Lily Ford: Dreams of Art in the Jewish East End, Part 3

DREAMS OF ART IN THE JEWISH EAST END PART 3: EXPANSION AND EXHIBITIONS AT THE BEN URI, 1919-1930 DR LILY FORD

DATE JULY 2015 SOURCE COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR ESSAY WRITTEN AS PART OF THE BEN URI GALLERY’S RESEARCHER IN RESIDENCE PROGRAMME

Dreams of Art in the Jewish East End Part 3: Expansion and exhibitions at the Ben Uri, 1919-1930

By Lily Ford This is Part 3 of the history of the early decades of the Ben Uri Art Society, which had origins in the environment of Yiddish East End culture in Edwardian London, described in Part 1.

After its beginnings during the First World War, functioning more as a society than a collecting body, sustained by meetings and events which as Part 2 has shown were alternately haphazard and joyful, the Ben Uri began from 1919 to acquire a wider selection of Jewish art, and to embark on lecture programmes in earnest, offering a platform to a variety of Eastern European intellectuals, performers and artists as they passed through London, alongside a sense of community for both the original members and those who would go on to join the Ben Uri. Part 3 describes the society’s progress through the 1920s, as it consolidated and began to exhibit its collection.

The collection expands, 1919-1924 When Beach once again took up his pen to minute Ben Uri meetings in the summer of 1919, there were some new names in attendance. As in 1916, many of the meetings were chaired by Isaac Braydburg at his Notting Hill home. But now they counted with the presence of Leo Kenig, already a firm friend of Good 1 (as he probably had been of Berson), and of Joseph Leftwich. Kenig, also a Notting Hill resident, had been brought in to oversee the literary side of the catalogue that committee members were keen to organise and print. 2 Leftwich, the Yiddish writer and member of the Whitechapel Boys, had formed a similar venture to the Ben Uri only three weeks after Berson’s founding meeting, and came to the committee to seek support in re-establishing his own society for Jewish culture, which he claimed elsewhere had fallen victim to the ‘exigencies of war’ by this time 3. Though the Ben Uri declined to take on Leftwich’s group, he began attending Ben Uri meetings and soon became involved, as editorial secretary, with the Yiddish literary journal conceived of by Leo Kenig and Edward Good, Renesans.

It’s possible that Beach was motivated to start recording meetings again because the Ben Uri collection, until now consisting only of the somewhat disgraced Berson’s work, had been enhanced. On Saturday 2nd August 1919, ‘Friend Good reported that… a wonderful collection 1 Mosheh Oved Visions and Jewels: autobiographic in three parts London: Faber & Faber 1952, pp. 150-151.

2 1916-21 Minutes p. 71. This meeting is one of those whose date cannot be confirmed, but it may have taken place in June

1919. Footnote references to the Ben Uri’s first minute book are abbreviated to ‘1916-21 Minutes’. Page numbers refer to the page numbers in the original Yiddish manuscript, which are retained in Sima Beeri’s translation into English, from which all quotes are taken. Dates for the meetings to which the minutes refer are also given in the footnotes, and if the meeting is recorded as a members’ or committee meeting this is also noted. Footnote references to translations of Yiddish press cuttings use the Ben Uri Archive catalogue reference, eg. PR 01/01/01, which refers to the volume and page number of Judah Beach’s cuttings albums. The Ben Uri Archive will be referred to in notes as BU Archive.

3 Leftwich’s society was called the Jewish Association for Advances in Arts and Sciences (JAAS), and the group was nicknamed the ‘Focussers’. The Ben Uri Minutes refer to Leftwich’s society as the Anglo-Jewish Arts Society. BU Minutes 1916-21 p. 72. Sarah MacDougall ‘“Something is happening there”: early British modernism, the Great War and the “Whitechapel Boys”’ in Michael J. Walsh ed. London, Modernism and 1914, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2010, p. 134

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of paintings by a certain great Jewish painter by the name of Simeon Solomons [sic] was discovered.’ With the help of Kenig and Braydburg, Good had chosen 15 works and paid £165 for them, which he hoped to claim back from the society as the money was raised 4. Simeon Solomon was at that time a forgotten artist, a Victorian who had forfeited the usual accolade due someone of his pre-Raphaelite style by practicing his homosexuality and falling into destitution, and he died in disgrace 5. Yet he was a rare example of a British painter who included Jewish subjects in his art, and as such seemed an appropriate addition to Ben Uri’s nascent collection. No doubt the relatively cheap price and job lot also made the purchase an attractive one to Good, who, with a pronounced interest in art and an ability to bankroll purchases, would continue to steer the development of the Ben Uri collection through the 1920s. In fact, the Solomon acquisitions only included one painting, a watercolour, and were otherwise studies in chalk, pencil and charcoal, all dating from the 1890s. Their soft lines, tracing romantic androgynous visages, draw on a mixture of Jewish, New Testament, classical and Symbolist themes. The contrast with the Berson work already in the Ben Uri collection is quite marked, and the addition in 1920 of a third artist, David Bomberg, would only accentuate the eclectic nature of the Ben Uri accessions policy.

Besides an amplification of its collection, which was celebrated with a Hanukah banquet at Braydburg’s home featuring addresses by Pilichowski and Kenig, there was also a concrete move towards including Yiddish cultural criticism in the Ben Uri’s remit in 1920, when it took over Renesans 6. The journal had been running since January 1920, with Kenig as editor, Good on the editorial board, and Joseph Leftwich as editorial secretary 7. The second issue, dated February 1920, featured a long article by Leftwich on Simeon Solomon illustrated by reproductions of some of the Ben Uri’s new acquisitions. It seems as if the society’s patronage of Renesans did little to keep it going – the journal ceased after the sixth issue, possibly the only one to be released under Ben Uri auspices 8. Still, a rare British example of Yiddish art criticism, it counted Alfred Wolmark, Lucien Pissarro and Stephen Winsten among its contributors, as well as featuring work and writing by many of the artists the society would go on to acquire, including Jacob Kramer, Jacob Epstein, Bernard Meninsky, Isaac Lichtenstein and David Bomberg, who illustrated a cover 9.

It was at some point in 1920 that work by the third artist in Ben Uri’s collection, David Bomberg, was purchased 10. This represents one of several intriguing black holes in the society’s history – there is very little reference to him in the society’s records of the time, 4 1916-21 Minutes, committee meeting 2nd August 1919, p. 72. The wording suggests that it was Kenig and Braydburg who selected the Solomon paintings to buy, with Good merely financing them as treasurer.

5 See Ferrari, Roberto C, and Carolyn Conroy, Simeon Solomon Research Archive. Internet. Published 28 February 2010.

Accessed 16th January 2024. Available: http://www.simeonsolomon.com 6 1916-21 Minutes, meeting 28th December 1919, p. 74.

7 Oved Visions and Jewels pp. 150-151.

8 1916-21 Minutes, p. 75. Renesans is only mentioned in the 20th September 1920 meeting (though it can be assumed that it would have been discussed in previous, undocumented meetings), at which there was a proposal to celebrate the journal’s sixth and last issue, and an apology from Kenig about the wrong kind of paper being used by the printer.

