Beit Bialik - a poet's house in Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv's Bialik is one of the city's most beautiful and interesting streets. Named for Chaim Nahman Bialik, Israel's national poet, it is home to a number of Bauhaus and Eclectic style buildings. It is also home to the Reuven Rubin Museum whilst the Felicia Blumenthal Music Centre, a small Bauhaus Museum and Tel Aviv's City Museum are located on and around the plaza at the end of the street. Topping the bill in this wonderful collection of history and culture is Beit Bialik the former home of the poet and now a museum.

View of pillars and fireplace in the reception hall

Nahman was born in 1873 in Brody, a small town near Zhitomir in the Ukraine. He lived in a number of places including Berlin and Odessa before moving to Eretz Israel in 1924 having finally been able to purchase a plot of land in Tel Aviv following the success of his republished collected works in 1923. His arrival was viewed as such an important moment in the development of the city that the Mayor, Meir Dizengoff together with members of the municipal council turned out to greet him. 

Whilst in Berlin, Bialik had commissioned architect Joseph Minor to design the house. Minor had studied under Alexander Baerwald and was one of a number of architects progressing a "Hebrew" style combining western building forms with stylistic elements drawn from middle eastern influences including from those known to have been in use in the Jewish kingdoms of Biblical times. This resulted in the spectacular house at number 22 Bialik Street with its tower, domes, outdoor terraces, extensive tile work and arched windows. The house incorporates features for dealing with the middle eastern climate including a flat roof for summer evenings and low set windows to protect against the sun. When  first built the roof terrace would have had clear views across the developing city including a view of the sea, perhaps intended to inspire Bialik's writing.

The beautiful white exterior with its dark wooden window surrounds and doors is surpassed only by the arches, pillars and the stunning primary colours in the interior. This is enhanced by the extensive use of Bezalel ceramics on the floor, pillars and walls and in particular the fireplace which is surrounded with ceramic decoration showing the spies despatched by Moses, priests bearing the Ark of the Covenant and a Menorah, Magen Dovid and arabesques. Stylised palm trees heavy with fruit guard each  side of the fireplace. Continuing the Hebrew theme, the columns of the entrance corridor carry motifs of the twelve tribes of Israel and the signs of the Zodiac. The tiles were designed by another Israeli cultural icon - Ze'ev Raban. All of this is set off against stunning red and blue backgrounds contrasted against white ceilings and upper arches. 

Fireplace with Bezalel ceramic tiles

Dining room with ceramic tiled floor and items form Bialik's art collection

In addition to designing the building, Minor also designed the windows, door handles and furniture, taking the total work of art approach popular in Europe and exemplified by Austrian Josef Hoffmann and other artists of the Vienna Secession. The furniture designs were executed by the carpenter Avraham Krinitzky who was later to become mayor of Ramat Gan.

On completion the house soon became the focus of cultural and creative life in Tel Aviv with regular visits from writers, musicians, actors, artists and others from the creative milieu of 1920's Tel Aviv. Some of this was precipitated by Bialik being the president of the Writers Association and also of the Committee for the Hebrew Language. Bialik was viewed as one of the most important figures in the Yishuv - the pre-state Jewish community of Eretz Israel and in addition to his cultural role, was regularly sought out for advice by ordinary citizens of Tel Aviv. This could range from anything from advice on naming a new child to help with obtaining employment. Bialik did not especially welcome this and in an effort to establish some privacy had a sign placed on his door that read "Ch. N. Bialik receives requests at his residence on Mondays and Thursdays only from 5 to 7 in the evening". He even felt it necessary to publish this notice in the newspapers. It appears not to have been effective, as he moved to Ramat Gan in 1933 to find a little peace and a place where he could write without disturbance. Unfortunately he was not to benefit from the move as he died whilst recovering from a gallstones operation in July 1934, having traveled to Vienna to secure treatment.

View of the entrance lobby from the staircase

The Bilaik Street house stood empty until three years after his death, a Bialik Association was formed and assumed responsibility for the restoration of the house and the preservation of the poet's books, papers and general legacy. Restoration work undertaken in the mid 1930's although well intentioned, destroyed the original kitchen and bedroom. The house opened to the public in June 1937 with an archive, library and museum of Bialik's life and works. A number of the organisations that he had worked for or been associated with began to organise their activities from and in the house, thus maintaining its role as a cultural focus for the city. It also attracted tourists and visits from school and kindergarten classes - a tradition that continues until today.

Throughout the 1960's and 70's the house began to deteriorate. The roof began to leak, the plaster peeled, the colours dulled and in the 1960's much of the garden was lost when a new building was erected at the rear of the house. Much of the original furniture had been removed by Bialik's widow - Manya and the upholstery needed replacing on that which remained. In 1984 the municipality of Tel Aviv-Jaffa stepped in with a rescue plan, closed the house and undertook extensive renovation. With costs underwritten by Bank Leumi and the Tel Aviv Foundation, this included returning furniture that had been removed, remaking the wooden shutters that had rotted and restoring much of Bialik's extensive art collection including works by Litvinovsky, Reuben and Glicksberg. 

Today, after further works, the house is open for visitors and has been restored to its original glory. It has to be my favourite place in my favourite city with its memories of, and references to, the early years of Tel Aviv when the city (much like today) was at the centre of artistic, social and cultural creativity which included not only Bialik, but other great names in Israeli art and culture including painters Reuven Reubin and Nahman Gutman, actress Chana Robina, writers S. Ansky and Ahad Ha'am, many of whom will have set foot in Beit Bialik.

Exterior of the house

And some more interior pictures...

