Curator – Dr. Alek D. Epstein

January 1 – February 5, 2026 

House on the Shore (Under the Blue Sky), oil on canvas, 41x38 cm

House and Boat under the Shade of Trees, oil on canvas, 42x39 cm

Locked Past, oil on canvas, 24x21 cm

Discarded Bells near an Old House, oil on canvas, 24x21 cm

House with a Huge Bell, oil on canvas, 24x21 cm

Old House with a Balcony, oil on canvas, 33х29 cm

The Bells of History: Yaakov Nowogroder’s Nostalgic Surrealism

Dr. Alek D. Epstein 
Artistic Director and Curator, the Moshe Castel Museum of Jewish Israeli Art in Ma’ale Adumim

Yaakov Nowogroder, soon to turn ninety, is one of the most remarkable and uniquely gifted Israeli artists. His color palette is relatively quiet, the subjects of his paintings are very far from any current affairs in Israel and the world, and yet, once you see them – it is almost impossible to forget them. The exhibition at The Moshe Castel Museum of Jewish Israeli Art includes only six paintings, but they certainly constitute a representative selection of his works and allow for an in-depth look at the artist’s unique style.

Yaakov Nowogroder was born in 1936 in the small Polish town of Ostrów Mazowiecka, northeast of Warsaw. The town had been part of the Łomża Province of the Russian Empire until 1917. Most of its Jewish inhabitants perished in the Holocaust; some of them were deported to the Warsaw and Łomża ghettoes, and later to the Treblinka death camp. Under the Nazi occupation, the town’s population was halved. The Nowogroder family did survive, though: After the partition of Poland following the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, they had managed to flee eastward, into the Soviet Union. At first, they settled in Belarus; after the Nazi invasion of the USSR, they moved further inland, to the Mari Republic. The future artist’s father was conscripted into the Red Army, and served on the frontlines throughout the war, while his son spent about a year in the village of Kubasovo, together with his mother and sister, and later moved to Sanchursk (now in Kirov Oblast).

In 1946, the family returned to Poland, but they were unable to regain their former home, and were resettled in a completely different place, the city of Dzierżoniów (previously known as Reichenbach) near Wrocław in Lower Silesia. Later, Yaakov Nowogroder studied for two years in Wrocław.

In 1957, the Polish authorities permitted the Jews willing to immigrate to the State of Israel to do so, and the Nowogroders were among the first to seize this opportunity. Yaakov, who had just turned twenty, arrived in Israel together with his father, mother, and sister. About a year later, he was conscripted, and served in the Israeli military for three years, from 1958 to 1961. And then his wanderings began: First, he moved to Beersheba, and later lived in Haifa. In the late 1970s, he finally settled down in Petah-Tikva, where he has lived ever since with his wife Pnina.

Looking at his paintings, one can hardly believe that he became a professional artist only in his forties, though he had had a passion for art ever since his childhood. Until the age of forty-four, he worked at a public office, and painted only in his spare time.

Yaakov Nowogroder did not really have a teacher, so his talent evolved and flourished naturally. The style he has developed could be described as “nostalgic surrealism,” and his works are instantly recognizable at any exhibition. “I don’t think that anyone can actually teach you to be a good artist,” says Nowogroder, “If you try to make your talent fit some rigid system or tradition, you will only ruin it; but, if there is no talent there in the first place, you will just get nowhere, no matter what.”

Obviously, Yaakov Nowogroder is only one of those self-taught artists who have developed their talent on their own. In fact, he appears to be one of the most gifted self-taught artists to have emerged in Israel since the foundation of the state – just like Henri Rousseau in French art, whose works are now displayed in the world’s most prestigious museums. Nowogroder’s talent is not limited to his perfectly mastered technique; rather, it also has to do with the bright and bountiful world he creates on the canvas, so rich and unique. Instead of simply capturing reality, he conceives of a completely different universe, where the remnants of the past serve to nurture a new life.

Thanks to his success among art collectors, Yaakov Nowogroder was able to quit his job in 1980 and dedicate himself exclusively to painting. He bitterly admits that, only a while ago, even people of modest standing wished to buy paintings, whereas today everyone is happy with posters. He laments society’s growing indifference to art and culture in general. The artist confesses: “I honestly don’t know if I would have had the courage to quit my job now, to make a living from my painting.”

Yaakov Nowogroder shows the utmost respect to the future owners of his works: He meticulously adds a finishing touch to the edges of the canvas, and then carefully selects the frame. A portfolio featuring eight prints of his paintings, published in 750 copies, with every sheet numbered and signed by the artist, gave a considerable boost to his artistic career. Additionally, an album of his works was published in 1981, and finally, in the late 1990s, another two booklets, including several dozens of his paintings, saw the light of day. His exhibitions have taken place in museums and galleries all over Israel, as well as in Montreal, Dusseldorf, and Brussels. For years, Yaakov Nowogroder had worked with the most renowned art galleries in Tel Aviv, owned by Eliezer Rosenfeld and Bruno Abramovich. Unfortunately, both men passed away, and their heirs have not been able to keep up the pace set by their predecessors. Additionally, a number of his exhibitions were held at the “13.5” gallery in Jaffa, owned by Abraham Eisenburg and Erik Van-Ezel. In 1999, they sold the building to new investors, yet the latter did not care much for the arts. Sometimes, his paintings would be sold off so fast that the exhibition had to close down ahead of schedule.

In the words of the well-known Israeli writer and journalist David Giladi (1908–2009), who authored a preface to an album of the artist’s selected works (published in 1981), in Yaakov Nowogroder’s paintings there exists a wondrous, enchanted, almost magical world, all aglow with soft colors and shades, full of vivid images of nature, with green branches stretching over the ground. His style evinces a neo-Romantic influence, with its telltale warm colors phasing into shades of velvet beige and ochre grey. The interplay of color draws the viewer’s attention to the center of the canvas, where treetops rustle in the wind, with their tender leaves painted in delicate, airy brushstrokes, so sincere and heartfelt, as though the artist were seeking to tell a story from the bottom of his heart.

As David Gilady aptly remarked, “It is a known rule of literature as of art that each work contains autobiographical elements. This rule holds good for the work of Nowogroder, whose external, legendary motifs, are the attractive wrapping for the burden of harsh experiences concealed inside. Nowogroder in his realism gives us an accurate rendering, and also the import of his message could give rise to the impression that here we have to do with realism for its own sake. But the fact is that under the veneer of realism there lies revealed a fantasy world of chaos, the world of another planet from which the artist came, and in which everything had collapsed, become decrepit, turned into junk. Everything that men had created over the course of centuries had met its destruction.”

