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Memoirs of an American Jewish Sculptor
1 Special to The
«r> Southern Israelite
2 “America bore him, Germany
trained him, Italy inspired him."
~ This is how the "Dictionary of
••American Biography"
^ characterizes the famous sculptor
u! Moses Jacob Ezekiel (1844-1917).
t Toward the end of his life Ezekiel
u wrote a lengthy autobiography
< which shows in his own words how
<*) these three countries had shaped
“ hislife. Co-edited by Prof. Stanley
ee F. Chyet of the Hebrew Union
College faculty and Prof. Joseph
f Gutmatin of. the Wayne State
, University faculty, the manuscript,
% long on deposit in microfilm at the
u American Jewish Archives, was
X scheduled for publication in mid-
May by the Wayne Street Univer
sity Press. Its text runs to some
600 pages, and it includes about
seventy plates.
Ezekiel, who came of a partially
Sephardic family which had
migrated from Holland early in
the nineteenth century, was born in
Richmond, Virginia. He offers a
colorful picture of the ante helium
life of a Jewish family in what was
to become the Confederate capital.
When the Civil War broke out,
Ezekiel went to the Virginia
Military Institute. He took part
with his fellow-cadets in the Battle
of Newmarket and vividly
recounted the adventures and
tragedies of the war years, the
hardships endured by Southern
families, and his relations with the
Robert E. Lees after General Lee
returned to civilian life.
When the war ended, the
Ezekiels found it economically
necessary to leave Richmond for
Cincinnati. Ezekiel studied
medicine in Richmond for a time,
but soon turned to art. His artistic
abilities had long shown
themselves, and, in 1869, having
raised a little money by selling a
diamond pin, he set out for Berlin
where he gained entry into the
Royal Art Academy.
Ezekiel tells, of the difficulties
besetting a struggling art student
in the unfamiliar surroundings of
the Prussian capital. A year after
his arrival, the Franco-Prussian
War broke out in 1870. He tried to
earn a little money as a war cor
respondent for the New York
Herald, but his journalistic ac
tivities were cut short when the
suspicious Germans arrested him
as a French spy. For as time,
Ezekiel languished in a military
prison at Koenigsberg, haunted
daily by visions of being shot for
espionage.
The prowess which Ezekiel
showed at the Berlin Academy
won him a prize enabling him to
continue his studies in Rome.
Though he returned to the United
m*
LIFE GOES ON normally for Ma’alot school children — almost.
Ma’alot—
Continued from Page I
ing in Ma’alot a little easier:
*A team of doctors from Tel
Hashomer Hospital, over 90 miles
away in Ramat Gan, promised
mental care to Ma’alot’s citizenry.
Today, emotional problems are
still being treated in a free weekly
clinic.
•Through the UJA's Israel
Education Fund, the Grass Family
Foundation of Harrisburg, Penn
sylvania, is financing a modern,
well-equipped Community Center,
now being built.
•Garin Oded is a group of a
dozen teenagers from all over
Israel. They are donating a year of
their lives to the service of
Ma’alot, after they finish high
school and before they enter the
Army. Working without pay, they
are busy day and night in schools,
youth clubs, and underprivileged
homes.
Kathy Sternberg of Asheville,
N. c., is one of the Oded group’s
guiding lights. “Our biggest job,”
she reflects, “is convincing
Ma’alot’s kids that they do, in
deed, have a future." Not from a
really religious background — “
special feeling for Israel that she
finds difficult to spell out. “It’s just
that Jewish youth belong here, I
gues," she explains, “so I came."
Ma’alot’s future looks good.
The forecast calls for the Town
Council's elevation to Municipali
ty status by 1980, with a city pop
ulation of 18,000. Plans include a
new high school, more housing, a
375-acre Industrial Park, develop
ment of cultural, commercial and
entertainment centrs.
And, of course, people.
What kind of man will leave the
convenience of his home, the
security of a good job, the roots of
his birthplace, the comfort of
friends and relatives — and go to
live in Ma’alot? The answer is sim
ple; The same kind of Jew who
walked from Europe to the Holy
Land in the I880's; who built Eretz
Israel in the I920's, despite
malaria, drought and starvation;
who struggled against British
pressures during the Mandate,
then in 1948 wrested the newborn
Jewish State from the hands of five
Arab armies; and who, today, see
Ma’alot — and dozens of develop
ment towns like it — as the foun-
States several times, he made
Rome his headquarters for the rest
of his life, and his recollections
reflect the fact that his studio in
the Baths of Diocletian became a
recognized rendezvous for the
cosmopolitan society of the Eter
nal City. There in Rome he en
joyed the friendship of such diverse
figures as Gustav Cardinal' von
Hohenlohe, Franz Liszt, Gabriele
D’Annunzio, Pietro Mascagni,
and Queen Mafgharita.
Ezekiel’s output as a sculptor
was extensive. Examples of his
work are found in many countries.
They include a marble group,
“Religious Liberty,” com
missioned by the B’nai B’rith for
the National Centenary of 1876
and installed in a Philadelphia
park, and the monument to the
Confederate dead at Arlington
National Cemetery. His work is
well represented in the Hebrew
Union College's Skirball Museum
in Los Angeles as well as on the
Cincinnati campus of the College-
Institute.
Malcolm Toon
New UJ§. Envoy
WASHINGTON (JTA) —
Malcolm Toon, a veteran Foreign
Service career officer whose ex
perience i has been limited to
Europe, mostly Soviet and Eastern
European affairs, will be
nominated shortly as the new U. S.
