Tim Gidal (né Nahum Ignaz Gidalewitsch) was one of the founders of modern photojournalism. Born in Munich, the son of East European Jews, Gidal was a Zionist from an early age. When he received his degree from the University of Basel in 1935, he moved to Mandate Palestine. Struggling to make a living as a photojournalist there, he left for Britain. After two years there, he returned and joined the British army as a photographer in 1942. After the war, he moved to the United States, where he worked for Life and taught at the New School for Social Research in New York. In 1968, he moved to Zurich, and in 1970 he returned to Jerusalem, where he lived until his death.
A sick woman in a squalid rear tenement, so wretched and so pitiful that, in all the years since, I have not seen anything more appealing, determined me, within half an hour, to live on the East…
Cover of sheet music for “Hatikvoh” (The Hope) and “Dort vu die tseder” (There Where the Cedars Are). “Hatikvoh,” or “Hatikvah,” is based on Naftali Hertz Imber’s poem, “Tikvatenu” (Our Hope), first…
How shall I bless him and what will this child be blessed with? asked the angel. Life—so it emerges from the song lyric—was among the options of the angel’s blessing. But after all, angels don’t exist…