The Jewish heritage in American folk-art exhibit

By Arlene Stolnitz

So, you ask (having read my article in the October Federation Star article), what is this subject all about?

In the 1980s, the Jewish Museum and the Museum of American Folk Art in New York City collaborated in an exhibition they would call “The Jewish Heritage in American Folk Art.” It explored a subject which was largely unknown to scholars. There was virtually little or no information readily available. Naturally, specialists in both Jewish religious ceremonial art and American folk art were apprehensive. They were not even sure if there was enough material for an exhibit. However, researchers continued their exploration and, two years later, curated an impressive collection of significant pieces, many of which were previously unknown. The exhibit was so impressive that it later traveled to several major cities across the U.S.

The exhibit included items such as ketubahs (marriage contracts), prayer shawl bags, pinkas (registers), omer counters, memorial plaques, matzah covers, seder towels, mizrachs (plaque denoting Eastern Wall), Torah binders, micrographic portraits, challah covers, silhouettes, circumcision record, ceremonial chairs and even carousel horses (to be explained in a later column).

With major grants from The National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts, along with several family foundations, the exhibit was organized by Norman L. Kleeblatt, long-time curator, critic and consultant at the Jewish Museum in New York and the late Gerard C. Wertkin, past director of The American Folk Art Museum.

So, what has all of this got to do with my family?

One beautifully sunny day (rare in Rochester, NY), my husband and I received a phone call from Rabbi Abraham Karp, z’l, who at that time was our esteemed rabbi at Temple Beth El, a Conservative temple in Rochester, NY. He informed us that our family possessed some pieces of Judaic artwork that could be an important part of an upcoming exhibit being organized by the Jewish Museum of New York and the American Folk Art Museum.

As a scholar and historian of Judaica, Rabbi Karp owned several of these pieces, which were paper-cuts, and knew of others in various synagogues in the Rochester environs. Rabbi Karp also knew the artist was Baruch Zvi Ring, my husband, Avrum (A. Harvey) Stolnitz’ s maternal grandfather!

An interesting aside is that Ring was my father’s Hebrew teacher, a fact I did not discover until many years later.

According to researchers at The Jewish Museum, Ring was born in Vishya, Lithuania and emigrated to the United States in 1902. He was a widower with five children. He earned his living as a Hebrew teacher and scribe (sofer) in Rochester. His expertise, however, was in his creation of memorial plaques and mizrachim, which were displayed admiringly in synagogues throughout the community.

To understand the importance of his work, and of others who were producing Judaic artworks during that time, we must understand that period. During the late 1900s, there was a great influx of Jewish immigrants into the United States from Eastern Europe. They brought with them many of their crafts known to us as “folk art.” Their expertise in the field of handicrafts was considerable. Among them were cap making, haberdashery, boot making, goldsmithing, and more. There were also lesser handicrafts, often extremely original and beautiful in their simplicity. With little contemporary documentation, knowledge of these crafts is scarce. These lesser-known handicrafts were the subject of the exhibit “The Jewish Heritage in American Folk Art.” My next article will focus on the art of paper cutting, popular in Poland in the late 1900s.

Baruch Zvi Ring was a “master” in that art form. His works are still displayed, not only in synagogues but in Judaic art galleries in Eastern Europe as well as the U.S.

“See” you in my next article with a discussion on the art of paper cutting, its origin and influence on American Folk Art.

Arlene Stolnitz, the “Jewish Music” contributor to Federation papers the past eight years, is starting a new series focusing on Judaic folk art. A native of Rochester, NY, Stolnitz is a retired educator and lives in Venice, Florida.