JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

BAK, printers and pioneers in Ereẓ Israel. ISRAEL BAK
(1797–1874) was born in Berdichev, Ukraine, into a family of
printers. Later he owned a Jewish press in Berdichev, printing
about 30 books between 1815 and 1821 when the press closed
down. In 1831, after various unsuccessful efforts to reopen the
works, he immigrated to Palestine and settled in Safed. There
he renewed the tradition of printing Hebrew works, which had
come to an end in the last third of the 17th century. During
the peasant revolt against Muhammad Ali in 1834 his printing
press was destroyed and he was wounded. Later he reopened
his press, and also began to work the land on Mount Yarmak
(Meron), overlooking Safed. His was the first Jewish farm in
Ereẓ Israel in modern times. After the Safed earthquake in
1837 and the Druze revolt in 1838, during which his farm and
printing press were destroyed, he moved to Jerusalem. In 1841
he established the first – and for 22 years, the only – Jewish
printing press in Jerusalem. One hundred and thirty books
were printed on it, making it an important cultural factor in
Jerusalem. Bak also published and edited the second Hebrew
newspaper in Ereẓ Israel, Ḥavaẓẓelet (1863). After a short time
its publication stopped and was renewed only in 1870 by his
son-in-law I.D. *Frumkin and others. Israel Bak was a leader
of the ḥasidic community; as a result of his efforts and those
of his son Nisan, a central synagogue for the Ḥasidim, called
Tiferet Israel (after R. Israel of Ruzhin), came into being. In
Jerusalem it was also known as “Nisan Bak’s synagogue.” It was
destroyed in 1948 during the War of Independence.
Nisan (1815–1889), only son of Israel, was born in Berdichev
and immigrated to Palestine with his father in 1831. Nisan
managed the printing press after the death of his father until
1883, when he sold the business; thereafter he devoted himself
exclusively to communal affairs in Jerusalem. He was an active
worker in the ḥasidic community and the representative
of the Ruzhin-Sadagura dynasty in Jerusalem. Through his
contacts with the Turkish government he did much to modify
decrees aimed against the yishuv. He initiated and executed
several building projects in Jerusalem, such as the Kiryah
Ne’emanah quarter, first named Oholei Moshe vi-Yhudit, but
better known as Battei Nisan Bak. He and his brother-in-law
I.D. Frumkin were pioneers of the Haskalah in Jerusalem;
they also opposed the methods of *ḥalukkah distribution.
In 1884 Nisan and others founded the Ezrat Niddaḥim Society,
which fought the missions and established the Yemenite
quarter in Jerusalem.
Bibliography: G. Kressel (ed.), Mivḥar Kitvei I.D. Frumkin
(1954), index; A. Yaari, Ha-Defus ha-Ivri be-Arẓot ha-Mizraḥ (1937),
20–22 (list of books printed by Israel Bak in Safed); S. Halevi, Ha-
Sefarim ha-Ivriyyim she-Nidpesu be-Yrushalayim (1963), index; G.
Kressel, Toledot ha-Ittonut ha-Ivrit be-Ereẓ Yisrael (1964), index; Tidhar,
1 (1947), 64f.; M. Benayahu, in: Aresheth, 4 (1966), 271–95.
[Getzel Kressel]
BAK, SAMUEL (1933– ), painter. Bak was born in Vilna. A
few years later the area was incorporated into the indepen-
bak, samuel
dent republic of Lithuania. He was eight when the Germans
occupied the city. Bak began painting while still a child and,
prompted by the well-known Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever,
held his first exhibition (in the Vilna ghetto) in 1942 at
the age of nine. From the ghetto the family was sent to a labor
camp on the outskirts of the city. Bak’s father managed to save
his son by dropping him in a sack out of a ground floor window
of the warehouse where he was working; he was met by
a maid and brought to the house where his mother was hiding.
His father was shot by the Germans in July 1944, a few
days before Soviet troops liberated the city. His four grandparents
had earlier been executed at the killing site outside
Vilna called Ponary.
After the war, the young Bak continued painting at the
Displaced Persons camp in Landsberg, Germany (1945–48),
where he also studied painting in Munich. In 1948, he and his
mother immigrated to Israel, where he studied for a year at
the Bezalel Art School in Jerusalem. After fulfilling his military
service, he spent three years (1956–59) at the École des
Beaux-Arts in Paris. He then moved to Rome (1959–66), returned
to Israel (1966–74), and lived for a time in New York
City (1974–77). There followed further years in Israel and
Paris, then a long stay in Switzerland (1984–93). From 1993
Bak lived and worked outside Boston, in Weston, Massachusetts.
In 2001 he published a detailed autobiography, Painted
in Words: A Memoir (Indiana University Press).
Bak’s paintings have been exhibited in museums and galleries
and hang in public collections in England, the United
States, Israel, Germany, and Switzerland. Many later works
may be viewed at the Pucker Gallery (171 Newbury Street)
in Boston. The editors of Between Worlds: The Paintings and
Drawings of Samuel Bak from 1946 to 2001 (Pucker Art Publications,
2002), a survey of more than a half-century of his
work, summarize the sources of his vision as follows:
Bak’s life has inevitably influenced his choice of images and
themes. The particulars of Vilna and the Holocaust, of surviving
and being a wandering Jew, are part of his individual biography;
but all are also aspects of our shared human condition.
Bak has always sought to find the universal in the specific. His
ongoing dialogues with the long-dead members of his family,
with his early teachers, with the great masters of all epochs,
with contemporary culture, and with the Bible and the diverse
host of Jewish traditions – all come from his desire to represent
the universality of loss and the endurance of man’s hope
for a tikkun.
The fragile balance between ruin and repair remained a central
theme of his efforts to create for modern consciousness
challenging visual images of our contemporary world.
Bibliography: A. Kaufman and P.T. Nagano, Samuel Bak:
Paintings of the Last Decade (1974); R. Kallenbach, Samuel Bak: Monuments
to Our Dreams (1977); S. Bak and P.T. Nagano, Samuel Bak:
The Past Continues (1988); J.L. Kornuz, Chess as Metaphor in the
Art of Samuel Bak (1991); S. Bak, Ewiges Licht (Landsberg: A Memoir
1944–1948) (1996); L.L. Langer, Landscapes of Jewish Experience
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3 71