JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

BERGNER YOSSL (Yosef; 1920– ), Israeli painter. Born
in Vienna, the son of the singer Fania Bergner and the Yiddish
poet Melech *Ravitch. Bergner immigrated to Australia
in 1937 and studied at the art school of the National Gallery
of Victoria in Melbourne. He arrived to Israel in 1950 and
settled in Safed. During his career Bergner exhibited his
work all over the world. He represented Israeli art in international
exhibitions such as the Biennale in Venice and the
Biennale of Sao Paulo. In addition to painting Bergner produced
book illustrations and designed theater sets and costumes
for the Yiddish and Hebrew stage, particularly for
plays written by Nissim *Aloni. In 1980 Bergner was awarded
the Israel Prize. Bergner is married to the painter Audrey
Bergner.
In his unique way Bergner remained a Jewish cosmopolitan
refugee in spite of his Israeli citizenship and spending
most of his life in Israel. Bergner’s art consists of a large
variety of subjects: Jewish, Australian aborigines, children of
Safed, wall paintings, masks, angels and kings, still lifes, toys
and flowers, paintings inspired by the Bird’s-Head Haggadah,
Kafka’s images, Brighton Beach, chairs and tables, Zionists
figures and pioneer images (Pioneer’s Funeral, 1977, Israel
Museum, Jerusalem). Bergner described himself as someone
who has to express everything that goes through his head, in
a very eclectic way.
Bergner’s style moves freely between extremes, from
compact compositions and minimal coloration to richness
and dramatic style. He always maintained a rare combination
between figurative description and surrealistic atmosphere.
At the heart of his approach lies the understanding that the
visual image is a more or less aesthetic representation of the
meaning beyond it.
More then once Bergner has been defined as a literary
painter, in his case meaning a painter who is as comfortable
with world literature as he is familiar with Jewish literature.
As the son of a Yiddish poet, the stories of Mendele Mokher
Seforim (Sholem Yankev *Abramovitsh), *Shalom Aleichem,
and I.L. *Peretz were a part of his life. At the same time Bergner’s
art has been an inspiration to many Israeli poets like Dan
*Pagis, Tuvia Rivner, and Ḥayim Hefer. They were drawn to
the characteristic images of Bergner’s art, referring to them
as an integral part of their poems.
During the years 1971–72 Bergner dealt with the theme
of the Crucifixion. The cross looms high in the foreground
of a cloudy sky. Instead of a human being crucified there are
graters or a white fabric. The atmosphere in these paintings
is dramatic and magical (Messenger – The Dismantled Cross,
1972, Private Collection, Tel Aviv).
Bergner’s paintings are very popular among religious
people because of the absence of human figures and the focus
on objects.
Bibliography: C. Rubin (ed.), Yosl Bergner – A Retrospective
(2000).
[Ronit Steinberg (2nd ed.)]
bergson, abram
BERGSON (Berkson), assimilated Warsaw family, descended
from the court factor Samuel *Zbitkower (d. 1800). Most of
the children of his second wife, Judith Levi of Frankfurt on
the Oder, were given a secular education, and converted to
Christianity, founding the Fraenkel, Oesterreicher, and Flatau
families which played an important role in Polish economic
life. BER (Berek), Zbitkower’s son by his first wife, alone remained
Jewish, and under Prussian rule adopted the family
name Sonnenberg. He and his wife, Tamar (Temerl), built a
synagogue in the Praga suburb of Warsaw in 1807. Their home
became a meeting place for the Ḥasidim in Poland. Their
sons, Jacob, Leopold, and Michael, took the name Bergson
(or Berkson, “son of Berek”). Members of the family included
JOSEPH BERGSON (1812–?), a lecturer in medicine at Warsaw
University (1841–61), and the musician MICHAEL *BERGSON
(1820–1898), father of the most celebrated member of the family,
the philosopher HENRI *BERGSON. Active in the Warsaw
community was MICHAEL BERGSON, the son of Leopold, who
served as president of the community from 1896 to 1918. Other
family members were bankers and manufacturers.
Bibliography: A.N. Frenk, Meshumodim in Poyln, 1 (1923);
I. Schipper (ed.), Żydzi w Polsce odrodzonej, 1 (1932), 481; J. Shatzky,
Di Geshikhte fun Yidn in Varshe, 3 vols. (1947–53), index; A. Levinson,
Toledot Yehudei Varshah (1953), 204; EG, 1 (1953), 235–54. Add. Bibliography:
A. Guterman, Kehillat Varshah bein Shetei Milḥamot
Olam (1977), Index.
[Nathan Michael Gelber]
BERGSON, ABRAM (1914–2003), U.S. economist and expert
on the Soviet Union. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Bergson
earned his B.A. degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1933
and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard in 1935 and 1940, respectively.
While he was a graduate student, he and his brother
Gustav, a physicist, decided to change their name to Bergson
because they felt the name they were born with – Burk – did
not convey their Jewish heritage.
From 1937 to 1940 Bergson was an instructor at Harvard,
and from 1940 to 1942 assistant professor at the University of
Texas. He spent 1942 to 1946 as an economist in various agencies
of the U.S. government, and as chief of the division for the
Office of Strategic Services, was a U.S. delegate to the Moscow
Reparations Conference (1945). For the next ten years he
was at Columbia University but returned to Harvard in 1956
as professor of economics, where he remained for the rest of
his career.
He began his academic life as a theorist, publishing an
extremely influential paper at the age of 23 on the measurement
of well-being across society. His best-known work later
became linked with that of Paul A. *Samuelson, a classmate at
Harvard who won the Nobel in economic science. The Bergson-Samuelson
social welfare function, which combines individual
gauges of well-being, has been a fixture in economic
analysis for decades.
Bergson was director of the Russian Research Center
(now the Davis Center) from 1964 to 1968 and acting direc-
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