Ira Jann; Arthur Kolnik: Seeing the Melody

The exhibition is centered on a dialogue between two illustrators of two special editions of stories by Isaac Leib Peretz (1852—1915): Ira Jann and Arthur Kolnik. Eight illustrations by Jann (1869—1919) accompany six of the stories in the collection Ausgewählte Erzählungen und Skizzen (Selected Stories and Sketches), publishedin German in 1905. Twenty illustrations by Kolnik (1890—1971) accompany the story “Metamorphosis of a Melody,” whose special edition was published in Paris in 1948 and dedicated to Kolnik’s brother, who perished in the Holocaust with his wife and children.

The illustrations were created in proximity to crises and calamities in Jewish history: Jann’s illustrations were made two years after the Kishinev pogrom in Bessarabia (1903; now Chişinău, Moldova), and Kolnik’s illustrations were created in the aftermath of the Holocaust, three years after the end of World War II. The impact of the Holocaust on Kolnik’s work is discernible in several of his illustrations for Peretz’s story, which address the genocide openly; whereas Jann, who came from an assimilated family, disclosed after the pogrom and following her meeting with Bialik, that in his poem “In the City of Slaughter”—”he brought me back to my people, he brought me back to myself.” Hence her decision to illustrate Peretz’s Hasidic stories.

The illustrators saw the need to emphasize the common denominators between Jewish communities throughout the generations in I.L. Peretz’s stories. In so doing, the artists faced the question of their own identity as Jews, as they wandered through East and Central Europe. Inspired by Peretz’s stories, each of the two in his/her own way chose to illustrate situations that bring together two extreme mindsets: on the one hand, the pessimism of standing on the edge of an abyss, in a harsh reality, responding with discontent and protest; and on the other, the optimism of adherence to faith and a passion for life, for tikkun and spiritual ascension, out of faith in the immortal Jewish spirit. These situations are underlain by the Hasidic foundations of joy mixed with sadness, found in Peretz’s stories.

In the mid-20th century, Kolnik wrote “We are all passengers in Hayiml’s wagon,” but his words still appeal to us today. Like Hayiml, we are all travelerswanderers in a dark forest between shtetls, subject to the dangers and threats of the road. Nevertheless, our future is largely in our hands; it depends on the person responding to these predicaments. Hayiml’s melody touched the hearts of those who traveled with him in his wagon; it made them all “see the melody”: experience the confluence of all emotions in one place, a locus faraway and loftier than the intimidating reality.

Thanks to: The Klier family, the Suibelmann family, the Stern family, Zeev Zelig; The National Library of Israel: Orly Simon, Netanel Moses, Noa Fink, Zmira Reuveni, Miriam Chalik; Yad Yitzhak Ben-Zvi Institute: Nirit Shalev Khalifa, Rivka Calderon, Ruth Eitam-Pachtowitz, Hamutal Menasheof; Orange Line: Daniel Roll, Dimitar Philipov, Ilia Bakalof, Heli Mandil; Benjamin (Jimmy) Lewensohn, The Schatz House, Jerusalem

Installation photographs: Tal Nisim