DECEMBER 2015 NO:- 121 A CHRISTMAS STORY (A JEWISH CHRISTMAS IN TONGA) BY ALAN W. BENJAMIN

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1 DECEMBER 2015 NO:- 121 EDITOR: Website for previous issues Index A CHRISTMAS STORY (A JEWISH CHRISTMAS IN TONGA) BY ALAN W. BENJAMIN It was 30 years ago that I was asked to by the Church of Tonga to feature The Baby Jesus along with Mary & Joseph on the 1985 Christmas stamps. Obviously I agreed but decided that their Jewish origins should be featured obviously in a respectful way. There was not much I could do with Mother & baby but I certainly wanted Joseph to be a Jewish Joseph so I made sure he got the right haircut & beard plus a kipah none over obvious but enough for those I wanted to notice to recognise the family origins. On the right illustrated is an imperforate proof of the final accepted design. NEW MEMBER:- 161:- DALE FLASHBERG. - quiltingclowngvtc.com 452 ENGLAISH OAKS CIRCLE, INTERESTS:- COLLECTS CLOWNS, PENGUINS, AND BOERNE, CHANUKAH ON STAMPS. TEXAS 78006, (MAY DECIDE TO ALSO COLLECT UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. JUDAICA ON STAMPS) TEL:- (001)

2 JEWISH PAINTERS BY HILTON ELLISON The East African country, Mozambique has over the years provided thematic philatelists with a wealth of varied material particularly on the theme of artists and paintings on stamps. In 2011 the country produced a lovely miniature sheet of six stamps exclusively featuring Jewish Painters. The sheet is headed in Portuguese Pintores Judeus (Jewish Painters). There are three stamps of MT (Metical) values and three of MT. Clockwise from bottom left on the sheet: Chaim Goldberg Babi Yar The artist and sculptor was born in Kazimiertz-Dolny Poland and lived subsequently in Russia, Israel and then the USA. Known primarily for his depiction of Jewish Shtetl life, the painting on the stamp however shows a ravine known as Babi Yar in the suburbs of Kiev which he painted from memory. On closer examination the painting shows a harrowing scene. A depiction of Jews murdered at this site in 1939 by the Nazis. 2

3 Moritz Daniel Oppenheim The return of the Jewish volunteer Oppenheim was a German painter, often regarded as the first Jewish painter of the modern era. While many Jewish artists of the 19 th century converted to Christianity to gain acceptance, Oppenheim retained his strong Jewish identity throughout his life. On the right hand side of the stamp is a self portrait of the artist produced in 1833 and the title of the painting on the left translated is The return of a Jewish Volunteer from the War of Liberation (The Portuguese Civil War) to his family still alive. The painting shows the joyous reunion. Amedeo Modigliani Dedie Hayden 1918 The Italian Jewish painter was born in Livorno from a wealthy family. He was a sickly child and illness plagued his entire life. Not much is known of his Jewish life. He studied art at the academies of Florence & Venice and subsequently moved to Paris where he led a dissolute life on drink and drugs. This lifestyle combined with his lifelong lung affliction lead to his early death at the age of 35. Like many famous painters, he was never recognized during his lifetime. He is known for his portraits in a style of elongated faces and figures. The portrait of Dedie Hayden shown on the stamp, painted in 1918 hangs today in the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. Camille Pissarro The Hay Harvest in Eragny. Pissarro was born on the island of Saint Thomas in the Danish West Indies, son of a merchant of Portuguese Jewish decent. His mother was a native Creole islander. At an early age he was sent to France for schooling and later studied art at Academies in France. He is often known as the father of impressionist art, and many famous artists subsequently followed and developed this style further. The title of the painting translated is The Hay Harvest in Eragny. It was painted in 1901 and today hangs in the National Gallery of Canada. Maurycy (Moses) Gottlieb Jews Praying in the Synagogue on Yom Kippur Gottlieb was a Polish Jewish realistic/romantic painter born to a Yiddish and Polish speaking family living in the Galicia region of Poland. He studied art at various schools and academies in Krakow, Munich and Vienna. Contrary to many artists of the period, Gottlieb won much acclaim during his lifetime. Many of his works depict Biblical themes both from the Old as well as New Testament. The painting shown on the stamps is one of Gottlieb s most famous works and it located today in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Entitled Jews Praying in the Synagogue on Yom Kippur. This beautifully composed picture shows all the traditional elements of the Ashkenazi Synagogue in the artist s hometown of Drohobych. Gottlieb has painted himself into the picture (to the right of the seated Rabbi, looking outwards). Being from his own home community, the Rabbi and worshippers shown were probably all real persons known to the artist. In 1879 he proposed marriage to Laura Rosenfeld who rejected him. It is believed that heart-broken, he intentionally exposed himself to Influenza and died shortly thereafter at the young age of 23. The self-portrait to the right of the stamp shows the artist in Arab/Bedouin dress. The date 1887 on the stamp is obviously an error as the artist had already died and probably should read