Yaakov Novogruder’s works can also be given another interpretation: his works seem to recreate visions of a beautiful and charming period that never actually was (these are quite surreal paintings) – and yet, the viewer feels as if he belongs and is connected to it. These works cause the sense of time to be lost in the colorful vortex of the artist’s infinite imagination, to which he also invites us, the viewers... This invitation is an opportunity; we cannot fail to take advantage of it.

 Curators: Dr. Alek D. Epstein and Noam Mualem Yosef
Thursday, November 6, 2025 – Thursday, December 25, 2025
Festive opening and catalog launch – Wednesday, November 19, 2025, at 5:00 p.m.

Portrait of Meir Dikstein, the Artist’s Farther. Collection of the artist’s family

Portrait of Nechama, the Artist’s Spouse. Collection of the artist’s family

Portrait of Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky. Collection of the artist’s family

Old City of Safed. Collection of Noam Mualem Yosef

At the Synagogue in Safed. Collection of Noam Mualem Yosef

Tomb of Isaac Luria in Safed. Collection of Noam Mualem Yosef

Mount Zion, Jerusalem. Collection of Noam Mualem Yosef

Jerusalem at Sunset. Collection of Yoav Salomon

The Sea of Galilee. Collection of Dan Birenboim

View of Tiberias and the Sea of Galilee. Collection of Dan Birenboim

Flowers in a Vase. Collection of Noam Mualem Yosef

Urban Landscape. Collection of Noam Mualem Yosef

Our Grandfather, Mordechai (Monya) Avniel –

A Man, a Zionist Leader, and an Artist

Illit Shtengel and Yoav Salomon

Today, looking at our Grandfather’s paintings, we seem to see not just landscapes, but also his very life. The contours of the light, the layers of paint, the mountains, the fields, the sea – all are part of the long story of a man who presented a rare combination of determination, broad-mindedness, humility, and love for his fellow human beings.

He was an artist and a fighter, a jurist and a teacher, a pioneer and a builder – and, first and foremost, a person who believed that life has beauty and meaning only when it is put at the service of a greater idea.

Grandfather was born in 1900 in the town of Parychy, Homel Province (in present-day Belarus). His own grandfather was a rabbi and the head of a yeshiva, while his father was a highly knowledgeable man who combined faith with reason. Already as a child, Mordechai evinced a heightened sensitivity to beauty and artistic creation. In his adolescence, he was sent to study at an art academy in Ekaterinburg, Russia – a rare move for a young man from an observant Jewish family in those days.

As a student, he became attracted to Zionist activism, and was arrested for it. After his release, he became the leader of a group of Jewish pioneers who undertook a year-long trek to the Land of Israel. The young people, who sought to build a homeland out of their hearts and souls, had to walk most of the way.

After reaching their destination in 1921, the group began to work in agriculture at the “Goldberg Orchard” (present-day Tel Hashomer).

At an exhibition in Tel Aviv, Mordechai met Prof. Boris Schatz, the founder of the Bezalel School, who recognized the young man’s talent and urged him to join his institution. Grandfather eventually agreed – but not before the pioneer group had been won over by Prof. Schatz’s pleading. Mordechai went on to study and teach at Bezalel, and create miniature sculptures, woodcuts, and sketches. He decided to switch to these artistic media because of his difficulty in adapting to the light of Eretz Israel, which was utterly different from that of Russia. Years afterward, he headed the Miniature Sculpture Department in Jerusalem, combining the precision of an artist with the courage of an educator. Only about a decade later, when his body and eyes had become adjusted to the light of this land, did he resume painting.

Wishing to have a stable source of income, he studied law, and was accredited as a lawyer.

Grandfather was one of the first Revisionist Zionists, a member of Brit HaBirionim, and editor of the Hayarden newspaper. Together with Grandmother Nechama, who always stood by his side, he opened his doors to the fighters for the freedom of Israel and the defendants from the “trial of the assassination of Arlozorov.” He paid a heavy personal price for this, being forced to close his office in Jerusalem and move with his family to Haifa, where he worked at the firm of the lawyer Dr. Winschel.

During World War II, as Rommel’s troops were advancing through North Africa toward the Land of Israel, and the locals were building fortifications and preparing the “Musa Dagh on Mount Carmel,” Grandfather saw what was going on and said: “El Alamein will become their graveyard” [a pun in Hebrew]. After the establishment of the State of Israel, he was elected to the Haifa municipality on behalf of the Herut movement, and went on to cooperate with the mayor, Abba Hushi from the Labor Party, despite their ideological differences. He played a role in the creation of the museums of Haifa, and even headed them for some years – yet another example of his combination of spirit and action.

Already in the late 1950s, Avniel spoke of the need to dig a tunnel beneath Mount Carmel. This idea, which seemed fantastical at the time, would become reality fifty years later. He was also one of the founders of the artists’ quarter in Safed, and stood at its head for years, supporting young artists with the generosity of one who believes that culture is the people’s creative force. 

His personal life, like his art, was marked by depth and balance. He and Grandma Nechama were a single entity – “Nechama and Monya” – and one could not think of either of them in isolation. She accompanied him on every journey and each project, while he cherished her calm, her wisdom, and her faith. When she passed away, he was left heartbroken; the part of him that had kept the fire burning died with her – until he, too, passed away.

Today, when we look at his works, we hear his calm voice, see his perceptive eye, and feel his simple faith in a loving dialogue between a person and their land. He taught us that creation is not just an artistic act – it is a way of life.

Between matter and color, between word and action, Mordechai Avniel bequeathed to us a legacy of beauty, of responsibility, and of faith in humanity and in this land. This is our Grandfather’s way: the way of a person who – quietly, persistently, out of pure love – has left a mark that is rooted in the soil, yet shines in the sky.

*

From Expressionism to Lyrical Abstraction:

On the Art of Mordechai Avniel

Dr. Alek D. Epstein

Mordechai Dikstein (later Avniel) was born 125 years ago, on July 31, 1900, in the small town of Parychy in Belarus, which had a Jewish majority. Presumably as a result of the battles and pogroms of World War I and the Russian Civil War, the Dikstein family was forced (apparently, in 1917) to relocate to the city of Ekaterinburg in the Urals, more than 2000 km from Parychy. Mordechai Dikstein joined Tze’irei Zion [Youth of Zion] – a popular movement of young Zionist Jews, whose ideology emphasized practical Zionism: moving to the Land of Israel, working it as halutzim [pioneers], and reviving Hebrew culture. Hence, it is hardly surprising that, in 1921, having overcome all the hurdles and obstacles, the young man arrived in the Land of Israel, – where he would remain until his death on October 12, 1989. Other articles in this book recount his fascinating life story, so here I will confine myself to his artistic legacy, which has not yet achieved due recognition.