9 MacDougall op. cit. p. 134. The British Library holds issues 1-4 (Jan-April 1920) of Renesans.

10 According to an annotated copy of the 1925 list of the Ben Uri collection in the BU Archive, four paintings by Bomberg (‘Ghetto Theatre’, ‘The Window’, ‘A Studio’ and ‘A Writer’) were bought in 1920. That is the only existing information about this acquisition.

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indeed seven months of 1920 are unaccounted for in the minute book11. Bomberg, born in Birmingham to East European Jewish parents and brought up in Whitechapel, had entered the Slade in 1911 as part of the cohort of East End students funded by the JEAS, but left in 1913 after disagreement with the tutors there. He painted gridded, almost abstracted scenes of East End life – of the docks, the Jewish baths and Yiddish theatre – and was quite widely exhibited over the years 1912-1914, also being chosen by the Whitechapel Gallery, alongside Jacob Epstein, to select international works for the Jewish Section of their ‘Twentieth Century Art’ exhibition. Bomberg was squarely in the avant-garde of modernist art, and polarized critical opinion, making it all the stranger that no discussion by the Ben Uri committee is recorded or referred to during the period of the acquisition. Epstein may have been on the list of Ben Uri’s founding members, but it was Leftwich who, by his own recollection (the limits of which were mentioned in Part 1) introduced Bomberg to the committee 12.

Judah Beach would provide a kind of post-hoc rationalization of the Bomberg acquisitions in his 1930 account of the Ben Uri, on the grounds of making the collection ‘representative’ ‘of both the older and the younger Jewish artists, irrespective of school, or tendency, or period’ 13.

Beach insisted that ‘the Ben Uri has always been strictly impartial in the purchase of its exhibits’, giving the sense of a policy which was clearly not in operation in the early 1920s. In reality, the society’s lack of funds made it dependent on the credit, and therefore judgement, of treasurer Edward Good. Though there are records of discussions about around half the artworks bought between 1919 and 1924 in the minutes, it is only by their appearance in the 1925 list of works that we know other items had been bought by then. An art-buying committee was set up later in the century (the first archival records for this date from 1946), but the early history of Ben Uri collecting unfolds along lines of acquaintance, personal recommendation and goodwill rather than as a clear-cut policy. The emphasis was certainly on art from the Yiddish-speaking world, in keeping with the society’s identity as Jewish/Yiddish national, and the artworks that were bought can be read in the context of the Ben Uri’s wider cultural commitment to Yiddish. There are records of many Yiddish musical, dance and theatrical events hosted by the society in this period. Besides these, every celebration of a new purchase or a Jewish festival involved Yiddish songs, readings and instrumentals. In the records of events from this period, the artworks really do seem to be secondary to the parties, or, to put it another way, the acquisition of works of art was only one element of an ongoing endeavour to celebrate Jewish identity. Looking back in 1930, Beach remembered ‘If the society acquired forty pictures, it was a holiday. An album, another holiday. Four years of existence, a jubilee.’ 14

11 A lecture by D. Bomberg was being planned in December 1921 but there is no evidence this ever took place; 1916-21

Minutes, meeting 13th December 1921, p. 92. Bomberg did lecture for the Ben Uri in 1928 on his Middle Eastern tour (the notice is in the BU Archive). The gap in the minutes goes from the meeting about taking over Renesans on 20th September 1920, to ‘the first open meeting’ in 30th April 1921, concerned with gathering support from ‘various organizations’ (not named) to organise a reception for the artist Glicenstein; a second open meeting was held 8th May 1921 (BU Minutes 191621, pp. 75-77). A flyer in the BU archive shows that the Ben Uri put on a fancy dress ball at the Hampstead Conservatoire on December 4th 1920, but details of the organization around this event are not available.

12 ‘I also brought in Bomberg, by taking Mosheh Oved, Beach and a few others to his studio.’ Joseph Leftwich ‘“Jewish” London Fifty Years Ago’ in Jacob Sonntag ed. Ben Uri, 1915-1965: Fifty Years’ Achievement in the Arts London: Ben Uri Art Society, 1966, pp. 12-16, p. 16.

13 Judah Beach ‘The Ben-Uri: Its History and Activity’ in Catalogue and Survey of Activities London: Ben Uri, 1930, p. 14.

14 ‘Fifteenth Anniversary of Ben Uri’, undated cutting, source unknown, PR/01/01/53.

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A good example of the meshing of the Ben Uri’s dual commitments, to Jewish art and Jewish life, is the society’s activity in 1921, in organizing a fundraising concert in tribute to the Polish Jewish sculptor, Enrico Glicenstein. Glicenstein was already a well established artist on the continent, having followed commissions and offers of exhibitions to Italy, Germany and Switzerland, and was keen to try London. Leo Kenig saw in Glicenstein’s trip to London the chance for the Ben Uri to put on ‘a peoples’ celebration’ 15. Possibly the fact that Glicenstein, by virtue of his itinerant career, could represent a kind of pan-European Jew uncategorized by nationality, was also an attractive factor. Edward Good exclaimed that the sculptor ‘is almost the only Jew with whom we are close’ in the context of visual art, a strange statement given the association of the society with Pilichowski and Wolmark at this time16. Another factor that may have made Glicenstein a worthy subject of the Ben Uri’s energies was his impecunious situation. He could not afford to have his work transported from Rome to London, nor to pay the duty on its arrival when the society advanced him the necessary sum for the transport 17.

Joseph Leftwich wrote a poem about him in 1921 which suggests he was too poor to buy the materials necessary for his sculpture So I must model clay, in vain, To fling back my forms into clay again.

How little has he done, they say, at his age, And my heart like an earthquake rocks with rage.

Even when I smile, tranquil-faced, It is like a quiet field with a mine in its bosom placed. 18 The noble figure, suffering for his art and profoundly creatively committed, clearly appealed to the Ben Uri committee. Aware of Glicenstein’s financial difficulties, they agreed to try and put on an exhibition to help him sell his work, or at least postcards of his work; this was converted into a drive to raise funds to enable the Ben Uri to buy at least one item for its collection 19. The event drew more new figures into the Ben Uri committee. The printer and impresario Moyshe Susman, who was to bring many Yiddish theatre troupes from Eastern Europe to perform in London, including the very successful season of the Vilna Troupe the following year, took charge of organizing the evening alongside Shamay Pinski, the Hebrew and Yiddish writer and Zionist 20. The event took place at the People’s Palace on Sunday 26th June, chaired by Israel Zangwill, with speeches by all the usual Ben Uri luminaries (Pilichowski, Wolmark, Good) as well founding members Dr. Jochelman and Morris Myer, and the respected Zionist scholar and Sephardic chief rabbi Dr. Moses Gaster 21.

15 1916-21 Minutes, meeting 30th April 1921, p. 76.

16 1916-21 Minutes, meeting 8th May 1921, p. 77.