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Ze'ev Raban: painter, illustrator and father of Israeli design

2012 saw the 100th anniversary of Ze'ev Raban's arrival in Eretz Israel at the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, first as a student and then as a teacher.

Born as Wolf Rawicki in Lodz, Poland in 1890, he studied decorative arts from 1905 to 1911, first in his home town and then in Munich, Paris and Brussels. Many of the influences he absorbed during this time would emerge in his later work, but with a distinctly Levantine take on them. It is this combination of styles and influences that appeals so much to me. I love the boldness and the optimism of his work, the rousing use of colour and the stylised depiction of biblical scenes and figures.

Raban came to Eretz Israel as part of the Second Aliyah, one of a wave of immigrants who revived the Hebrew language and worked on the land, creating a new type of society, different from diaspora Jews and not wishing to live on charity as some of the established communities did.

On arrival he joined the Bezalel at the invitation of its director - Boris Schatz, remaining there until 1929 as director of the repousse workshop and teacher of anatomy and decorative arts. Working with other departments, he designed a number of large objects including the beautiful Elijah Chair of 1925 that can be seen in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. He came to be considered the main proponent of the Bezalel style, bringing together European influences, techniques of Eastern applied art and Jewish and biblical themes and motifs.

Over time, he took a stronger "eastern" approach to his work, particularly adopting the image of the Yemenite Jew as the model for biblical or Hebrew figures in his work. The second wave of Yemenite aliyah between 1908 and 1914 saw whole families arriving in the country and many were employed in the school, especially in the silversmith, stonemasonry and carpet making departments. Several also acted as models.

Raban was a committed Zionist and was commissioned by the Jewish National Fund to design posters to encourage tourism. He designed two which are still reproduced and sold today, original copies changing hands at huge prices. One depicts a western tourist pointing at a map of the country beneath the legend "Come and see Erez Israel", with a series of important Jewish religious sites displayed around the edges and a prominent advertisement in English and Hebrew for the Bezalel and its products. The other is a biblical scene overlooking the city of Tiberias and the Kinneret.

These themes were repeated in his illustrations of biblical scrolls, including the Song of Songs (1914-18), Book of Esther (1927), the Book of Ruth (1930) and his famous Ten Cities of 1930 which shows ten of the holiest Jewish sites in Israel.  My own copy of the Ten Cities is a personal treasure. Leafing through the tissue divided pages and gazing at the images of Rachel's tomb and Hebron stir me to want to visit these sites. It is still possible to pick up original copies of these and other Raban works from time to time. Trionfo at 9 Dorot Rishonim Street (off Ben Yehuda) in Jerusalem sometimes has copies as does Pollak in King George Street, Tel Aviv.

Trionfo is especially worth a visit as serious customers are offered strong arabic coffee and invited to take their time to look through the stock and chat with Abraham Medeisker or his son Gali, both of whom are extremely knowledgeable and able to locate just the right item! The shop is crammed with Israeliana, old books, posters and artefacts. It is a real treasure house.

Raban's tourist poster designs led to broader based work in advertising. In  1925 he was commissioned by S.Tokolwsky, the owner of the Jaffa Fruit Company to prepare labels for the orange crates. This resulted in an icon of early Israeli design showing a man dressed in a white blouse, red sash, blue narwal and turban standing on the beach and a robed arab figure. The city of Jaffa is visible in the background. The text reads "'Lord' Jaffa Oranges Famous for Flavour". Other advertising work followed including for Nur cigarettes, Ariel cigarettes, Carmel Oriental wine and, my own favourite, Havilio Halva. There is something about Raban's skills as a story teller that makes me want to buy these products, despite not being a drinker or a smoker!

I have often thought about the seeming contradiction between his use of biblical motifs and the production of commercial art to sell cigarettes and oranges. Some people argue that like all artists Raban needed to put bread on the table and this would certainly be true. However for me, the beauty of the commercial works and the iconic status they have achieved lead me to believe he approached this field with equal seriousness and also considered them to be important artistically.

Raban lived through some of the most turbulent years of Israel's history, including the Mandate period, the  War of Independence and the wars of the 1950's and 1960's. A story is told about how in 1922 during a period of strained relations between the British forces and the Jews, the Bezalel students were sent out to collect used gun shells for decorating vases or to be melted down for other works.

Normally the British would ignore this, but on one occasion arrested a young student, holding him for several days, believing the School was collecting weapons for combat. The episode ended with a surprise attack on the School, with the soldiers breaking the doors down only to find the shells being used for artistic purposes. To commemorate the event, Raban created new doors, now on display in the Artists House, Jerusalem.

It is still possible to see some of his ceramic designs used to decorate buildings in Tel Aviv in the 1920's. Several of these are on the exterior of buildings - real gems being the Municipal School in Ahad Ha'am Street, the exterior sign on the Ismaylof home and the Moshav Zkenim synagogue on Allenby Street. These works conjure up times of great creativity in Israel, a time when great artists, poets, writers, actors and musicians frequented cafes and salons, creating a unique Hebrew and Israeli culture from their many different backgrounds and influences, with Raban being a key figure in this renaissance.

Topping the bill has to be the recently restored Bialik House on Bialik Street in Tel Aviv. A beautiful, eclectic style building, whitewashed on the exterior, the interior is a blaze of reds, blues, greens and other vibrant colours showing scenes from Jewish history interspersed with the motifs of the 12 Tribes and the signs of the zodiac. Normally photographs are not allowed, but I managed to get a dispensation on my most recent visit. 

Raban died in 1970, blind and suffering from Parkinson's disease, a sad end for a man inspired to create beautiful images and who chose to communicate his view of the world through such visual means, but he has left a legacy that still inspires admiration today.