Avniel started out as a painter of portraits, some of which were more successful than others. It seems that he never painted a still life. His most recognizable works are landscapes, and he remained loyal to this genre throughout his life. Working with both watercolors and oil paints (and his watercolor works bear an uncanny resemblance to oil paintings), he builds up the landscape with tender, nearly transparent colors, which appear to float above the surface of the canvas or paper, and merge softly into a single whole. In the picture, the earth meets the sky – but the point of convergence is blurry, making it hard to tell where the earth ends and the sky begins. Thus, his best works create the feeling of infinite depth. The light in his paintings is, for the most part, not the harsh and white Mediterranean light – but a different, softer light, which can be captured only for a few hours at the beginning and end of the day. Avniel does not typically build his composition around a central point; rather, all the details converge into a single motion, which creates harmony. In the course of his career, the artist moved from figurative art, which can be assigned to the Expressionist school, to painting in the Impressionist style – and, from there, to Lyrical Abstraction. The landscape in his works is not copied “as is,” but transformed into a starting point, or a source of inspiration. As Oren Schatz has astutely observed in his article about the artist, “Avniel paints not the objects in nature, but the air and the light around them. However, even when the painting is nearly abstract, it still bears traces of the landscape out of which it has grown.”

It seems that Safed, more than any other city, has been scrutinized, reworked, idealized, and endowed with a multiplicity of meanings by Israeli artists. This city – of the Kabbalah, the narrow streets, the tombs of the righteous, and the spiritual light – became not only a site of religious or cultural pilgrimage, but also a charged pictorial arena. Isaac Frenel (Frenkel), Moshe Castel, Mordechai Levanon, Jacob Eisenscher, and Milia Laufer are only a few of the artists who turned their attention to this city – and, moreover, each of them had their own, slightly different Safed. The same is true of Mordechai Avniel, although his version of the city occasionally resembles that of Isaac Frenel (1899–1981), who was one year his senior, and who had similarly grown up in a religious Jewish family in the Russian Empire, and arrived in the Land of Israel around the same time (a year before Avniel). Like many of his fellow artists who walked the streets of Safed day by day, Avniel, too, came to this city as a dreamer, an observer, a seeker of myths. His paintings are devoid of theatricality and any protest against time, yet they constitute an emotional form of documentation, suffused with light. He practically “sang the praises” of the stone roofs, or the mountainous background, and lingered on the cracks in the walls, the condensed silence of a Haredi courtyard in the afternoon. He painted with profound modesty and a loving, yet sober, gaze. He did not perceive the city as an alien vision that had to be assimilated into the canon, but as a place that was a part of him, that he carried in his body; this may be the reason why his paintings stick in the memory of the viewer for a long time.

Looking at Avniel’s artistic legacy, I think that his uniqueness as an artist is most pronounced in his paintings of Jerusalem, on the one hand, and in his marine landscapes (including those of the Sea of Galilee), on the other.  

Almost all the Eretz-Israeli artists have depicted Jerusalem, yet Avniel did it in his own unique way, which became apparent at the exhibition Our Eternal Capital: Jerusalem in Israeli Art, curated by me at the Museum several months ago. The Jerusalem landscapes painted by Avniel reveal an artist who has grown out of the spirit of Impressionism, but who seeks to break out of it, into a region where the light is not just a natural given, but an inner – almost mystical – attribute of cultural memory. Avniel chooses Jerusalem not as a monumental subject, but as a poetic space, penetrable to light, time, and fragility. In his works, we can recognize motifs of French Impressionism – in the texture of the brushwork, the fragmentation of the color, and the desire to capture the fleeting moment; these paintings possess a lyrical-meditative dimension. Avniel never sought to “copy the external appearance” of Jerusalem, but to uncover its “inner movement” – the connection between this city, which is so important to human history, and the feelings that it engenders in the onlooker. His paintings evince a tendency to blur the boundaries – between stone and sky, the skyline and the vegetation, the observer and the object of observation. Jerusalem, for Avniel, is not merely a city, but a state of mind; layers of time that accumulate in unsaturated colors – gentle turquoises, dreamy pinks, serene greens, – and the shapes sometimes fade into each other, as though pushed toward each other, and melting together. On his canvases, the landscape of Jerusalem is less an actual landscape than the memory of one – or a longing for one. These are artworks in which spiritual presence is converted into an almost transparent aesthetic. The style touches the spirit of the abstract and the lyrical, yet it maintains an implicit grip on reality, without fully committing to it.

The key aspect that I would like to emphasize is that Mordechai Avniel grasped the landscape of Eretz-Israel like an observer who seeks, in this landscape, that which lies beyond it. His paintings, which are quite unique in the Israeli art of the Mediterranean Sea and the Sea of Galilee, evince not only a love for the vistas of our land, but also the desire to touch the essence of the visual experiences – in the light, the calm, and the constant changes of the water and air. Thus, when we compare his art to the works of William Turner (1775–1851) and James Whistler (1834–1903), two of the “founding fathers” of the marine landscape in European art, we see a clear commonality: All three use the sea not as an object, but as an emotional space. Turner – with his intensities of light and color, Whistler – with his lyrical restraint and sense of dusk, and Avniel – with his lighting of the scene as a metaphor for quiet, yet charged contemplation. Avniel’s depictions of the Sea of Galilee create the sense of an almost mystical calm. The pale blues, light greens, and whites intermingle, and the horizon becomes blurred – as often happens in Turner’s late pieces, and in Whistler’s series of “Nocturnes” from the 1870s and 1880s. The most apt description of Mordechai Avniel’s art is probably the one given by the artist himself: “The clouds passing over the Sea of Galilee or the Dead Sea – both lying below sea level – result in nearly constant changes of light, color, and atmosphere. The landscape assumes forms, and then loses them again. These clouds have taught me to understand the space. I do not perceive the landscapes optically; they are a combination of colors that intermingle harmoniously – sometimes abstract, at other times expressing my inner emotions. My constant motif is a landscape that is not static, with all its contradictions – the ray of dawn, the silence of the day’s heat, the dusk of the evening, the nocturnal glow, the wind and the rain, the storm of the night.” Avniel – more than any other Eretz-Israeli artist, I would say – has contributed a restrained, perceptive voice, which listens to the silences of the sea.

We are honored to host a retrospective exhibition of this amazing artist at our Museum.