17 1916-21 Minutes, meeting 19th July 1921, p. 80.

18 Joseph Leftwich ‘Glicenstein’ (1921) in Along the Years: Poems 1911-1937 London: Robert Anscombe and Company,

1937, p. 47.

19 1916-21 Minutes, meeting 8th May 1921, p. 77; text of announcement by Beach, PR 01/01/19.

20 1916-21 Minutes, meeting 8th May 1921, p. 77. Leonard Prager Yiddish Culture in Britain: A Guide, Frankfurt am Main and New York: Peter Lang, 1990, (on Zusman) p. 731, (on Pinski) p. 517, (on the Vilna Troupe’s success), pp. 681-3.

21 A.B. Levy ‘The First Twenty-Five Years’ in Jacob Sonntag ed. Ben Uri, 1915-1965: Fifty Years’ Achievement in the Arts London: Ben Uri Art Society, 1966, p. 25, see also programme in BU Archive.

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Though it was clearly an important cultural event, the evening failed to raise sufficient funds, and it is likely that the second event of 1921 was organized in order to make up enough money to buy some of Glicenstein’s work. Susman, who had proved himself so capable in June, held committee meetings at his home in August and September, drawing on his network of European musicians and actors to plan a concert on September 18th at the Rivoli 22. The line-up included singers Mischa Léon, Elsa Stralia, Dorothy Stram and Vladimir Rosing, musicians Isolde Menges and Lilia Kanevskaya, and the Jewish Drama League, directed by Leo Kenig, acting out character sketches from the work of Sholem Aleichem and Israel Zangwill 23. The concert seems to have been a success, and at last a profit was made, enough for the society to purchase a bronze, ‘Messiah’, and a number of drawings by Glicenstein the following month. Good also took the opportunity of the Ben Uri’s relative liquidity to buy two paintings from Isaac Lichtenstein, the Polish Jewish painter who had been in London since 1920, having studied at the Bezalel in Palestine, and served in the Jewish Legion during the war 24. Lichtenstein had contributed to Renesans and subsequently attended a Ben Uri meeting 25, and would work with Good illustrating his Lebens-Lieder in 1924.

The activities of 1921, or perhaps Susman himself, attracted to the Ben Uri two men who were already deeply involved in the life of East End Jews: Adolph Michaelson and Abraham Mundy 26. They were respectively superintendent and secretary of the Jews’ Temporary Shelter on Leman Street, Aldgate, a very important institution for arriving émigrés 27. Within a few months, Michaelson was weighing into committee discussions (‘Friend Michaelson thinks that the Society should become a mass movement.’ 28), and he would become a dominant voice in the Ben Uri, hosting many meetings at the Shelter and serving as chairman from 1926 until 1940.

The Ben Uri artworks were at last turning into a collection worthy of the name. It was decided after the success of both that year’s events, with their prominent guests and speakers, that the society needed to pin its colours to establishment figures and ‘gain support from the AngloJewish press’ 29. In October 1921 Zangwill was invited to be Honorary President, with Honorary Vice-President roles going to two well-known Jewish artists of East European origin: Leopold Pilichowski, who was already a member and collaborator with the committee, and Alfred Wolmark.

Both Zangwill and Wolmark professed themselves unwilling to take up their roles. Wolmark felt he was not representative of ‘the “Jewish Street” and its diversity’, but accepted the post out of ‘a duty towards the Jewish people’; furthermore he professed that the Ben Uri seemed

22 1916-21 Minutes, committee meetings 8th, 17th, 24th and 29th August and 6th September 1921, pp. 81-6.

23 There are two reports on the Rivoli concert in the cuttings book, publications unknown. PR 01/01/20.

24 Prager op. cit. p. 416.

25 1916-21 Minutes, meeting 30th April 1921, p. 76.

26 The first meeting they attended was on Wednesday, 8th August 1921 at Mr Susman’s house. 1916-21 Minutes, p. 81.

27 Prager op. cit. p. 475. Mundy wrote ‘Some Reminiscences of the Shelter’s Activities for the Last Quarter of a Century’, translated by A. Michaelson, typed MS at the Jewish Museum, London.

28 1916-21 Minutes, meeting 11th October 1921, p. 87.

29 Ibid.

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to be the only society, among many, to survive in its creative aspirations 30. Zangwill declared that the role would be better occupied by someone with more ‘Jewish feeling’, a curious idea coming from a figure so widely identified with Jewish letters. He suggest approaching the Anglo-Jewish painters Sir William Rothenstein or Solomon J. Solomon 31. With these nominations, Zangwill was suggesting that Ben Uri might seek patronage from figures in the highest echelons of Anglo-Jewish society. Both Solomon and Rothenstein were British establishment artists, schooled in Paris in the 1870s and 1880s respectively, and members of the New English Art Club. While Rothenstein had dabbled in East European Jewish themes, with his ‘discovery’ of stimulating portrait matter in East End synagogues in the first years of the 1900s, he was very much an outsider to Whitechapel. His choice of title for one canvas executed in this period, ‘Aliens at Prayer’, is indicative of his detachment as an Anglo-Jew from this very different species of religious East End Jew 32. Solomon, ensconced in his reputation as the most sought-after society portraitist both in and outside Anglo-Jewish circles, seems to have expressed no interest in East End Jewish culture, but alongside Rothenstein, who as a younger artist Solomon had mentored, served on the committee of the JEAS. On behalf of the JEAS both artists helped the careers of Jacob Epstein and Mark Gertler as well as other emerging Whitechapel Boys 33. It is notable that when approached for advice by Epstein in 1905, Rothenstein could see no audience in Britain for the sculptor’s avant-garde style despite admiring it himself, and suggested he seek a sympathetic public in Paris instead 34.

Despite the prominence of these two figures in the art world, the Ben Uri committee was initially resistant to allying itself to them. To understand their compunctions we may turn to the tension between East End Jews and West End Jews outlined in Part 1, but they were also artistic scruples. Solomon and Rothenstein represented the old guard. Leo Kenig would write of Solomon after his death in 1927 that he was a thoroughly ‘normal’ painter. While recognizing Solomon’s skill as a great academician, he could not help but wonder if he might have amounted to something more interesting in different circumstances. ‘[I]t could be that if he had been born a little later, we would have had a great constructivist artist instead of a respectable academic portrait painter’ 35. Kenig’s subtle deprecation of the artist can be taken to represent one element in the Ben Uri committee’s attitude towards such painters, which might amount to the belief that artists should take more risks and pay more attention to ‘the Jewish soul’. It answered Zangwill’s suggestion with the response that it was inappropriate to ‘appoint as head an artist who favours a certain direction in Modern Art’ 36, and the writer acquiesced in becoming President. He would step down from the position three years later, forcing the committee to swallow its compunctions and approach Rothenstein and Solomon.

30 1916-21 Minutes, meeting 3rd November 1921, p. 89.

31 1916-21 Minutes, meeting 6th December 1921, p. 91.

