexander Zaid, David Polus
David Polus (1893-1975) emigrated from Poland to Palestine, where he spent his life as an itinerant artist. His figure of Alexander Zaid (1866-1938), the founder of HaShomer, a group dedicated to the self-defense of Jewish…
1947 – Sabbath on the Kibbutz, Yohanan Simon
Idyllic kibbutz life was part of the romanticized founding ethos of Israel. The kibbutznikim were the elite, working the land. Sabbath, portrayed in this painting in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art by Yohanan Simon…
1948 – In the Cyprus Deportation, various artists
In August 1946 the British established displaced-persons internment camps in Cyprus, a bitter affront to those who had just survived the concentration camps in Europe. Industrialist Pinhas Rutenberg set up a seminar to prepare the…
1948 – Portrait of the Artist’s Son, Aharon-Jimmy, Menachem Shemi
Menachem Shemi’s (1897-1951) son, Aharon, known as Jimmy (1926-1948), was a charismatic Palmach leader who was killed during a battle for the Jerusalem corridor in the War of Independence. He was buried at the military…
1948 – Nocturne (Death of a Warrior), Marcel Janco
Marcel Janco (1894-1985) was a renowned Dadaist before making aliyah in response to the fascist, Nazi-sympathizing rule in Romania at the beginning of World War II. Once in Palestine, Janco worked as an architect and…
1948-1949 – Torah Case, Ludwig Yehuda Wolpert
Eliahu Elath, Israel’s first ambassador to the United States, presented this Torah case to President Harry Truman in 1949. It is in the collection of the Truman Presidential Library & Museum in Independence, Missouri. The…
1949 – The Knesset Moves to Jerusalem, Arieh Navon
Arieh Navon (1909-1996) is well known for gently humorous caricatures that appeared for over 30 years in Davar, the newspaper of the Histadrut, beginning in 1933. In this work, based on the depiction on the…
1949-1950 – First Seder in Jerusalem, Reuven Rubin
In this oil painting on canvas in the Rubin Museum collection, Reuven Rubin (1893-1974) depicts a representative gathering of the new state. A Hasidic rabbi, Bukharan immigrants, kibbutznikim, Yemenites, a Palmach fighter, the artist and…
1951 — Life on Kibbutz (Yehiam), Joseph Zaritsky
The desire to be part of the greater art world and adopt a more universal style and range of themes led Joseph Zaritsky (1891-1985) to found what became the New Horizons school of Israeli art….