Curator and Catalog Editor – Dr. Alek D. Epstein
Opening to the Public as part of an "Advance Visit" – Sunday, November 2, 2025
Festive Event and Catalog Launch – Wednesday, November 19, 2025, at 5:00 PM
Celebratory Event Closing the Exhibition – Wednesday, January 21, 2026, at 5:00 PM

Naftali Bezem (1924–2018) – Eternal Love

Isaac Frenel (1899–1981) – Rabbi with a Torah Scroll

Jacob Wexler (1912–1995) – Small Talk in a Cafe

Yosl Bergner (1920–2017) – Two Klezmers

David Hendler (1904–1984) – Mother and a Child

Meir Pichhadze (1955–2010) – A Woman and a Butterfly

Joseph Kossonogi (1908–1981) – A Young Woman at an Easel

Gershon Knispel (1932–2018) – Violinist

Eliahu Sigard (1901–1975) – A Woman with a Bouquet of Flowers

Zvi Shor (1898–1979) – Still Life with Fruits and Flowers

Ludwig Blum (1891–1974) – Jerusalem, Street in the Old City

Albert Goldman (1922–2011) – Shepherd

A Collection of Words about a Collection of Paintings

 Dr. Alex Gizunterman

I was born in the city of Kiev, which has a history stretching back for over a millennium. However, even prior to history, this city was ruled by nature – which, with great skill, filled it with ranks of chestnut trees, and endowed each season with a distinct, impressive appearance. The green, blooming spring is succeeded by the sunny summer, which then gives way to the gold of autumn leaves, and to winter… The winter played a trick on me. Overnight, everything was covered with a white sheet. On my way to kindergarten, I perceived a similarity between the snow and my great love: sugar. I loved it spread on bread, or even in an ordinary spoon. And so, I dreamed that I was surrounded with a boundless expanse of sugar. While walking in the yard, I ate the snow, expecting to feel sweetness. And then, I came down with laryngitis, which left me bedridden. All my toys had been packed into two crates, and I had already come to know them well. During the days of my sick leave, I kept looking for something new – and I found a treasure in my father’s closet: albums with stamps. A great variety of colorful pieces of paper, the most beautiful of which had been placed in an art album. I studied them carefully and learned the names of the artists. Occasionally, the artists themselves were depicted on the stamps, and I would then make sure to attach the artist to their creation, as though righting some past wrong.

In the summer, our regular destination was Feodosia, on the shores of the Black Sea. There, I learned the concept of the beach, and also that of the museum, thanks to the house of the painter Ivan Aivazovsky. His large paintings looked real, and the frames seemed the only barriers to reality. I spent the summer of 1986 elsewhere. Following the Chernobyl disaster earlier that year, my grandparents had spirited me away to Moscow. Thus, when I was six, we found ourselves in a single room of a communal apartment, with no games to play. And so, every day we would go to the Obraztsov Puppet Theater, to look at the clock on the wall, waiting for its twelve figures to come to life at noon. They were my game; they were my friends.

After our return to Kiev, I undertook the challenge of learning to ride a bicycle. I practiced the riding and the falls in the park near our home, which attracted me on some subconscious level; it was named Babi Yar. At the time, my mother had a subscription for the Family and School magazine, whose last page was dedicated to artworks. I would regularly check the contents of our mailbox, having an interest of my own in the monthly magazine issue: cutting out and collecting the pages with the artworks. I had to give up on this hobby when we left the city yet again, this time for good.

I was ten years old when we immigrated to Israel, and I began to collect the experiences of a new immigrant in Israel. Thirty years later, I would realize why I collected them. As a child psychiatrist, I have been exposed to countless stories, and I could only regret that I lacked the literary talent of my teacher and idol, Anton Chekhov. However, I met another highly talented person, the poet Yehuda Atlas, who had been collecting stories about the difficulties experienced by adolescents, and reworking them into a book of poetry. At one of our meetings, after I had given him material for new poems, we discussed his celebrated book It’s Me. I told him about myself, and this tale, with some minor additions, became a poem about my journey. Even before setting out on this journey, I got to see a performance of The Fiddler on the Roof in Kiev. Since then, I have been looking for opportunities to watch new shows. Once, after attending a stage play with Orna Porat, I was so impressed by her character that I sent her a letter of appreciation. I received a response, written upon a postcard with a painting by Rembrandt. I took a good look at both sides of the postcard and decided that, from now on, after each visit to a museum, I would buy a postcard with my favorite painting.

Before becoming a child psychiatrist, I had spent another chapter of my life as a medical student in Italy. I lived in the city of Ferrara, in a building of the ghetto, which appears in the Oscar-winning film The Garden of the Finzi-Continis. In Italy, art suffuses the very air. One breathes it in while walking in the street, while riding a bicycle – and, certainly, while visiting the museums. During my study breaks, I would rush to the secondhand bookstores. I pampered myself with art books, once again surrounded by colorful pictures, constant friends. However, in addition to attending classes, a student must also work. Among other things, I found an opportunity to repay Italy, at least a little, for all the centuries of history and culture that it had so graciously lavished upon me. In the city of Salò, which had once been the seat of Mussolini’s short-lived Fascist republic, I lectured on Jewish history and culture. I was awarded my degree in a hall named after another student of the same university – an old friend of mine, whose face adorned a stamp that I had kept ever since coming into possession of my father’s albums. This friend is Nicolaus Copernicus, who wrote a brief article asserting that it was the planets that orbited the sun, and not the other way round.

After returning to Israel, I went to a fair with my mother and looked at the pictures. She bought me one of them, as a gift on the occasion of my graduation. I then developed an interest in painting, and began to read up on the existing galleries and art sales. I obtained catalogues, and would leaf through them during my lengthy shifts as an intern. The first painting I bought, which marked the beginning of my collection, is still the one dearest to my heart. It reflects the sadness that is part of the legacy of the Jewish people – alongside the humor, the traditions, and the mutual solidarity. The artist Maurycy Trębacz perished in the Holocaust. I felt that, by hanging his painting on the wall, I was bringing him and his characters to life. Merely buying the painting was not enough for me, and I decided to restore it. I had some specialists clean it, repair a blemish, and add a protective cover. I mended and protected the painting, giving it what the artist himself had been prevented from doing. I was very satisfied. So, I kept looking for other paintings. As a bachelor living on my own, I would devote much attention to heritage: carefully reconstructing the genealogical tree of my family, volunteering with Holocaust survivors, and working to commemorate the Holocaust. The paintings I bought at the time were similar in terms of subject matter – sad Jews. Ten years later, my marital status changed. I married at the age of forty, and went on to have three sons over the next five years. This changed everything for me: Even the planets began to move differently, according to a formula that has yet to be worked out; even the contents of the paintings were altered. The collection became more diverse, acquiring some abstract shapes, still lifes, and landscapes. Since I prefer Israeli products over imported ones, I have also decided to focus on Israeli artists. None of them stayed in their places of birth. Some fled persecutions, while others took up arms. Even in times of peace, they would wander from land to land, searching for the painted and the realistic views, in order to distill their styles and mix their sensations with the works of nature – an angle of a tree branch, the wrinkles of a face. Israel was either their destination or an intermediate station. However, my collection does have a single exception – a very small painting by Aivazovsky. After all, I couldn’t let the past just slip away, could I? And if, one day, Israel is covered with snow, I will make sure to taste it for sweetness.  