32 See Peter Gross ‘The lachrymose Mr Rothenstein’, Chapter 6 of unpublished PhD thesis 'Ostjuden and Westjuden: art and Anglo-Jewish identity', for more on Rothenstein and the East End. 33 Lisa Tickner and Peter Gross ‘The Jewish Education Aid Society and Pre-First World War British Art’ in The Ben Uri Story from Art Society to Museum and the influence of Anglo-Jewish Artists on the Modern British Movement London: Ben Uri Gallery, 2001, pp. 62-63.

34 John Stevenson The Penguin Social History of Britain: British Society 1914-45. London: Penguin 1984, reprinted 1990, p.

434.

35 Leo Kenig ‘Solomon J. Solomon’ in The Jewish Post, undated. PR/01/01/60.

36 1916-21 Minutes, meeting 6th December 1921, p. 91.

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The higher profile representation did not gain the Ben Uri much more coverage in the Jewish Chronicle. Another hiatus in the minutes means the details of planning what turned out to be a good autumn for Yiddish events in London are obscured 37. Only the programmes remain from that year’s society activity. Rothenstein gave a lecture for the Ben Uri at the Whitechapel Gallery on 13th May 38. A garden party was held on 30th July at Brook House in Tottenham, with Mr and Mrs Zangwill as guests, a display of the collection’s artworks, and several entertainments from the musical to the frivolous (a fortune-teller was installed in ‘the cavern of Ben Uri’) 39. By this point in the year Whitechapel Boy Samuel Winsten had become secretary of the Ben Uri, and must have had a part in organizing a lecture series in the autumn at the Whitechapel Gallery. The Whitechapel Gallery talks took place between October and December 1922. According to the programme, the art collection was displayed on each occasion 40. The lectures were given in Yiddish or English, depending on the speakers, who were both drawn from within the Ben Uri’s ranks – Dr. Salkind on ‘Art and the Jew’ (Yiddish), Kenig on Yiddish literature (Yiddish), Oved on ‘The Spirit of Jewish Art’ (Yiddish), Winsten on everyday art (English) – and from a wider sphere spanning the arts of the time. Edward McKnight Kauffer, the artist behind many successful London Underground posters, spoke on poster art. Cinema was addressed by Bertram Jacobs, who as Benedict James was a successful screenwriter (his film Son of David (1920), now lost, was about a Whitechapel Jew who became a professional boxer to avenge his father). Thomas Moult, poet, novelist and journalist, lectured on ‘The Future of the Novel’ – Moult may well have been recruited to speak by Zangwill – their children would marry. And the actor, novelist and critic E. Graham Sutton spoke on ‘The Drama of Tomorrow’.

There is no indication that Sutton included Yiddish theatre in this category, though he may have. He had written earlier that year on Irish drama, and portrayals of the Irish on the English stage, but his literacy of or attitude towards Yiddish theatre is unknown 41. In fact this latter enjoyed its first wave of critical acclaim in the English press in the same weeks as Sutton’s lecture on October 21st. The Vilna Troupe, an ensemble brought over from a residency in Antwerp by Ben Uri member Moyshe Susman, performed a very successful run at the Kingsway Theatre in late October, eliciting comment and praise from a range of non-Jewish drama correspondents, none of whom understood a word of the show, but all of whom were impressed by the acting skills of the troupe. ‘It is a daring venture to play in the language of the Ghetto in the West End’, remarked the Weekly Westminster Gazette reviewer, ‘but it is fully justified’ 42.

37 Beach’s handwritten Yiddish minutes end on the eve of the society’s sixth Hanukah celebration, which probably took place at the Monickendam Hall on Saturday 25th December 1921, fuelled by an interesting assortment of foodstuff and drinks donated by committee members. 1916-21 Minutes, meeting 22nd December 1921, p. 93. The next minute book in the archive begins in January 1924, written in English by a newly appointed honorary secretary, W. J. Simons. Minutes of the Executive Council January 1924-July 1926. Monday 7th April 1924. Future references to this minute book will cite the BU Archive catalogue reference Exec/01/02. The book has no page numbers.

38 Invitation in BU Archive.

39 Programme in BU Archive, see also report on PR 01/01/34 and report in the Jewish Chronicle August 4th 1922, p. 26.

40 Programme in BU Archive.

41 E. Graham Sutton ‘The Irishman in the Theatre’ The English Review May 1922 (Vol. 34) pp. 442-446.

42 Prager op. cit. p. 683. See also pp. 52-3 and pp. 681-3.

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Such praise of a Yiddish art form in the national papers, including the Sunday Times, the New Statesman, the Daily Herald and the Manchester Guardian, signals that by the early 1920s the language could count on greater recognition in the British cultural arena. The Ben Uri’s new associates – Kenig, Leftwich and Susman, among others – had helped enhance the society’s programming and network of Yiddish writers and performers. The broad remit of the programme of Ben Uri lectures in the autumn of 1922, with its meshing of Yiddish themes with remarkably contemporary, indeed forward-looking, British art forms, suggests a certain confidence in the society’s place as a proponent and arbiter of both literary and visual art in London.

Another gap in the records occurs at this point, with only the balance sheet for 1923 offering a clue as to the society’s activities during that year. It shows that the Ben Uri acquired a painting

by Samuel Hirzenberg, a well established Polish-born painter who was now resident in Jerusalem and involved in the Bezalel School of Art 43. Sabbath Rest (1894) constituted the first item in the Ben Uri collection to portray a classic scene of Jewish family life and religious observance, as three generations listen to a scriptural reading 44. The painting was bought with the help of Edward Good, who then attempted to recoup funds in instalments from members – the issue of non-payment would provoke ‘heated discussion’ in the January 1924 committee meeting 45.

1924-1927: adventures in exhibiting The middle years of the 1920s saw the Ben Uri develop into an exhibiting organization, with a series of displays of its growing collection in more or less formal settings. After a pause of three years, possibly represented in a missing minute book, the minutes were resumed by a new honorary secretary, W. J. Simons. Simons wrote in English and, in contrast to the 1916-21 minute book, his notes were checked and signed by the chairman of each subsequent meeting.

The location of the meetings was almost always the Jewish Shelter on Leman Street, with Michaelson taking a prominent role, rotating chairmanship with Good and Chechanover, a fellow Yiddish writer. Chechanover may have been an associate of Susman, or at any rate part of the Yiddish theatre network, for he proposed a concert in aid of the ‘remaining members’ of the Vilna Troupe, who had arrived on a less successful second tour in 1923. His motion was rejected by Michaelson, who ‘objected to the “Ben-Uri”’s acting as a charitable constitution’ 46.

As superintendent of the Jewish Shelter, Michaelson was perhaps all too familiar with the mechanisms of local Jewish philanthropy and wished to maintain the Ben Uri’s separate integrity as a cultural society.

43 Printed Balance sheet, 31st December 1923, BU Archive.

44 See Gross ‘Wolmark’ chapter 7 of unpublished PhD thesis 'Ostjuden and Westjuden: art and Anglo-Jewish identity' pp.

34-5.