Ambassador to Israel. President
Ford is expected to announce the
nomination and submit it for
Senate approval as soon as formal
acceptance is received from Israel,
sources said.
Toon, who will be 60 in July,
was Ambassador to Yugoslavia
until recently and was slated to
replace Ambassador Ellsworth
Bunker as the chief American
representative at the Geneva Mid
dle East peace conference. His
assignment was changed following
the death May 4 of Kenneth B.
Keating who was Ambassador to
Israel since 1973.
Toon, who served as Am
bassador to Czechoslovakia from
1969-72, and hold the rank of
career minister, a rank just below
career ambassador, has no ex
perience in Middle Eastern affairs.
But State Department officials
were said not to consider that a
drawback.
In addition to his previous am
bassadorial posts, Toon served
twice in Moscow and was the State
Department's officer in charge of
Soviet Affairs in the 1960s. He was
reportedly under consideration as
Ambassador to Moscow in 1973
but the appointment went to
Walter J. Stoessel.
Some eyars after Ezekiel’s fami
ly moved to Cincinnati, his father,
Jacob Ezekiel, became the first
secretary of the governing board of
the Hebrew Union College. While
visiting Cincinnati in 1899, Moses
Ezekiel executed the bust of Isaac
Mayer Wise which is now a valued
part of the Collegejlnstitute
Museum collection.
Ezekiel recalls his conversation
with Wise while he was modelling
the bust and describes how he urg
ed on Wise the view that a Jewish
state would be re-established one
day. Wise was antagonistic, but
Ezekiel had long been interested in
reviving Jewish fife in what was
then still Ottoman Palestine. He
was a pre-Herzlian Zionist.
The Ezekiel volume, entitled
Moses Jacob Ezekiel: Memoirs
from the Baths of Diocletian,
derived much of its material from
the files of the American Jewish
Archives on the Cincinnati campus
of the College-Institute, but will be
of interest to non-Jews as well as
Jews. Much of his work had no
connection with anything'Jewish,
and Ezekiel himself felt that artists
“belong to no country and to no
sect ... It is a matter of absolute
indifference to the world whether a
good artist is a Jew or a Gentile ...
This Cloudburst
Has Silver Lining
TEL AVIV, May 12 (JTA) —
An ill wind blows no good, but the
flood waters that ravaged northern
Sinai early this spring causing
hardships for countless Bedouins
and other resident* of the region
had one salutary effect. According
to Israeli authorities, they washed
away huge quantities of narcotics
that were about to flood the drug
markets of the United States, t
Europe and Israel. ^
The drug in question was
hashish, a staple commodity of the
Middle, past drug traffickers.
Quantities of it — the exact
amount is unknown, but police say
it was huge — were hidden in
northern Sinai after being smuggl
ed from Jordan into Israel to await
shipment abroajl.
Israeli police have reported in
addition that there has been a
significant decline recently in the
amount of hashish smuggled into
the country. They attribute this to
the tension along the borders
which has resulted in tighter
security measures.
Kivie Kaplan, Head
of NAACP, Dies
BOSTON (JTA) — Funeral ser
vices were held May 7, for Kivie
Kaplan, president since 1966 of the
National Association for the Ad
vancement of Colored People. Mr.
Kaplan, a businessman,
philanthropist and Reform
Judaism leader, died May 5 in
New York at the age of 71.
Mr. Kaplan, vice-chairman of
the Union of American Hebrew
Congregations, had just arrived in
New York from his home in
Chestnut Hill, Mass., to attend a
meeting of the UAHC’s Israel
commission when he suffered a
heart attack.
In recent months, Mr. Kaplan
had been working for a better un
derstanding between blacks and
Jews. He had formerly been presi
dent of the Colonial Tanning Co.
in his native Boston, but had
retired to devote himself to
philanthropic activities.
He and his wife had contributed
$100,000 in 1959 to buy a building
in Washington to house the
UAHC’s Center for Religious Ac
tion. He helped provide funds for
the Jewish Memorial Hospital in
Boston, Brandeis University and
the Boston branch building of the
NAACP.
Obihuvm
Benjamin Greene
Benjamin (Bert) Greene, 78, of
Savannah died Thursday, May 1.
Graveside services were held
May 2 in Bonaventure Cemetery.
Mr. Greene, a native of Liver
pool, England, had retired in 1969
after 52 years with the Seaboard
Coast Line Railroad Freight Dept.
He was a member of the
Brotherhood of Railroad Clerks
and the local Musicians Union, as
well as B’nai B’rith Jacob
Synagogue.
Survivors include a son, Harold
L. Greene of Miami; sister, Mrs.
Lillian Goldman of Ocala, Fla.;
brother, Leslie Greene of Mon
treal; two granddaughters and a
number of nieces and nephews.
Joseph Goldberg
Joseph Goldberg of Beverly,
Mass., died Monday, Apr. 28. He
was the father of Leon Goldberg of
Savannah.
Mr. Goldberg was a retired
employe of the United Shoe
Machinery Manufacturing of
Beverly after 50 years of service.
He was a member of the Beverly
Temple.
In addition to Leon Goldberg,
survivors are his wife, Mrs. Celia
Goldberg; another son, Milton
Goldberg; daughter, Mrs.
Emanuel Abrams, all of Beverly; a
brother, two sisters, ten
grandchildren and three great
grandchildren.
Roberts-Shields Memorial Company
Artistic Designs Of
Marble
Granite Bronze
Office 525-0663
Represented by Arnold Feldman
Home 355-1624
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