Figurative Art at its Best:
An Exhibition of Paintings from the Collection of Dr. Alex Gizunterman

Dr. Alek D. Epstein
Artistic Director and Curator, the Moshe Castel Museum
of Jewish Israeli Art in Ma’ale Adumim

Our current exhibition showcases a collection of relatively modest size, but of outstanding quality, loaned to the museum by Dr. Alex Gizunterman. He was born in Ukraine, grew up in Israel, studied medicine in Italy, and returned here. His biography is the story of the stunning success of an immigrant who arrived in Israel in 1990, and who now comes to our Museum of Jewish-Israeli Art with a collection that can be rivaled by very few native Israelis. Some of our past exhibitions have featured works from the collection of Eli Schechter, another immigrant from 1990, and I am very happy to see people like myself, who came from a different cultural background, starting out penniless in this country – and who have since fallen in love with Israeli culture, and are now putting the works bought with their hard-earned money at our disposal, for the edification and enjoyment of the general public.

Other works by some of the artists in Dr. Gizunterman’s collection have already made an appearance at our museum these past two years: Three pieces by Naftali Bezem starred in this year’s exhibition Survive, in Order to Create: 18 Israeli Artists – Holocaust Survivors, while an impressive artwork by Ludwig Blum was included in the exhibition Our Eternal Capital: Jerusalem in Israeli Art. More than forty drawings by Isaac-Alexander Frenel were displayed in his solo exhibition From Odessa to the Artists’ Quarter in Safed via Paris, which we held on the occasion of the 125^th anniversary of this important artist. Additionally, graphic works by Frenel and by seven other artists – Emmanuel Mané-Katz, Aharon Giladi, David Hendler, Yossi Stern, Moshe Bernstein, Albert Goldman, and Naftali Bezem – featured last year in the exhibition Self-Portrait: The Figure and Soul of the Painter in Israeli Art. However, the present collection includes representative oil paintings by most of these artists, letting our visitors greatly enrich their understanding of the artistic worlds of those men. Some of them passed away more than fifty (Ludwig Blum), or even sixty (Mané-Katz), years ago, while others (e.g., Naftali Bezem) died in the last decade. But, regardless of the historical distance between us and them, the importance of these artists has remained undiminished, and their works definitely merit a museum exhibition.

Some of the artists visit our museum for the first time. Four of these – Jacob Wexler, Avigdor Stematsky, Marcel Janco, and Zvi Meirovich – were, together with Moshe Castel, members of the “New Horizons” group in the first decade of Israeli independence. Thus, the museum visitors will have a rare opportunity to see the art of Moshe Castel’s friends alongside his own works in the permanent exposition.

It is very hard for a young collector (Dr. Gizunterman is only forty-five years old) to lay their hands on the very best works of any given artist; usually, such pieces are zealously guarded by the artist’s heirs, by museums, or by veteran collectors. Hence, it gives me particular pleasure to note that five artworks in this exhibition (by Isaac Frenel, Jacob Wexler, Zvi Shor, and Gershon Knispel) are among the best works of their respective creators. I believe that these pieces from Dr. Gizunterman’s collection ought to be included in any future exhibition of these artists’ oeuvre, because of their outstanding merits.

This collection, like the previous exhibitions that I have curated at the Museum, proves yet again that Israel was home to some amazing artists who have been unjustly forgotten. I would like to offer my deepest thanks to Dr. Alex Gizunterman for helping bring them back into the artistic limelight – and I invite everyone to come visit the exhibition.

 Curator – Dr. Alek D. Epstein
October 30, 2025 – January 21, 2026
Festive evenings and presentations of the catalogue:
(in Russian) Monday, November 24, 2025, 18:00
(in Hebrew) Sunday, December 7, 2025, 19:00

. Self Portrait with Lilac, 1978 (oil on canvas, 79x52 cm)

Frozen Solitude, 1978 (oil on canvas, 64x50 cm)

Self Portrait, 1988 (oil on board, 34x25 cm)

Shabat Shalom, 1987 (oil on board, 50x35 cm)

Song of Virtues, 1987 (oil on canvas, 50x35 cm)

Synagogue at the Marina Roscha, Moscow, 1988 (oil on canvas, 55x46 cm)

The High Priest, 1988 (oil on canvas, 49x34 cm)

Prayer for Peace, 1988 (oil on canvas, 80x60 cm)

Purim. Pisces Zodiac Sign (oil on panel, 55x33 cm)

Alon Shvut, 1990 (oil on canvas, 34x48 cm)

Evening in Jerusalem, 1992 (oil on canvas, 80x60 cm)

Giving the Torah, 1993 (oil on canvas, 49x34 cm)

My Friend Motya Lipkin

Yuli Edelstein,

Speaker of the Knesset in 2013–2020

There are people whose mere name brings on acute mental anguish – and, at the same time, very bright and warm memories. For me, one such person is my friend, the outstanding painter Mordechai Lipkin, who was brutally murdered by terrorists in the summer of 1993.

Mordechai, known to everyone as just “Motya,” was a typical representative of the Jewish Muscovite intelligentsia. In fact, it was people like him who were largely responsible for the widespread stereotype of the “Russian intelligentsia” – with its scrupulous decency in all matters, its selflessness, and its overpowering craving for spirituality.

In the early 1990s, we were neighbors in Alon Shvut, and our two families became friends. We had much in common. Although Motya was a little older than me, we could be said to be agemates. Like me, he had discovered the spiritual power of Judaism and the Jewish tradition back in the USSR, and wished to live his future life in Israel. Hence, it is hardly surprising that he made aliyah about a year after us, in 1988, when many were still trying to decide whether to leave or stay put. And, just like me and my wife, he and his family immediately settled in Gush Etzion, in the very heart of Judea – a step that required considerable courage.

