First edition. 48 pp. illus. 245:210 mm., wide margins, light age staining, stamps. A very good copy bound in the original illustrated boards, rubbed.

 

A primer for children to teach them to read and write Hebrew. It is illustrated by Leon (Lev Vasil'evich) Zak, a Russian artist who moved to Paris in 1923, and became a naturalized citizen in 1938. The work was reissued once by Bloch of New York in 1942.

R. Jehiel Lichtenstein (1898-1988) lived in Paris and later taught at Yeshiva University High School in New York City. He is the father of R. Aharon Lichtenstein, the Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva Har Etzion. Léon Zack, (b Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia, 12 July 1892; d 30 May 1980). French painter, sculptor and stained-glass artist of Russian descent. He studied literature at Moscow University while also taking painting courses at private academies; his painting teachers included Il’ya Mashkov, one of the founders of the Jack of Diamonds group. After leaving the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic in 1920, he lived for two years in Florence and then for a year in Berlin, where he designed sets and costumes for the Ballets Russes. He settled in Paris in 1923 and in the 1920s and 1930s painted in a figurative style influenced by Renaissance masters such as Leonardo and Michelangelo; his themes included biblical subjects, prophets, vagabonds, gypsies and landscapes.

During the German Occupation Zack, as a Jew, took refuge at Villefranche-sur-Mer and in a village in the Isère, returning to Paris in 1945. His work then began to develop towards abstraction, becoming completely non-figurative in 1947, and he became one of the leading exponents of Tachism. His abstract works, such as Painting (1959; London, Tate), which are usually regarded as the culmination of his career, are notable for their beauty of colour and texture and almost oriental refinement. As a convert to Roman Catholicism, he also received a number of commissions for stained-glass and religious sculptures from c. 1950, including Stations of the Cross for churches in Carsac in the Dordogne and Agneau in the Manche, and windows for the chapel of Notre-Dame-des-Pauvres at Issy-les-Moulineaux.

 

Hebrew Description

ללמד בני ישראל קרא וכתב, [מאת] ד"ר יחיאל ליכטנשטיין. עם ציורים מאת ליאון זק... [1], 36 עמ', עם שער נוסף: Remarques ,Vocabulaire et lexique Alphabetique pour ...Preface de M. Julien Weill... Introduction du Grand-Rabbin M. Liber... עמ' [2-1] בחלק העברי: הקדמה מאת ר' משה ב"ר קלונימוס ז"ל לבית ליבר.