Reubeni Foundation, educational and cultural organization, founded in Jerusalem by Polly Reubens Van Leer.
The first project of the Reubeni Foundation was an imaginative newspaper, which described Biblical events as if they were current news. Inspired by an idea of Polly Van Leer’s son, Chronicles was printed in Rehavia and includes many of the typical newpaper rubrics, like Names in the News and Letters to the Editor, all written as if contemporaneous to the events described. “It is devoted to turning a contemporary spotlight on ancient history. Here the age-old tales are retold in lively, modern prose—in a manner that teases the mind and illuminates their significance fo the twentieth-century readers.”1The Suburban List, Thurday, July 11, 1957. Initially printed monthly and available at news stands, the Reubeni Foundation began collecting the issues in volumes in 1954. The Foundation ceased publication of Chronicles in 1973.
Emmy Roth grew up in Hattigen, studied with C.A. Beumers in Düsseldorf and, after her first marriage, settled in Berlin. Between 1923 and 1933, she had a workshop in Charlottenberg and enjoyed considerable acclaim. After the Nazis seized power, she emigrated to France until 1935, when she left for Palestine and settled in Jerusalem. Unable to get sufficient commissions, she returned to Europe in 1937, working in the Netherlands. By late 1939 or early 1940, she was forced again to leave Europe, this time, settling in Tel Aviv. Ill with cancer and unable to work, Emmy Roth committed suicide in 1942.1Sänger, Reinhard W. “Emmy Roth” in FrauenSilber: Paula Straus, Emmy Roth & Co., Badisches Landesmuseum, 2011.
Carmel Winery (יקבי כרמל), the largest producer of wines in Israel.
A postcard for Carmel wines, with Ismar David’s signet.
Baron Edmond de Rothschild was the owner of the world famous Château Lafitte Winery in Bordeaux. In 1882, he sent representatives to Palestine to assess the land’s growing conditions. They returned with favorable reports that the climate was similar to Bordeaux and recommended planting vineyards for the production of wine. By 1890, construction of the first section of a winery in Rishon Lezion was already completed and the first grapes were harvested. In 1896, the winery started to export throughout the world. The new company’s success led to the opening of new branches, initially in Odessa, Hamburg and New York. These were soon followed by other branches located in Berlin, Vienna, and London. Simultaneously, the Carmel Winery began to export wines throughout the Ottoman Empire.
The outbreak of World War I signaled a difficult time for the Jewish settlement and for the wineries. The international wine market fell into a period of disarray meaning that the Near East became a more important market for wine, with Carmel Mizrachi becoming a dominant force in the market. In 1957 James Rothschild, son of the Baron passed ownership of the winery to the Winegrowers Association. The Carmel winery grew and its wines continued to accompany all the important events in the State of Israel.
Ismar David designed the original logo of the Carmel Winery.
A postcard for Carmel wines, with Ismar David’s signet.
The verso of a postcard for Carmel wines, with Ismar David’s signet.
The neighborhood of Rehavia was established in 1921, on land leased from the Greek Orthodox Church by the Palestine Land Development Company and named for Moses’ grandson. The German-Jewish architect Richard Kauffmann was commissioned to design it as a garden neighborhood. Many of the residents were members of the Fifth Aliyah and gave it a European character and an association with German-Jewish culture, language and tradition. The Jewish Agency building and the Keren Kayemet LeIsrael (Jewish National Fund) headquarters are there. Café Hermon was a popular meeting place. Among Ismar David’s friends and associates from the neighborhood were: Gabriella Rosenthal, Alfred Bernheim and Charlotte Stein.
Rosh Rehavia (Head of Rehavia), 8 Keren Kayemet Street, was a building designed by Rafael and Dan Ben-Dor in 1936. Ismar David lived and worked there from possibly the late 1930s until he moved to New York. His studio was in the basement of the west wing. As he was the first tenant in that part of the basement, a wall had to be erected and the space finished. Water and electricity were installed for him. Other commercial neighbors in the basement of 8 KKL included a sports trainer and later a seamstress.1Draft of a letter to Jonathan Tsvi Werbelowsky, February, 1984.
Charlotte Stein, 1901–1987, proprietor of Charlotte Shop, the first and oldest gift store in Jerusalem
A framed photograph of Charlotte Stein in the Charlotte Shop.
Born in Berlin, Charlotte Stein studied arts & crafts there. She had emigrated to Jerusalem after what she described as a moment of political insight and because “I didn’t want to make bourgeois things for bourgeois people anymore,” 1Jerusalem Post Magazine, Friday, November 5, 1971 p.21. opening her shop on Storrs Street in 1931. The first and oldest gift shop in Jerusalem sold Charlotte’s own hand painted silk lampshades and catered to British soldiers, eager to send souvenirs home. Charlotte worked closely with the city’s craftsmen, helping them to adjust their work to modern sensibilities and needs, and cultivated merchants from near and far. She said, “There’s nothing like the fun of never knowing who will come in next and bring you something which you’ve never had in the shop before. You have to swallow hard and not show your enchantment.”2Jerusalem Post, Thursday, December 31, 1981.
The store has weathered over 90 years of social and political storms and today still occupies the same space on Storrs Street, now called Koresh Street. Charlotte’s successor, Noga Eshed, continues to curate a unique collection of art and artifacts: copper craft, Armenian ceramics, Persian fabrics, antique jewelry, Bedouin embroidery, Moroccan and Israeli art.