At that time, a whole community of relatively young families with similar beliefs and outlooks crystallized in Alon Shvut. We would often visit each other. Those were truly unforgettable years, although they were darkened by a number of painful losses. One such loss, which has left an unhealing wound in my heart, was the death of Motya.

Even today, people often remember that he was not just a talented artist, but also a wonderful lecturer on Judaism; that it was thanks to him that many new olim discovered the world of the Torah, and Judaism as a whole. And yet, his defining character trait was, undoubtedly, his unconditional love for the Land of Israel, the feeling of an unbreakable bond with it. It was this devotion that ultimately determined the particular focus and uniqueness of his art.

I am neither a professional art scholar nor a critic, yet I can state with confidence that Lipkin’s works could never be confused with those of any other artist; this unique artistic signature is the hallmark of a true master. These paintings are unmistakably his because they embody the inimitable spirit of the landscapes and Jewish settlements of Judea, their special atmosphere; and because of their peculiar color palette – subdued, yet mesmerizing.

In one of the articles dedicated to Mordechai Lipkin’s art, the author assigned him to the avant-garde school. However, even if this verdict is true, it was a very special type of avant-garde, one that was intimately tied to the centuries-old Jewish art – and, more broadly, to ancient Near Eastern art, which is familiar to us from ancient history textbooks. Needless to say, the artist’s nationality can easily be deduced by looking at the paintings – his art is authentically and exclusively Jewish.

Thus, it turns out that, despite living a very brief life, Motya was able to accomplish a great deal, and this is the key to the enormous success of all his exhibitions, no matter where they are held. And the fact that the present one is held at a museum in Ma’ale Adumim strikes me as particularly significant. I believe that Motya would have been very pleased had he known that his paintings, which have been shown all over the world, are now being exhibited in one of the cities of Judea, which he loved so deeply, and which he extolled so poetically in his art.

Motya’s life is not over yet. He lives on not only in his works, but also in his four wonderful sons, the youngest of whom was still a toddler at the time of his death. He lives on in the activities of his widow, Ilana – who, like Motya himself, works in the field of Jewish education, and has done a great deal to popularize his art and perpetuate his memory, may it be blessed.

Mordechai Lipkin – A Man and an Artist

Ilana Lipkin

My husband was born in 1954 in Moscow, where, in 1977, he graduated from the Department of Painting and Graphics of the State Pedagogical Institute. Although his parents were alienated from their Jewishness, his grandfather, Grisha Bomshtein, attended the synagogue, and the young Motya (as he was called by almost everyone) heard his first Jewish stories from his lips. Even as a child, Motya was interested in questions of roots and national identity. He had actually been given a traditional Jewish name – in honor of his other grandfather, Mordechai Lipkin, who had killed in World War II. However, in accordance with Soviet practice, he was officially registered under a Russian name (Matvei, in this case).

From childhood, Motya loved drawing, and this would eventually become his profession. His graduation project at the Department of Painting and Graphics was a sequence of illustrations to Isaac Babel’s Red Cavalry; this was followed by illustrations to the novella “Oh, Sabbath” by Dina Kalinovskaya (née Dora Beron). That novella was originally published in Yiddish in 1975, and its Russian translation appeared five years later. In general, Motya believed that he had returned to his roots and to the observance of traditions through art. In his diaries, he wrote of all the types of art which had been present at the Temple in Jerusalem, and which, sadly, have been lost over the millennia of exile.

Motya was fascinated by Jewish history, traditions, and culture. When we named our firstborn son David, Motya’s father had a nasty shock. He kept repeating that he could not just show up at the factory and tell his colleagues that his grandson was named David. Incidentally, my father-in-law was named Yitzhak, but his friends called him Vitya; Motya would tell me that once, in his youth, he and his father were walking through a forest, and stumbled upon some guys who greeted the father with the words: “Hello, Vitya!” – And Motya kept looking about, unable to understand who this Vitya was. Now, however, my father-in-law kept saying: “How can I show up at work and tell them that my grandson is named David?” To this, Motya replied: “If you tell them that his name is Ivan, they will be even more surprised.”

We had our own apartment in Moscow, two rooms and a kitchen; every week, we would sit and talk there until morning. After a Hebrew lesson, people would gather and debate: those in favor of emigration vs. those who preferred to stay; those in favor or religion vs. those who were against it. It was a social club of sorts. We put on Purim spiels and celebrated Hannukah. Already in the early 1980s, Motya began to paint on Biblical subjects, and his canvases featured not only the faces of Jewish kings and prophets, but also Hebrew letters, which Motya had learned to read. He later created a series of paintings and graphic works dedicated to the Moscow Synagogue. Motya was bold enough to display some Jewish-themed pieces at the Izmailovo Arts and Crafts Market in 1985 – at a time when some of our acquaintances were still being arrested and imprisoned for teaching Hebrew.

Our whole group of Hebrew students would make the trip to Izmailovo, bringing little David along in a stroller, and sell Motya’s “Jewish” paintings there. In this connection, there is a very sad story: Once, when we were exhibiting the paintings, we were visited by Ora Namir, who had just come to Moscow at the head of some Israeli delegation. She saw Motya’s paintings with Hebrew writing. Motya answered her questions: “Yes, I’m painting on Jewish themes; I’m studying the Hebrew Bible, and I intend to make aliyah.” Ora Namir then said: “Present-day Israel no longer has much use for art with such themes!” We were left open-mouthed. Even in Izmailovo, we already self-identified as Israelis, tried to popularize Jewish art, and considered ourselves ambassadors of the Israeli culture – and here we were told that, in the Promised Land that we were desperately trying to reach, no one would have much use of us or our art! This came as a real shock.

   In 1988, we came to Israel. In those days, many used Israel as an excuse: Upon arriving in Vienna, they would board a flight to the USA; of all the passengers aboard our plane, we were the only family who did not change course, and landed in Eretz-Israel. In 1989, Motya wrote to his parents in Moscow: “I have only just arrived, yet I feel as though I have lived my whole life here…” Motya continued his studies at a yeshiva in Alon Shvut, and even taught a little. He toured the country and lectured on Jewish religious tradition for the recent immigrants. Other things that gave him pleasure were guiding tours and preparing a large exhibition. At this time, Motya began to work as art director at the Russian-language Jewish Encyclopedia, edited by Ella Slivkina. He also designed a number of covers for Biblioteka Aliyah [The Library of the Aliyah] series, managed by Rita Shklovsky.