45 Exec/01/02, 15th January 1924.

46 Exec/01/02, 29th January 1924.

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Early in the year the committee was engaged in appointing a new honorary president, after Zangwill’s resignation, and coming up with a new scheme upon which the society’s finances could be made sustainable, perhaps as a club. On this matter Beach and Michaelson presented opposing plans, neither of which seem to have been actioned despite a committee being set up to deal with the matter 47. Solomon J. Solomon agreed to becoming president in April, and in early July he visited Beach’s home to view the collection and meet members of the committee.

Interestingly, a meeting with the reputable Anglo-Jewish artist seems to have held little interest for many committee members, with Beach complaining that they did not attend in sufficient numbers. Solomon showed himself ‘highly interested and pleasant’ but seems to have attempted to curb the committee’s ambitions: He did not approve of opening a club yet awhile, and thought that the best means of attaining anything was by the Committee’s personal efforts and sacrifice. We must prepare the Jewish Community for the desire, and finally the necessity of Jewish Culture, for we have many competitive institutions which are all deserving of assistance. 48 It had recently been decided by committee that Beach should keep a visitor’s book at home ‘for all visitors to the Collection to enter names and addresses’ 49. Solomon’s discouragement of the plan to open a club must have left Beach resigned to housing the collection for some time longer. This small moment represents the point at which one might locate the first permanent exhibition of the Ben Uri collection – the capital letter given it by Simons in the minutes marking it out further as an entity in its own right. Although Beach never called his home a gallery, he had opened it often for members’ events to take place surrounded by the society’s artworks 50. The inauguration of a visitor’s book suggests an openness to attendance by the wider public.

Despite his active involvement in the older Anglo-Jewish philanthropic society the Maccabbeans, which he had founded, Solomon does not seem to have been a particularly effective advocate for the Ben Uri. Unlike Zangwill, he did not speak or write publicly about the society. He was unavailable to open its first official exhibition, and he seems to have donated neither funds nor works for the collection. The paintings of his now in the Ben Uri collection were donated by family members years after his death. The society’s aims languished over the rest of 1924 despite the efforts of committee members to organise lectures and find premises, but its social life was robust. A summer day trip to Eastcote, a stately home and garden to the north of London, attracted 143 adults and 28 children 51. It seems that the work of organizing such outings impacted negatively on the Ben Uri’s other activities; certainly a year later Simons was complaining he had been kept so busy by arrangements for a 47 Exec/01/02, Monday 25th February 1924.

48 Beach’s report of Solomon’s visit, Exec/01/02, 1st July 1924.

49 Exec 01/02, June 3rd 1924.

50 Eg. 15th January 1922 as reported in the Jewish Chronicle. PR 01/01/61.

51 Exec 01/02, 22nd July 1924.

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forthcoming ball that he had no time to prepare accounts 52. The minutes of a meeting at the end of the year show the committee dejected and bickering, in agreement only ‘that we are not going about things in the right manner’ 53.

In a twist of fate made mysterious by another gap in the minutes, however, March 1925 saw the group reunited by candlelight in the Ben Uri’s first ever home, a set of rooms at 68 Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury. This seems to have been due in large part to the efforts of Edward Good, who chaired their first meeting there with the air of a host, apologizing for the absence of electricity and furniture 54. Good had had his own shop nearby since 1908 and it is probable that he organised the rent on Great Russell Street 55.

The venue was opened officially on May 17th by the Reverend Dr Gaster, chaired in Solomon’s absence by Wolmark, with addresses by Councillor Arthur Howitt, the first Jewish Mayor of Richmond and an active art collector and philanthropist, and Dr Jochelman. According to the Jewish Chronicle, ‘over sixty people were packed into a room which would offer comfortable accommodation for half that number’ 56. After a mellifluous introduction by Wolmark, and Gaster’s inaugural address, a note of criticism was introduced to the proceedings by the representative of another Yiddish organization, The Workers’ Circle, who said the gallery ought to be in the East End. Considering the amount of discussion that had gone on about rooting the Ben Uri in East London over past years, the reactions of the committee are a little surprising. Good, as committee chairman, protested that Anglo-Jewry was not content to remain in a ghetto in the East End. The Gallery was not very far from the East End, and people really interested in art were ready to walk a much greater distance for anything from which they could derive inspiration.

Beach, interestingly, pointed out that ‘they had had little but abuse and laughter from the East End, and it was Notting Hill that had been the foundation stone of the institution’.57 Such remarks show no little frustration with the lack of enthusiasm of the very community that the Ben Uri had been set up to address, and echoes of this sentiment would resound through to the early 1930s.

The programme issued for the opening contains the first published list of the Ben Uri’s art collection, numbering some 88 artworks. Samuel Hirzenberg’s ‘Sabbath Rest’ headed the list, before 15 works by Simeon Solomon, five by Isaac Lichtenstein, four by David Bomberg, Pilichowski’s ‘Hear O Israel’, three works by Arno Stern, Mark Wayner’s caricature of Lord Kitchener, four works by Glicenstein and the 53 items that comprised Lazar Berson’s output in 1915-16. The first review of the collection, published in the Jewish Chronicle, was not effusive. The correspondent took issue with the society’s admittedly ecumenical approach to 52 Exec 01/02, 31st October 1925.

53 Exec 01/02, 30th December 1924.

54 Exec 01/02, 4th March 1925.

55 Oved Visions and Jewels p. 50.

56 Jewish Chronicle 22nd May 1925, p. 32.

57 Ibid.

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what might constitute Jewish art, wondering ‘what is the “Jewish interpretation” of Lord Kitchener?’. He went on: The artist who is numerically the best represented is Simeon Solomon, but with one or two notable exceptions – “Head of a Rabbi” is one – there is little Jewish atmosphere in his work, which for the most part has the rather sentimental prettiness of BurneJones. Stern has one or two notable pictures, “Head of a Woman” being a work of striking, though gloomy, beauty. There are some impressionistic views of Palestine by I. Lichtenstein, and some grotesque but striking essays in futurism by D. Bomberg – “A Ghetto Theatre”, and “The Window” cannot fail to attract attention if not admiration. 58 The reviewer concluded, scathingly, with the observation that visitors ‘can, if they desire, be co-opted as members of the Society’ – clearly he or she did not sign up. The disdain for Bomberg’s early work is characteristic of the period – there was little appreciation of this artist until after his death in the 1940s. It was, in all, a rather cruel appraisal of the Ben Uri’s first proper exhibition, and is perhaps indicative of continued Anglo-Jewish condescension towards these eager East End Jews.

The committee took advantage of its new home to organize Sunday lectures at Great Russell Street over the summer, though not everybody actually turned up to these. Simons complained in September that ‘both he and Mr Good had attended the Sunday functions on their own, the Committee failing to assist’ 59. Once the matter of further social events was on the agenda, however, the committee members threw themselves back into activity, organizing a winter opening complete with ‘social’ for October 11th, to be followed by a ball a fortnight later. There are no programmes or cuttings from this ball in the archive, however a note of ticket sales in the minute book suggests that over 500 tickets were issued.