4 Samuel Hirszenberg The Sabbath rest Hirszengerg was born in Lodz Poland of orthodox Jewish parents. Much against family wishes he decided to become an artist and at the young age of 15 obtained the sponsorship of a local doctor who saw his artistic potential and went to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. Most of his works depicted Jewish life. Later his works were exhibited in Munich and in Paris where he was awarded a silver medal. In general however his art was not universally accepted and in 1907 he emigrated to Palestine and began to work as a lecturer in the newly founded Bezalel School in Jerusalem where he died one year later in The beautifully painted picture shown on the stamp The Sabbath Rest was painted in 1894 It shows a touching picture of a poor three generation family probably all living in the one room celebrating the Sabbath in the warm sunlight from the room s single window. Almost unseen unless one uses a magnifying glass is the little figure in the bed on the left, possibly a sick child? The painting is to be found today at the Ben Uri Gallery of the London Museum of Jewish Art. ************************************************************************************************************ ONE OF MY FAVOURITE ITEMS BY CHARLES WILDSTEIN I made this maximum card below, of the Belgian Yvonne Nevejean stamp of One of the rare stamps issued only because of the person being honoured was a Righteous amongst the Nations. On the stamp you can see a Magen David and a group of children. As the director of the child welfare ministry she managed to hide some 4000 Jewish children. The card shows the Alley of the Righteous in Jerusalem's Yad Vashem. Only five maximum cards exists. 4

5 GEMS FROM MY COLLECTION BY SEYMOUR NUSSENBAUM The back and front of this cover below are equally interesting to me as a collector of Judaica. The front of the cover shows that it was mailed in Geneva, Switzerland on December 12, 1902 from the office of the Jewish University. The sender, as noted in the return address on the back of the cover, was Dr. Ch(aim) Weizmann, later to become the first president of the State of Israel! Chaim Weizmann was born in 1874 in Motol, Russia. His intelligence was noted at an early age and he was able to pursue his education at German and Swiss universities. In 1902, when this letter was mailed, he was teaching chemistry in Geneva. He relocated to England in 1904 where he discovered a means to extract acetone from maize which greatly helped the British munitions industry. This accomplishment helped with the Zionist negotiations with the British government. Having been an avid Zionist since his youth, he also played an important part in the Balfour Declaration of 1917 which favoured the establishment of a Jewish national homeland. In 1948 he was elected as the first president of the State of Israel. He died in The cover is addressed to M(oshe) Glikin ( ) who participated in the 2nd Zionist Congress. He was a farmer in Migdal, in Palestine where he entertained Albert Einstein and his wife in Glikin later owned the Migdal Hotel in Haifa. I purchased this cover in a Toronto, Canada stamp shop about 38 years ago. I was there visiting family and tried various local stamp dealers for Judaica items. This particular dealer had the cover in a box of Judaica items for $7.50 Canadian. I would have bought it just for the corner card on the front, but when I checked the back of the cover I felt as though I had hit the lottery! Talk about serendipity! 5

6 GILBERTO BOSQUES SALDIVAR ON FRANCE AND MEXICO STAMP ISSUES BY ROBERTO BRZOSTOWSKI (BUENOS AIRES) GILBERTO BOSQUES SALDIVAR, a Mexican, saved during WWII thousands of Jews and Spanish Republicans from the clutches of the Nazis. He was honoured by France and Mexico (in July 2015) with the issue of four stamps with his photo. He was a man who touched his live and was protagonist of the most tragic events of the 20 th. Century. Born in 1892 and died in He was Consul General of Mexico in France during the German occupation and dedicated himself to save more than 20,000 Spanish Republicans and to give visas to the Jews. When he was 9 years old, Bosques lived the uprising against the dictator Porfirio Diaz in his native Ciautia, State of Puebla, he encouraged awareness of social problems. He was director of the newspaper El Nacional and always considered to honour the Republic. He was named by President Lázaro Cárdenas as Consul General in Paris in In 1942 he took the Consulate in Marseille from where he helped Lebanese who had lived in Mexico and went to renew their passports to Cairo (within his jurisdiction) and to Republicans who escaped from the dictatorship of Franco. Many of his efforts to save Jews was also helped by Ambassador Alfonso Guerra, consul general of Mexico in Hamburg. He had to rent two castles (Reynarde and Montgrand) where he gave refuge and asylum to hundreds of people. He fed people, cultivating some fields and leading herds of cattle to take care of them. He organized an orchestra and mounted a theatre to lift the mood of the inmates. Only in Reynarde there were 850 refugees and in Montgrand about 500 children and women who had good nutrition, playground for children, pediatricians and school camps. They created an atmosphere of physical and mental recovery for women rescued from concentration camps. He was responsible for bringing medicines to the concentration camps, and health care delivery service in hotels and guesthouses where Spanish refugees resided. He also installed a legal office to defend them in case that the Spanish fascist government demanded the extradition Getting jobs to refugees he prevented German deportation to death camps. Many times he managed to remove people from the concentration camps to give the Mexican visa and with this they could travel to this great Latin American country. He founded a Recovery House in the Pyrenees where 80 children collected in the vicinity of the concentration camps, recovered from anemia and frozen toes. He saved the life of about 7000 Jews, which turned him into a Righteous between the Nations. In 1942 the German troops stormed the Mexican diplomatic legation and Bosques and his family were confined in the Pyrenees and later in Bad Godesberg (Germany), where they stayed one year and two months until being exchanged for German prisoners in Lisbon, Portugal, and departed to New York. From there they travelled to Mexico D.F., where all the Jewish community and 7000 Spaniards gave them a big welcome. The President Manuel Avila Camacho sent him to Lisbon to protect persecuted Spaniards who were in Portugal. The humanitarian work of Gilberto Bosques Saldivar also had a great relationship with Cubatated as he facilitated gave haven to Raúl Castro in 1950 s. In 1955 Fidel Castro obtained a refugee visa after leaving the Cuban prison of Isla de Pinos. Yet despite all the great humanitarian work Gilberto Bosques Saldivar was never given the honour and named Righteous Amongst Nations. Mexico made him several tributes and a street is named with his name in Vienna, Austria. 6