Photograph by Paul Almasy from an article, Transit Palästina, in an unidentified German language magazine. The original caption ran: “The barbed wire on the sidewalk is already a big concession to traffic, since there are whole areas that are completely cordoned off and can only be accessed with special identity cards, which are difficult to obtain. The Jews call these neighborhoods ‘Bevingrad’ with bitter cynicism, but no wonder, after the experiences with the British.”
Charlotte Stein was on of Ismar David’s oldest friends in Jerusalem. He designed signage and graphics for the store.
The KKL, or Jewish National Fund, a non-profit organization founded in 1901 to support the Jewish settlement in Palestine.
The organization bought and developed the land in Ottoman Palestine, later the British Mandate for Palestine, and subsequently Israel. Since its inception, the JNF says it has planted over 240 million trees, built 180 dams and reservoirs, developed 250,000 acres (1,000 km2) of land and established more than 1,000 parks.
Winning the KKL’s competition for the design of its Golden Book cover at the end of 1931, enabled Ismar David to come to Jerusalem and settle there. He subsequently designed three more Golden Book covers, as well as other graphics and exhibition work. The headquarters of the Keren Kayemet LeIsrael/Jewish National Fund is still in the Rehavia neighborhood of Jerusalem, a few minutes walk from where he lived. Decades of massive Golden Books are displayed there.
The over-arching theme of the 1939 World’s Fair was “The World of Tomorrow.” The aim of the Jewish Palestine Pavilion was to demonstrate that a Jewish State could be a part of it. The pavilion opened on May 28, 1939, incidentally the day after Cuba denied entry to the passengers of the MS St. Louis. Albert Einstein was guest of honor and main speaker. Chaim Weizmann spoke, too, via NBC network broadcast from Paris.1Jewish Telegraphic Agency News, May 29, 1939, p.1. Fiorello LaGuardia, Senator Robert F. Wagner and Stephen S. Wise, David Lloyd George and 100,000 other spectators also attended.
In his autobiography, project director Meyer W. Weisgal recalled how he had wanted the pavilion to look:
… a miniature Palestine in Flushing Meadows. …Palestine was small but dynamic and graceful, its people were hard working and idealistic; the architecture of the Pavilion, the setting and interior displays hat to reflect just that. 2Meyer Wolfe Weisgal, So Far: An Autobiography. p.151.
The project required an immense amount of private fund raising, since Jewish Palestine had no state sponsorship, and more than a little spectacle. Weisgal chose Aryeh Elhanani as the main architect. Thomas Mann laid the foundation stone, a block from the third century synagogue that had recently been found in Hanita. A ner tamid, kindled at the Wailing Wall, arrived by ocean liner. The central courtyard contained fifty plants and trees native to Israel, including a 16-foot tall date palm. The displays for the ten exhibition halls, outlining the history and achievements of Jewish Palestine were built principally in Tel Aviv and involved the work of many artists and craftsmen, among them, Maurice Ascalon, who created the monumental hammered copper relief sculpture, “The Toiler of the Soil, the Laborer and the Scholar,” for its façade. The pavilion proved very popular, helped galvanize support for a state of Israel and won the second prize at the Fair for aesthetics and beauty. 3Meyer Wolfe Weisgal, So Far: An Autobiography p.151.
Ismar David worked on building the Jewish Palestine Pavilion for a little more than three months, arriving in New York on March 9, 1939 and boarding the Aquitania to return to Palestine in mid June. During that time, he stayed at the Mayflower Hotel on Central Park West and saw little of the city except the subway ride to and from the fairgrounds in Flushing, Queens. Apart from the cover of a souvenir magazine and the Pavilion visitors book, we don’t know what exactly Ismar David did there, but tantalizing hints exist in rare photos of the exhibition.
Ismar David (foreground, sitting) in front of the Jewish Palestine Pavilion, 1939.
Rollo Gabriel Silver, 1909–89, historian of early American printing publishing, and typography; author of numerous books and articles.
Rollo and Alice Silver lived in a house on Mount Vernon Street in Boston. Ismar David would visit them on his way up to Rockport, where he often spent summer vacation time.
Ludwig-Peter Kowalski, 1891–1967, painter, proponent of applied art, designed decorative windows and mosaics, taught at the Städtischen Handwerker- und Kunstgewerbeschule in Breslau from 1928–34.
A painter in the German expressionist tradition who had been a student of Hans Poelzig and Eduard Kaempffer at the Kunstakademie (Academy of Art) in Breslau, Ludwig-Peter Kowalski taught at the Preußische Akademie der Künste (Prussian Academy of Art) after having been dismissed from the Handwerker- und Kunstgewerbeschule (Arts and Crafts School) in Breslau. He was a director of the Schlesischen Künstlerbundes (Silesian Artists’ Association) from 1936-41 and took part in various exhibitions during the war. He lost most of his work when he fled Upper Silesia for Berlin in 1945. His many post-war commissions in churches and other public spaces dot the city still. His wife Paquita Kowalski-Tannert was a graphic designer, well-known for her book jackets.
Ludwig-Peter Kowalski taught a figure drawing class, which Ismar David attended, 6 hours a week from October 27, 1927 to March 31, 1928. Kowalski’s report on his student was