Only two months later, in December 1925, the society was once again finding it difficult to make ends meet. A letter from the director of the Bezalel School of Art in Jerusalem expressing interest in the collection prompted suggestions among some in the committee that it should be sent to Palestine permanently, given the ongoing financial problems around housing it in London. 1925 ended as 1924 had, with a despondent meeting, resolving only to convene a debate about ‘The Future of the Society’ in the new year. This, which took place on January 31st 1926, was full of conflicting ideas about how to redeem the society’s perennial funding problems, and a degree of sniping. Mr L. Good, brother of Edward Good, even ‘considered one of the main failures of [the] society to be due to the absence of a Jewish writing secretary’, possibly a criticism of Simon’s taking minutes in English rather than Yiddish, but probably a reference to there being no designated role within the Ben Uri officers addressing Yiddish literature, rather than art 60. By March matters were no further resolved, and even Edward Good, who had done so much to build up the collection, suggested it go to Jerusalem as ‘he cannot 58 Ibid.

59 Exec 01/02, 29th September 1925.

60 Exec 01/02, 31st January 1926.

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carry on as he has done in the past with the Society’s work’ 61. It was agreed to give up the Great Russell Street premises at the end of the month, and the next recorded meeting saw the committee back at the Jewish Shelter in Leman Street, with ‘the spirit of the Society[…] greatly shattered’ 62. Michaelson, who chaired this meeting, led a mea culpa: … we have failed to indulge in carrying out our moral duty towards Jewish thought and outlook, and neither for ourselves nor for the mass of our people have we tried to illuminate the various questions and problems of a modern Jewish life.

“Ben-Uri” must be a centre for all types of Jewish creative efforts and also be a home for social and spiritual repose. 63 A letter was issued to members explaining the closure of the Bloomsbury ‘club’ and announcing a reorientation of the society towards more ‘literary and educational work’ 64. And sure enough, by the society’s annual meeting in October, plans were afoot to resume Sunday lectures at the Whitechapel Gallery, commencing with a tribute to the recently deceased Israel Zangwill. The main focus of the meeting was the question of where in London to establish a home for the collection, and there was no more mention of Palestine. The artist and vicepresident Leopold Pilichowski, before pressing the case for East London, ‘marvel[led] at the stubbornness and resolve of the handful of the members of the society’ 65, as well he might.

Once more the Ben Uri cohort had bounced back from adversity with renewed energy and intentions.

Again, as in 1922, the society had a fruitful winter of literary and social events, including the Zangwill memorial evening on November 7th, 1926. The latter, as reported in Di Tsayt, provides an interesting set of perspectives on the dimensions of being at once Jewish, Yiddish and a public intellectual. Eulogies were given by Morris Myer and by the writer J. M. Landau.

Myer assessed the novelist’s philosophy and writings, thanking him for contributing to a better understanding of ‘East End Jewish life… by the English’, and perceiving in one book Zangwill’s ‘own struggle against westernized Jews’ 66. For Myer, this advocacy of East End Jewish identity as separate from both Anglo-Jewish and British culture was of great importance. He must have expressed regret that Zangwill wrote almost exclusively in English, for Landau picked up on this in his speech: I agree with Mr Myer that if Zangwill had been born in Russia or Poland and had written in the Yiddish language, he would have engaged more deeply with the Jewish soul, but, on the other hand, by writing in English, Zangwill presented to the English people the true Jewish character, showing them good Jewish traits and qualities

61 Exec 01/02, 10th March 1926.

62 Exec 01/02, 5th July 1926.

63 Ibid.

64 Judah Beach letter to members, 9th July 1926, BU Archive.

65 ‘Ben Uri Society Undertakes New Work’, October 15th 1926, publication unknown. PR 01/01/47.

66 ‘Israel Zangwill’s Life and Work’, Di Tsayt, Sunday November 7th 1926.

PR/01/01/22.

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that they, the gentiles, had had no idea about before Zangwill. Also, if he had written in Yiddish he would have been unknown, whereas now he is world-famous. 67 The implication is that Zangwill could not be a true Jewish writer without writing in Yiddish, yet his use of English made him a kind of cultural ambassador for the Jews. This neatly sums up one of the issues facing British Yiddishists as the 1920s went on – how to look inwards and nurture tradition while at the same time looking out for the place of Jewish culture in the wider world. While the Ben Uri and a few other organizations continued to cater to Yiddish interests, the number of Yiddish-speaking immigrants was shrinking. David Mazower notes that the Yiddish theatre was suffering from a decline in its audience, and suggests that ‘there were about four times as many Yiddish books and pamphlets published in London in the decade 1905-14 as there were in the years 1920-29 68. This characteristic feature of East European Londoner identity, so integral to the founding of the Ben Uri eleven years earlier, was beginning to fade into a niche interest.

In January 1927, Leopold Pilichowski gave a lecture on his recent trip to Palestine. Though Pilichowski subsequently set off for America, his lecture may have given impetus to a turn back towards art in the society’s programme for the rest of 1927. In April Lena Pillico, the artist married to Pilichowski, opened her own exhibition, possibly of canvases she had painted on the Palestine trip, in association with the Ben Uri 69. Beach signed the invitation to Pillico’s show, and he was also supporting Isaac Lichtenstein the same month. Although the Ben Uri was not directly involved in Lichtenstein’s exhibition in Aldgate 70, Beach advertised for sale a limited edition album of engravings by the artist in the Jewish Chronicle 71.

The exhibition of Jewish art and antiquities at the Whitechapel Gallery in May and June 1927 afforded an opportunity for some of the Ben Uri collection to go on display, and was the first time the society had lent pictures. The curator, J. Nightingale Duddington, had requested the loan of a Jacob Epstein bust of Edward Good, but in the end 19 Ben Uri artworks were lent, and Ben Uri advertised a talk by Duddington at the gallery 72. It was a large show, with 375 artworks, 200 antiquities and some 50 books on display from a number of lenders 73. The Ben Uri was among the largest lenders of art, alongside Councillor Howitt, and the only organization to lend. Although the Ben Uri collection represented a small part of the total artworks, curatorial decisions at the Whitechapel certainly endorsed the society’s acquisitions roster to date. The main gallery was devoted to Glicenstein, with seven bronzes, and a further five Glicenstein sculptures in the neighbouring small gallery along with Epstein’s head of 67 Ibid.

68 David Mazower ‘The Ben Uri and Yiddish Culture’ in Dickson and MacDougall eds. Ben Uri: 100 Years in London: Art Identity Migration, London, Ben Uri, 2015, p. 48.

69 Invitation from Ben Uri (signed by Beach) for April 9th, 1927. BU Archives.

70 This was arranged by the Central Education Committee / J L Peretz Institute / Circle House at Alie Street, Aldgate and took place in March-April 1927 with 31 works listed. My thanks to David Mazower for this information from a brochure in his collection.

71 PR 01/01/61 letter by Beach to Jewish Chronicle, April 22nd 1927. This was probably Isaac Lichtenstein by Jan-Topass, published by Editions Ars in Paris (no date), of which a copy remains in the Ben Uri Archive.

