Newspaper Page Text
Rapoport unveils sculpture
envisioned by Begin, Sadat
by Margie Olster
JTA
About seven years ago, then
Israeli Prime Minister Menachem
Begin and the late Egyptian Presi
dent Anwar Sadat commissioned
Nathan Rapoport to sculpt a bronze
symbol of the Camp David Accord.
After Sadat’s assassination, years
of waiting and a new sponsor’s
donation, the 75-year-old artist
unveiled the massive bronze sculp
ture, “Brotherhood of Man,” in
New York.
Rapoport, an internationally
acclaimed sculptor, summed up his
career in one sentence at the unveil
ing: “Forty years I was striving
with all my heart to express our
pain and sorrow through the medi
um of bronze and stone.”
“Brotherhood of Man,” a depic
tion of two brothers embracing in a
wheat field, would have stood on
the Israeli-Egyptian border as en
visioned by Sadat and Begin. But
after Sadat’s assassination in Oc
tober 1981, the project lost mo
mentum and fizzled out.
Today the statue stands tempor
arily in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza
facing the United Nations in New
York. In September, “Brotherhood
of Man” will make the trip to its
final destination at the Magen
David Adorn National Blood Ser
vice Center in Ramat Gan.
The rebirth of Rapoport’s latest
project came when philanthropist
and American Red Magen David
Adorn forlsrael(ARMDI)national
chairman Joseph Handleman
bought and commissionedthe statue
for the new blood bank, financed
partially by ARMDI.
Rapoport said he chose the theme
of brotherhood as a symbol of
sharing, compassion and love. An
inscription on the statue’s base tells
the story in Rapoport’s words:
“Long, long ago, on the site of
old Jerusalem, the Holy City, there
lived two brothers. They were far-
mersand they tilled the land which
they had inherited from their father.
I he older was unmarried and lived
alone. The younger was married
and lived with his wife and four
children.
“The brothers loved each other
and did not want to divide the
fields between them. Both plowed,
planted and harvested the crop
together. After they cut the wheat,
they shared equally in the produce
of the earth.”
The story goes on to say that the
older brother worried that his
brother had the responsiblity of a
family and he did not. He con
cluded his brother should get a
greater share of the harvest. At
midnight, he would bring a pile of
wheat sheaves to his brother’s field.
At the same time, the younger
brother, worried that his older
brother would grow old and have
no children to care for him, began
to bring piles of wheat from his
side of the field to his brother’s
field. This went on for several
nights.
“But on the third night when
each brother was carrying a pile of
sheaves to the other, they met at
Louis Rosenberg (left), national president of American Red Magen
David for Israei (ARMDI), and Joseph Handleman (right), ARMDI’s
national chairman, stand in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza with sculptor
Nathan Rapoport.
the top of the hill. Suddenly they
understood. Overcome, they dropped
their sheaves and embraced and
cried with tears of gratitude and
happiness.
It is this poignant image Rapo
port chose for his “Brotherhood of
Man” sculpture. “Legend has it
that on that very spot the Temple in
Jersualem was built, symbolizing
peace and the brotherhood of man,”
the inscription reads.
Most of Rapoport’s 13 previous
monuments depicted themes of the
Holocaust and redemption in Jew
ish history. One of the most noted
Holocaust monuments, “The War
saw Ghetto Uprising,” completed
in 1948, stands in Warsaw.
Other Rapoport sculptures in
clude “Job,” at Yad Vashem; “Scroll
of Fire” in the Judaean Hills;
“Monument to the Six Million
Jewish Martyrs,” Philadelphia;
“Memorial in Memory of the Jew
ish Children who Perished in the
Holocaust,” New York; and “Jacob
Wrestling with the Angel,” Toronto.
Rapoport, who was born in
Warsaw in 191 1, began the study
of sculpture at age 14 and went on
to study at the Warsaw Academy
of Arts and in France.
After the Nazi invasion of Poland
in 1939, he walked about 300 miles
east until he met the retreating Pol
ish army. Russians in Bialystok
rescued Rapoport and he continued
his art in Minsk.
With the Nazi invasion of west
ern Russia in 1941, Rapoport con
tinued his sojourn at a labor camp
in Siberia and then in Novosibirsk
where he learned of the Warsaw
Ghetto Uprising.
In 1943, he conceived the mon
ument to the Warsaw Ghetto fight
ers. In 1948, the statue was unveiled
on Zamenhoff Street where the re
sistance began and it remains on
that site today. Rapoport made
aliyah in 1948.
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PAGE 13 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE June 20, 1986