An engineer by trade, Solomon (Shlomo) Dreizner joined a secret Zionist organization in Leningrad, his birth city, and was a member of the “Leningrad Nine” when Soviet authorities cracked down on the group. Along with his confreres, Dreizner thought that Jewish culture might flourish in a less repressive Soviet Union. The government thought otherwise. Dreizner was arrested, convicted, and sentenced in a trial whose outcome was a fait accompli. Upon his release, Dreizner promptly returned to activism. He fulfilled his long-deferred dream of emigrating to Israel, arriving just before the Yom Kippur War.
Jules Lellouche painted the interior of this synagogue in Djerba during World War II, when Tunisia was ruled by Vichy France. Though Tunisia’s Jewish community escaped mass deportations and murder in…
Chaim Soutine’s self-portrait is both an homage to art history and a critique of it. There was a long tradition of artists painting themselves facing an easel, holding a palette and paint brushes. But…
The Aron Schuster Synagogue was built in the expressionist style of the Amsterdam School, a movement that flourished from 1910 to about 1930 and that favored brick construction and copious decoration…