72 Correspondence, flyer and invitation in BU Archive. 7 73 This and the following information is taken from the catalogue of the exhibition, available in the Whitechapel Gallery’s reading room.

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Good. Epstein was singled out for mention by Sir Herbert Samuel in his opening words, but the bronze of Good was the only work of his that could be obtained. Lichtenstein, Pilichowski and Bomberg were all well represented, though a greater number of Bomberg’s recent and more conventional Palestinian landscapes appeared than of his 1910s Cubist works. Ten of the Ben Uri’s Solomon drawings were displayed, as well as the shield made by Lazar Berson for Israel Zangwill, commissioned by Morris Myer in 1915.

This was the second exhibition devoted to Jewish art at the Whitechapel Gallery; the first had taken place in 1906. Peter Gross has suggested that the earlier exhibition represented an attempt to present an Anglo-Jewish vision of the assimilated Jew in British society to the East End Jewish community 74. By contrast, the 1927 show included a far greater proportion of East European Jewish artists, and reflected a much better established Jewish cultural life in Whitechapel. Sir Herbert Samuel, at that point High Commissioner of Palestine, declared in his opening speech: Here, in England, the Jews are proud to claim the greatest sculptor of the day in Epstein.

All about us in these halls we may see the signs that the spirit of art is alive among the Jewish people of the present time.

Nonetheless he made no mention of the Ben Uri Society, who, besides being an important lender, had frequently brought Jewish culture into the gallery over the decade, with their lectures and literary and musical evenings. Due to the absence of clippings and minutes for 1927, we lack responses from the committee to the exhibition, but it is not difficult to see how, although their involvement represented a certain validation by the wider art establishment, the exhibition might not have satisfied their aims as a society.

The last three years of the 1920s saw the Ben Uri’s social and cultural programme continue, with lectures at the Whitechapel Gallery by David Bomberg, Yiddish poet Zalman Schneur, Yiddish writer and editor of the Hebrew journal Haolam Moshe Kleinman and journalist and playwright M.J. Landa, a number of musical and literary evenings and festive banquets, and several ‘at homes’ chez Beach or at the home of another active committee member, Yankev or Jack Seres. 75 One cutting in Beach’s album offers a rare viewing of the committee gathered at one of these occasions. Disagreements over the conduct and direction of the society continued to be voiced. Though we have no minutes from 1927 to 1930, evidence of this tension can be seen in occasional irruptions into the local press. In the summer of 1927 Chechanover, Michaelson and Beach had it out publicly in columns for the ‘Free Platform’ of the Yiddishlanguage Jewish Post. Michaelson accused the Ben Uri of neglecting ‘the living Yiddish word’ and focusing too much on art at the expense of letters 76. Beach insisted that Yiddish literature was alive and well, and that art, by contrast, required much more advocacy in order to alter ‘the 74 Peter Gross ‘An Offer of Integration’ (chapter 5 of unpublished PhD thesis 'Ostjuden and Westjuden: art and AngloJewish identity') p. 28.

75 Bomberg lectured on 4th March 1928, Schneur read his poetry on 14th October 1928, Kleinman appeared on 18th November 1928 and M.J. Landa lectured on Leo Feuchtwangel’s Jew Suss on 20th October 1929. Programmes and brochures in BU Archive. See Prager op. cit. p. 573 for information on Seres.

76 Mazower ‘The Ben Uri and Yiddish Culture’ p. 50.

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understanding of the masses’. Though never citing Berson directly, Beach drew on the Bersonian tendency for metaphor and physical description of conceptual ideas: Among other nations and among us alike, many are born with a rich soul and a taste for beauty, a feeling of love for the people and respect for cultural treasures, which strengthens belief in its creativity. This train of thought, which moves almost every discerning Jew, who feels detachment from his past, must have the precedent to create temples, where thought would immerse itself in the spiritual tissues of its creators.

It is quite clear that Sister Art, this form of folk creativity, is very much neglected among us. The reasons for it are manifold. First, the artistic and literary atmosphere is lacking, which would enable us to establish granaries for gathering the fruits of the peoples’ strength, and because of it many historical strings have been torn into shreds of the Jewish soul, and folk poetry has been lost. 77 Perhaps unconsciously, Beach is appropriating religious language to express the place of art in life. It is reminiscent of some of the declarations of Good in Out of Chaos, and chimes with the interjections of a number of speakers at Ben Uri celebratory occasions, some of which are reproduced on the next page.

In the annual members meeting of February 1928, written up for the Jewish Times, debate over the degree to which the Ben Uri did and should support Yiddish writers, and over the most desirable location for the society’s home, continued to rumble along unproductively. Most of those at the meeting advocated an East End location ‘where Jewish life pulsates more than anywhere else’, as the Di Tsayt journalist Capitanchik put it 78. A year on, there had been no developments, but the committee’s propensity for parties resulted in a Purim banquet in March 1929 honouring two of the original founder committee members, Beach and Victor. Among the heartfelt speeches by Morris Myers and the guest poet Ben-Zion were lighter performances from comedians and satirists, and as ever, some Yiddish folksongs 79.

In early 1930 Michaelson announced to the Ben Uri members gathered in the Mecca Café on Leadenhall Street that the society was close to achieving a long-cherished goal: a home in the heart of the Jewish East End 80. Part of the newly built Jewish Shelter on Mansell Street, the home would consist of a room for the art collection, which, after a donation by Leopold Pilichowski, was augumented by 30 new paintings, and a hall for lectures and literary evenings.

To raise funds that spring, a special night directed by actor Rudolf Zavlavsky at the famous Yiddish theatre, the Pavilion, was put on, as well as a ball at the New Burlington Gallery organised by the new Ben Uri youth committee. According to Beach, donations were also made by individuals, including Seres 81.

77 Judah Beach ‘What is Ben Uri’ Jewish Post August 26th, 1927, PR 01/01/54.

78 ‘The Ben Uri and its Work: Where Should the Club it is Planning to Open Be?’ February 17th, 1928, publication unknown.

PR 01/01/52.

79 ‘Uplifting Ben Uri Evening’ 30th March 1929, publication unknown. PR 01/01/49.

80 ‘A Jewish Cultural Centre in London’ undated but probably February or early March 1930, publication unknown. PR 01/01/13.

81 Beach ‘The Ben Uri’, p. 17.

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The fifteenth anniversary banquet of the Ben Uri was a happy occasion indeed. Though the clipping in Beach’s album is undated, we might assume it took place in July 1930, a decade and a half after the society’s foundation. It was held at the Jewish Shelter, presumably in the knowledge that in only a few months the Ben Uri would have a permanent home in the same building. Chechanover, Pilichowski, Good, Beach and Michaelson all took turns to express their joy at the anniversary, and reflect on the society’s achievements. ‘Art’, exclaimed Chechanover, ‘is the Sabbath soul of life… Art is the very attire… which elevates grey everyday life to festive beauty.’ Good continued on this theme: ‘Decorative art is the song of the eye, in which a Jewish spark is twinkling, and brightens the hard, grey life, which is so short and transient, but true art never goes down and true artists live forever.’ 82 Beach contrasted the society’s beginnings with the current moment, in words already quoted in the last section: If the society acquired forty pictures, it was a holiday. An album, another holiday. Four years of existence, a jubilee. The word ‘art’ had some kind of sacred ring to us. We weaved our loveliest dreams around the treasures we had collected, we saw luminous visions for our future. And we have lived to see a contented pride. Now we have brought our work to the point of a peoples’ institution, and we rejoice at our fifteenth anniversary. 83 While this small group of Londoners celebrated, the broader context was one of depression.