Motya was once asked by his friend, the composer Arkadi (Aharon) Gurov (1956–2002; sadly, he, too, would be murdered by Arab terrorists): “Why did you leave Alon Shvut?” Tekoa was then a young, less developed settlement, with fewer inhabitants, and building a house there was less expensive. However, Motya gave a surprising explanation: “Alon Shvut is a place where the spirit of the rabbis and the righteous is palpable. Since we haven’t yet attained such a height, we are looking for a simpler place for ourselves.”

Motya continued to make art, trying out various styles and techniques. Jerusalem and the Judean Hills, the nature and the people that surrounded us – all this was transmuted into a new reality upon his canvases. He worked a great deal, often at night. I always asked him why he was in such a hurry, but Motya refused to put things off, seemingly sensing that his time here, with us, was limited. He did manage to accomplish a great deal in Israel, and we had two more sons. Exhibitions. Illustrations. Teaching traditions and art to others. And yet, he accomplished very little, since he got to live and make art in Israel for only five years.

The talented artist and teacher was shot dead by Arab terrorists on July 8, 1993. He was murdered in the very place where, shortly prior to that, he had painted the Judean Hills en plein air. That summer evening, he was returning home from work; the armed terrorists were lying in ambush for him on the road. He was only thirty-eight... Four little children – David, Yaakov, Avshalom, and Bezalel – became orphans; the oldest of them was seven years old at the time, while the youngest was not yet two.

In February 2015, a solo exhibition of Motya’s works was held at the Artefact Gallery in Moscow, with the support of the Russian Jewish Congress and the Jewish Agency for Israel. A decade has passed since then – and I am very happy that Dr. Alek D. Epstein, curator of the Moshe Castel Museum of Jewish and Israeli Art, has invited me to hold an exhibition of my late husband’s works here, in Judea, less than 40 km from the places where we lived and where Motya was murdered. Alek has told me that Ora Namir was wrong; that what Israel needs most of all is authentic Jewish art – and it is this kind of art that he prioritizes in his museum work. This is exactly what Motya dreamed of, and I am truly privileged to have lived to see his dream come true, and to have actually taken part in its fulfillment!

A Painter of Judea and Judaism:
Mordechai Lipkin’s Exhibition at the Moshe Castel Museum of Art
Dr. Alek D. Epstein
Artistic Director and Curator, the Moshe Castel Museum
of Jewish Israeli Art in Ma’ale Adumim

This exhibition is of great importance to me – and to many others, as I firmly believe. Regrettably, I did not personally know Mordechai Lipkin (1954–1993), who died when I was only eighteen; hence, I cannot share any recollections of meetings or conversations with this man. Instead, I would like to focus on the significance of his personal and artistic fate within the context of Israeli sociocultural life, of which he has remained a part, even posthumously – a fact that seems indisputable now, thirty-two years after his tragic, untimely death.

The only art museum in Judea and Samaria has a unique purpose; we are not merely a space for the exhibition of paintings, however good. The museum established by Moshe Castel’s widow, Bilha, is nothing less than the symbol of the spiritual triumph of our people – who, regardless of circumstances, have returned to their historical homeland wielding not only the sword, but also the pen and the brush. The sole museum in Judea and Samaria plays a key Zionist role – that of a cultural torchbearer, which strengthens the connection between our identity and that of the past generations, who created the experience of the Jewish people here, in Judea. I am certain that it is for this reason that Moshe Castel himself selected this spot for the future splendid palace of culture, which now justly bears his name.

Every day, when I enter the Museum (and I do this on an almost daily basis), I think of the artists who used to work here, in Judea, cementing our presence in this historical region with their own hands, but who did not live to see this edifice built, nor see their own works displayed within its halls. Are these artists destined to oblivion? Right now, we seem to have ended another war. So, what about those who fell in battle, or were killed in terrorist attacks? Are they truly gone for good, and we have no choice but to carry on without them?

I believe with all my heart that the answer to this is a resounding “no.” Hence, I am particularly excited to open the doors of the Moshe Castel Museum of Jewish Israeli Art in Ma’ale Adumim to a solo exhibition by a man who was a Zionist to the marrow of his bones; a unique artist, book designer, tour guide, and devoted father to his four sons. This was Mordechai (Matvei) Lipkin, a native of Moscow, who was murdered here, in Judea, on July 8, 1993. He dreamed of peace, yet his life was cut short by evildoers. We are grateful to his widow, Ilana Lipkin, who has preserved his works for all these years, believing – rightly – that her husband’s song was not yet over, and that, one day, art lovers would flock to his great exhibition here, in Eretz-Israel, in Judea. The couple got to live here together for only four-and-a-half years, yet Ilana’s husband, and the father of her four children, has become rooted in this land forever. She had kept the faith for over thirty years – and was vindicated: The day has finally come, and you are all invited to visit this exhibition at our museum.

As a sociologist, I can fairly confidently say that the times when we were regarded as “Russians” by our fellow Israelis are now over; immigrants from the USSR/CIS who arrived in the country in the 1970s–1990s – Natan Sharansky, Avigdor Lieberman, Ze’ev Elkin, Shlomo Ne’eman, Roman Gofman, and  Yaakov Berman – have, at various times, headed practically all the Israeli ministries; the Jewish Agency; Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley communities’ council; the Military Secretariat to the Prime Minister; and the Jerusalem District of the Border Police; “our” cultural figures – from Yevgeny Aryeh and Mark Kopytman (of blessed memory) to Yevgenia Dodina, Helena Yaralova, Vitali Friedland, Ira Bertman, Alla Vasilevitsky, Josef Bardanashvili, Marina Maximilian Blumin, and many others – have achieved great fame, becoming an important, integral part of Israeli culture; Mordechai Lipkin’s close friend Yuli Edelstein was elected Speaker of the Knesset in 2013. What more could we aspire to?

As for Mordechai Lipkin, he failed to win acclaim and recognition in his lifetime, being murdered when he was only thirty-eight – yet he was undoubtedly a pioneer of what Raphael Nudelman termed “Russian Neo-Zionism.” Lipkin was one of those who did not immigrate to Israel, but actually ascended to it (to use the Hebrew expression). And, immediately upon his “ascent,” he joined the ranks of the builders of this country’s present and future, finding a new home among the inhabitants of the settlement of Tekoa, which was then struggling for its existence. In Biblical times, according to Jewish tradition, it was the home of the prophet Amos, and also the place where Jehoshaphat, the fourth king of the Kingdom of Judah, defeated the alliance of the Ammonites, Moabites, and Edomites; later, during the First Jewish-Roman War, the troops of Simon bar Giora, one of the leaders of the anti-Roman revolt, camped there. When the State of Israel regained control over Judea, the pioneers of Neo-Zionism sought to reestablish the Jewish presence in Tekoa. Mordechai Lipkin decided to join them; for this decision, he would pay the ultimate price – his own life.

