8/22/2019 Rare early Soviet-era illustrations of ‘Chad Gadya’ seder song at Magnes

The Jewish News

of Northern California

"Chad Godyo" illusration by El Lissitzky (Courtesy/Ira Fink and Paula Hudis Family Trust)

CULTURE > ART

Rare early Soviet-era illustrations of

‘One Little Goat’ seder song at
Magnes
BY ROBERT NAGLER MILLER | AUGUST 22, 2019

A n upcoming exhibit at the Magnes museum in Berkeley brings to light a

fascinating yet little-known slice of modern European Jewish history.

“El Lissitzky’s Chad Gadyo at 100” focuses on a recent gift to the Magnes Collection of
Jewish Art and Life at UC Berkeley: a complete set of 11 colorful lithographic images

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8/22/2019 Rare early Soviet-era illustrations of ‘Chad Gadya’ seder song at Magnes

by El Lissitzky, a Russian Jewish avant-garde artist born Eleazar Markovich Lisitskii in

1890.

The works illustrate the popular Passover seder song that starts off, “One little goat,
one little goat, which my father bought for two zuzim.”

The exhibit opens Tuesday, Aug. 27 and will be on display through May 29, 2020.

A show highlighting the song, perhaps better known in modern times as “Chad
Gadya,” is significant, says Magnes curator Francesco Spagnolo, if for no other reason
than that these El Lissitzky illustrations are quite rare. The artist published an edition
of just 75 copies a century ago, and only about a dozen of them have made their way
into public collections worldwide.

Also noteworthy, Spagnolo says, are the contributions of the artist in the cultural
world of the early 20th century and the context in which he worked.

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8/22/2019 Rare early Soviet-era illustrations of ‘Chad Gadya’ seder song at Magnes

“…the butcher who killed the ox…” (Courtesy/Ira Fink and Paula Hudis Family Trust)

As New York’s Jewish Museum makes clear on its website, El Lissitzky may not have
been as widely known as Marc Chagall, a contemporary with whom he worked at the
People’s Art School in Belarus, but he was a leader in the artist movement called
Suprematism, a Russian abstract form that favored geometric shapes and patterns.

Before he embraced Suprematism, El Lissitzky was part of a group of Jewish artists

who flourished in the early days following the Russian Revolution, Spagnolo notes.
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8/22/2019 Rare early Soviet-era illustrations of ‘Chad Gadya’ seder song at Magnes

Unlike their predecessors, the czars, whose dynastic rule was often marked by
flagrant and numerous examples of anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish violence, the
Revolution’s early leaders encouraged Jewish artists to honor their heritage with
works that touched on their religion’s rich culture and history.

Contrary to the widespread belief that the Communist regime had always
promulgated and enforced anti-Semitic policies, the initial post-1917 “Soviet
leadership was open to Jews and their emancipation,” Spagnolo says. “There was a
coexistence of Jewish ethnographic work,” including folktales, music and art.

“It was a time of great hope for many Jews,” he adds. “Jewish artists were allowed to
express themselves in a Jewish vernacular.”

El Lissitzky’s “Chad Gadyo” is a striking example of Russian Jewish art being produced
at that time. The beautifully rendered illustrations of the “goat song” — whose
provenance, Spagnolo says, is decidedly not Jewish, but rather old Provençal French
of the Middle Ages — are accompanied by Yiddish and Aramaic text.

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8/22/2019 Rare early Soviet-era illustrations of ‘Chad Gadya’ seder song at Magnes

“…the dog that bit the cat…” (Courtesy/Ira Fink and Paula Hudis Family Trust)

Instead of stressing any kind of divine intervention in relating the song’s tale of the
“cat eating the goat” and the eventual slaying of the Angel of Death by God, El
Lissitzky focused on the “Soviet message” of “socially engaged art,” such as the image
of a water carrier that exalts “human labor,” Spagnolo points out.

“Chad Gadyo” was El Lissitzky’s last known Jewish-themed work before he fully
immersed himself in the Soviet avant-garde, says Spagnolo, who calls this work his

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8/22/2019 Rare early Soviet-era illustrations of ‘Chad Gadya’ seder song at Magnes

“swan song” to his Jewish heritage. Plagued by poor health for many years, he died in
1941 at age 51.

By the time of his death, the celebration of the Jewish vernacular had long ended, says
Steven Zipperstein, the Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History at
Stanford University, who noted Stalin’s increasing paranoia about Jews and a
concomitant decline in pro-Jewish sentiment among rank-and-file Soviets.

The gift of the “Chad Gadyo” illustrations was made by the family trust of a Berkeley
couple, Ira Fink and Paula “Penni” Hudis, soon before Fink’s death at age 82 in April.
The gift was made in honor of the late Seymour Fromer, the founder and director
emeritus of the Magnes, to mark the 10th anniversary of his death, and the official
name of the exhibit is “A Tsigele / One Little Goat: El Lissitzky’s Chad Gadyo at 100
(1919-2019).” In Yiddish, a tsigele means “a little goat.”

Hudis says the Magnes was “the perfect place for the ‘Chad Gadyo,’” in part because
Fink, an architect and urban planner, was delighted when the museum in 2010
became affiliated with UC Berkeley, where he earned his master’s degree and
doctorate.

During his lifetime, Fink amassed an extensive collection of architectural books about
synagogues, Hudis says. Approximately half of these books, numbering in the
thousands, also have been donated to the Magnes.

“El Lissitzky’s Chad Gadyo at 100”

Gallery hours are 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays at the Magnes, 2121 Allston Way,
Berkeley. Aug. 27 through May 29, 2020. Free. magnes.berkeley.edu or (510) 643-2526

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