Letter to the Editor

To the Editor:

Joseph P. Ansell dramatizes the vital contribution of a unique artist in his "Arthur Szyk's Depictions of the 'New Jew': Art as a Weapon in the Campaign for an American Response tot he Holocaust." He does so in your March 2001 issue (89:1), which also presents other outstanding treatments of American responses to dread events taking place in Europe. I had the privilege of meeting Mr. Szyk in the late 1940s, at his and Mrs. Szyk's home in New Canaan, Connecticut, when I drove my parents there one summer day.

Your article also has another personal connection for me because in The Menorah Journal, whose editor was my father Henry Hurwitz (1885-1961) from its first issue till his death, American readers were early made aware of his remarkable technique and vision. That was in the February 1929 issue (16:2), with an insert of his art and an appreciation by Jan-Topass, "Arthur Szyk:" Illuminator." (That writer is identified as "a leading art critic of France. He is of East European origin, but has spent most of his life in Paris.") He starts, "Our age seethes with sensations, ferocities and feverish discordances: Arthur Szyk stands outside, laboring serenely, sedately, painstakingly, faithfully, like a Benedictine monk." Just what "ferocities" lay ahead, and how Szyk certainly did not "stand aside" in the face of them, is made clear by Joseph Ansell.

Your author tells of the famous 1936 painting "Tel Hai," the one-armed Joseph Trumpeldor and his fellow chalutzim fighting in defense against Arab attackers in 1920, and writes (126 ff), "The first American publication of this image was on the cover of The American Hebrew in May 1941, only six months after Szyk's arrival in the country"; the title was "May I Perish with the Enemy." (This is Judges 16.30, where the passage reads, in translation, "Let me die with the Philistines.") One year later The Menorah Journal again published his art, now reproducing Tel Hai work on its cover: Summer 1942 (30:2). It is there named "The Modern Maccabees," as Dr. Ansell notes (129). The editor stated (228) that the artist "has just presented his painting ... to the Committee for a Jewish Army of Stateless and Palestinian Jews, in New York." Dr. Ansell now amplifies the story in your pages.

Respectfully,

David L. Hurwitz