‘The times are now very bad’, reflected Capitanchik in August 1930, ‘how will the London public respond to the Ben Uri events?’. It had been almost a year since the London Stock Market had crashed, and unemployment was on the way to doubling (between 1929 and the end of 1930). But just as the society had forged ahead in the dark years of the First World War, the committee members seemed unphased by the economic depression as they wrote and translated an ‘art edition’ catalogue and made their preparations for the gallery’s grand opening in November 1930. Morris Myer, covering the opening in his Di Tsayt editorial, also referenced current affairs.

It is perhaps not entirely beside the point to mention that the Ben Uri art gallery is opening precisely at the moment of heated struggle and great election frenzy. Is it not characteristic of the Jews? Is it not symbolic of our character? Even in the moments of heated struggle and great confusion we do not forget our cultural and art enterprises. 84 The catalogue represented a substantial effort and outlay of capital. It featured a cover designed

by Wolmark and essays by Kenig and Beach, along with a very thorough inventory of the collection, including details such as dimensions of the artworks which would not be included in subsequent catalogues until the 1980s, and biographies of some artists. The essays 82 ‘Fifteenth Anniversary of Ben Uri’, undated cutting, source unknown, PR/01/01/53.

83 Ibid.

84 Morris Myer ‘Today, Historic Date of a Cultural and Art Event’ November 30th 1930, assumed to be Di Tsayt. PR

01/01/23.

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recapitulate many themes that had arisen during ceremonial speeches and meetings down the years; Beach’s certainly represents the first official history of the Ben Uri. Two thousand copies were printed, in both English and Yiddish, and sent out far and wide. It was probably the catalogue which caught the attention of a Times reviewer, gaining the society its first mention in that newspaper. The correspondent was not greatly impressed by the exhibition, ‘[which] cannot be called more than a “scratch” affair’, but did admit, apparently persuaded by Kenig’s essay, that it represented ‘a first step towards fulfilling an obvious need’ 85.

The opening itself unfolded ‘in a festive and grand manner’, just as we might expect given the Ben Uri society’s evident enjoyment of ceremony and celebration. It was, of course, a moment for the committee, so often dejected, harried by financial problems and worried about the future, to rest upon their laurels. Pilichowski, as chairman opening the event, noted the great difference between the Ben Uri collection and collections amassed by individuals, both Jew and Gentile, and kept privately. ‘[T]his small yet unique collection that you have seen here, believe me, has cost the handful of people who have worked for these 15 years, a lot of effort, energy and money to put together.’ Having repeatedly rebutted the idea of the Jewish veto on art over the 1920s, Pilichowski used his opening comments to point to the presence of ‘two distinguished rabbis’ at the event as proof ‘that the society does not violate the second commandment with its exhibition of artistic paintings’. One of these, Dayan Dr Feldman representing the Chief Rabbi, blessed the proceedings and the other, Dr Gaster, warmly welcomed the society into the East End. Gaster had, of course, been present at the opening of Great Russell Street in 1925, and witnessed the disagreement over the proper location for the gallery then, so his words had an extra charge to them: ‘It is very symbolic that we are gathered in East London. The sun rises in the East, all the high ideals come from the East and the greatest works have been created in the East.’ Gaster’s conflation of East London with a broader oriental culture is significant, showing the continuity of the sense identified in the 1910s of East London Jews identifying with Eastern Europe. Despite its frequent intransigence in the face of the society’s efforts, the East End represented a geographical and symbolic compass point. The Ben Uri had, at least for the moment, come home.

Coda In fact, the establishment of the Ben Uri Gallery in East London in 1930 would prove to be some fifteen years late. The Jewish population of Whitechapel was shrinking. As Lipman points out, during the interwar period, ‘East End Jewry was a community which was losing by movement out, and gaining very little by movement in; and compared with the situation in 1881-1914, it was an ageing population.’ 86 Not only was the ‘Jewish street’ in decline, but as we have seen, there was less demand for Yiddish cultural products. The new generation, now at two removes from the Old Country, may not even have spoken Yiddish 87.

85 ‘Art Exhibitions: Ben Uri Gallery’ The Times 3rd December 1930, p. 12.

86 V.D. Lipman ‘Jewish Settlement in the East End of London 1840-1940: The Topographical and Statistical Background’ in A. Newman ed. The Jewish East End, 1840-1939 London: The Jewish Historical Society of England, 1981, pp. 17-40, p. 40.

87 ‘Whereas in 1891 only a sixth of children in the Jews Free School had English-born parents, in 1931, two thirds had.’

Lipman op. cit. p. 38.

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The Ben Uri’s two years at Mansell Street did not mark a great departure from form. The society continued to function as it had for the past decade, putting on lectures and greeting its mounting debts with plans to raise money through events and social functions. These were for the most part ‘not a financial success’ 88, and by the annual meeting of September 1932 it was £156 overdrawn. Council member L. Hersh reflected ‘The general crisis, which is now reigning in the world, has without a doubt seized our society as well’ 89. In 1933 the organization moved in to the new Jewish Communal Centre in Woburn House, Euston, provoking a flurry of letterwriting. Disgruntled committee members Goldenburg and Koldofsky complained in Di Tsayt that the Ben Uri ‘has climbed into high society and is deserting our miserable Whitechapel’, to which the treasurer Seres retorted that hardly anybody had visited the gallery in Mansell Street 90.

After another three years in Soho, the Ben Uri would find a longer-lasting home on Portman Street in the West End after the Second World War. It would not return to the East End of London, but rather followed the Jewish population of London north. The great magnetism around the ‘Jewish street’, the effervescence and excitement of new immigrant culture in the East End in the first two decades of the twentieth century, gave Ben Uri its founding ethos, and an enduring commitment to Jewish and Yiddish culture in London. For seventeen years, the society was part of a Whitechapel moment, in which the immigrant community – businessmen, intellectuals, artists and performers – demanded and created a new culture that saw diasporic traditions transplanted to a metropolis in flux, where scenes from scriptural history could hang side by side with avant-garde canvases, and suburban garden parties could resound with the heartily rendered choruses of Yiddish folk songs.

88 Exec/01/04, executive meeting 30th July 1931.

89 Notice of annual meeting to take place September 25th 1932. PR 01/01/36.

90 Y. Seres ‘Ben Uri in High Society’, letter to Di Tsayt, undated (c. 1933). PR 01/01/28.

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