In Israel, it is customary to say about fallen soldiers and terror victims that “in their deaths, they ordered us to live;” Mordechai Lipkin bequeathed this final wish not only to his four sons (I can easily empathize with them, since my own father was killed at the age of thirty-nine, when I was only four years old), but to all of us, who continue to keep alive the flame of Jewish spirituality in Judea – our ancient homeland, where we can be anything but “occupiers.” Mordechai Lipkin did not merely live here, but also worked here: making drawings, giving lectures, and guiding tours; merging with this land, helping others understand it and fall in love with it – and, ultimately, becoming part of it forever. For this reason, I am particularly pleased that his exhibition is being held in the first visual arts museum to be established in Judea, which is named after Moshe Castel; Mordechai Lipkin did not live to see the creation of this museum – but I, as its curator, deem it my moral duty to exhibit his works here.

According to a saying attributed to the American Slavist Carl Proffer: “The most important thing that a Russian writer needs is a good widow.” Indeed, in a situation when prominent writers and poets were dying one by one, it largely fell to Nadezhda Mandelstam, Elena Bulgakov, Anna Pirozhkova (Babel), and Kira Andronikashvili (Pilnyak) to preserve their husbands’ legacy and the manuscripts of their major works. In Israel, we are faced with a similar problem – and here, at the Moshe Castel Museum, opened by the Master’s widow eighteen years after his death, I have collaborated with the devoted widows of the wonderful painters Baruch Elron, Yosef Ostrovsky, and Shmuel Bonneh in arranging their posthumous exhibitions. The present exposition belongs to the same category, since it has been organized jointly with Mordechai Lipkin’s widow Ilana, who is an amazing person; it has been my great privilege to get to know her and work with her.

With pain and bitterness, Ilana told me how Ora Namir, an Israeli minister and member of the Knesset, had explained to Lipkin back in Moscow that contemporary Israel had absolutely no need for art that was traditional Jewish in content and spirit. In response to this, we must note that, in those same 1980s, Israel was home to numerous active artists whose works celebrated the Jewish legacy. Our own museum has very recently hosted an exhibition by one of them, Shmuel Bonneh, who authored 150 works inspired by motifs and stories from the Book of Books. There were also other masters – Jacob Wexler, Naftali Bezem, etc. It seems that Ora Namir was simply unaware of their existence. And the reason for her ignorance is that, unfortunately, she was largely right: Israeli museum curators and gallery owners consciously refrained from exhibiting works of this kind, branding them as archaic and parochial, out of a desire for “global” and transnational art. I consider this attitude a tragedy of Israeli culture, since it is precisely this emasculated national-historical consciousness that renders such art uninteresting to other countries and nations. To put it bluntly, there is no point in bringing Yellow Square with a Blue Ribbon against the Background of a Green Rectangle from Israel to be exhibited in Paris or New York; those cities already have plenty of similar works by homegrown artists.

It seems that Mordechai Lipkin had absolutely no knowledge of Israeli art, and the names of the abovementioned painters would have meant nothing to him. He was, undoubtedly, a professional artist – yet, as a Jewish artist, he was a complete autodidact. In this, he reminds me a little of Niko Pirosmani – that Georgian genius of Primitivism, who now enjoys worldwide acclaim, but who was similarly self-taught, seeking out his individual path in art by trial and error. The works by Mordechai Lipkin that celebrate the Jewish legacy – Purim, Hannukah, Yom Kippur, and other Jewish holidays; verses from the Book of Nehemiah and the Book of Leviticus, and the Psalms of David – are painted in a unique authorial style, and their manner seems to reflect his belief that no other artist had ever been inspired by these motifs and stories before. One piece by Lipkin is titled Blessed Be Thou, oh Lord, Who Hast Given Us the Torah – and this sentiment clearly illuminated his art, and his entire life, during his last decade.

Less than a year ago, I curated an exhibition by another artist who was profoundly Jewish in spirit, and who “ascended” from the USSR to Israel at about the same time. This was Yosef Ostrovsky, who also passed away in 1993; his family lived here, in Ma’ale Adumim, before building a home in Samaria. This is what his son Meir has told me: “More than twenty years ago, an acquaintance tried to help push through an exhibition of Father’s works at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art; a commission convened and looked at photographs of his paintings. I happened to overhear some snatches of the discussion. One lady blurted out: ‘Such works of genius! What an amazing master! Look at the colors and the brushwork! There’s so much soul in it; I’m literally falling in love with this artist. What a shame that these are Jewish works!’” In the end, sadly, the exhibition was not approved. For many years, I have been working to bring to the fore those masters of the visual arts who remained faithful to the Jewish self-consciousness; undoubtedly, Mordechai Lipkin, like Yosef Ostrovsky, was among the most consistent of these.

Finally, we must not forget the unequivocal code of civic political identification, which all cultural figures and humanities scholars were expected to obey. This code was utterly incompatible with living in the so-called “occupied” territories. Parenthetically, I should note that, when I completed my Ph. D. in 2001, hoping to get a permanent position at one of the two universities where I already worked as a teaching assistant and junior research associate, representatives of both institutions lectured me on how they could not possibly hire a person who had consciously chosen to live in the “Territories,” and that this contravened “the civic code of the department” (a verbatim quote). Needless to say, even if Mordechai Lipkin was not told such things to his face, this attitude was implicit – and it deprived him of the chance to be exhibited at the museums and galleries that were deemed prestigious. Here, at the Moshe Castel Museum of Jewish Israeli Art in Ma’ale Adumim, we have built an alternative to all this – and we are glad at the opportunity to honor the blessed memory of Mordechai Lipkin with a worthy exhibition, to which I invite all those who believe in our national culture and collective future in our revitalized ancient land. Mordechai Lipkin was one of those who contributed – and, ultimately, gave his live – for its revitalization.

I offer my deepest thanks to Boris Grossman, Deputy Mayor of Ma’ale Adumim and a dear friend, for supporting this exhibition from the very beginning, and to Mr. Yury E. Giverts for his extensive contribution to the production of this catalogue. And, on a personal note – I, too, am a native of Moscow; I, too, have devoted my life to art and books; like the Lipkin family, I, too, have built a home here, in Judea. I am truly privileged to be able to curate this exhibition, which makes a powerful statement: No murder, however vile, will halt the advance of the Jewish spirit in Judea, and we are here – “after two millennia, my wanderings are at an end.” Mordechai Lipkin is still with us, and he will forever remain an inseparable part of the People of Israel in the Land of Israel.