7 LETTER TO THE EDITOR FROM RABBI ISIDORO AIZENBERG With reference to David Cohen-Paraira s article Landhouses in Curacao, which appeared in last month s newsletter. The Venezuelan issue illustrated on top of page 6 deserves an article on its own, but I m not in a situation to be doing the necessary research. It was issued at a particular time when Venezuela and Israel had very close ties and the local Jewish community, about 35,000, was very influential. Today, post Hugo Chavez, 7,500 Jews are left, and diplomatic ties with Israel have been severed for over a decade. Furthermore, the photo of Ricardo/ Bolivar on the stamp is by a John de Pool who did the painting from his imagination decades after a nondocumented encounter between the two, and the text on the stamp, although written by Bolivar, does not necessarily refer to Ricardo. Oh, well! As for the article. Mordechai was a son of David Ricardo and ( Israel Hizkiau who is this?) Batshebah Semarch Aboab. Nowhere is it documented that Ricardo helped Bolivar. They PROBABLY met when Bolivar came to Curacao in 1812 fleeing from the Spanish. No proof of that, except from what was written in a book in Spanish by the same John de Pool, based on folk legend. In 1814, Bolivar was back in Venezuela, the Spanish weren t giving up their fight, and he decided to send his sisters to Curacao. There is no evidence that Mordechai gave them two properties. What he again PROBABLY did, was intercede with his widowed mother-in-law Rachel Frois to make the Octagon, her property, available to them for their temporary residence rent-free. Sometime later Bolivar wrote a letter to Ricardo from Kingston, Jamaica, thanking him for his help with his sisters, and praising their friendship. It is the only letter that we have as a testimony of their friendship. An English text of the letter is reproduced in Emmanuel s History of the Jews of the Netherland Antilles, vol. I. Editor s note:- ******************************************************** Isidoro Aizenberg served as a rabbi of the Jewish community of Caracas, Venezuela between He is also the author of La Comunidad judía de Coro: , (in Spanish) a history of the Jewish community of Coro (Venezuela), the first Jewish community to be established in South America following independence from the Spanish, and with the welcoming stamp of Simón Bolívar himself. The Jews of Coro were all Sephardim and had immigrated from neighboring Curacao. NEW MEMBERS:- ******************************************************** 162:- CRAIG SCHNEIDER NW 88TH AVENUE, APT. # 432, SUNRISE, FLORIDA 33351, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. TEL:- (001) craigfs13@gmaol.com INTERESTS:- ANYTHING ISRAEL TABS MINT, BOOKLETS, SOUVENIR LEAFS, MAXIMUM CARDS, ETC,. 163:- CHAIM GOLDBERG. QUEBEC, CANADA. - CHAIM.GOLDBERG@INVESTORSGROUP.COM INTERESTS:- JEWISH SCULPTORS, ENGINEERS & ARCHITECTS. ********************************************* NEW JUDAICA ISSUE REPORTED BY CHARLES WILDSTEIN Austria - 22nd. September years since the birth of Friedrich Kiesler, architect. He was also one of the architects of the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem. On the stamp the Shrine of the Book is shown. ********************************************************************************************************** 7

8 LETTER TO THE EDITOR FROM HELGA SILBERBERG I would like to add something to the article from Roberto Brzostowski about the Shanghai Ghetto. There is much more than just the houses he mentions. There is a plaque memorializing the fact that Jews lived there between 1939 and to about Below is a picture of the arch where the plaque is attached, as well as a picture of the plaque. There is also a Museum of Jewish Refugees. Pictures below of the sign at the Museum and the entrance door. (Menorah with Magen David). There is another sign in commemoration of the site of the JDC. The Museum is on the site where a synagogue used to be. I took these pictures in 2010, when I took my children and grandchildren to show them where I had lived and gone to school. 8