Micha Ullman, one of Israel’s top sculptors, recipient of the Israel Prize and one of Yerachmiel Schechter’s students, writes in his memories “Perhaps I’ll start with how I became a sculptor. In ‘Bezalel’ we studied calligraphy with Yerachmiel Schechter who was an architect, calligraphy with a nib.  My final project was about Shabbat. He looked at my work and after few minutes said “very good”. I told him, wait a moment, I’m not completely satisfied with the letters. He replied, I wasn’t looking at the letters, I was looking at the spaces. It took me about seven years to understand this sentence until I became a sculptor…” (from the Adi foundation website)

Here, a calligraphy by Ulman the student (1961) and his autograph on the back side

(Courtesy of Schechter Archive, Emuna Collage, Jerusalem)

The Shadow  Clock, a calligraphy-illustration project by Eric Kolmanik, one of Yerachmiel Schechter’s talented students in the ‘new’ Bezalel. Around 1960.

Sketches of the design

(Courtesy of Schechter Archive, Emuna Collage, Jerusalem)

An exquisite glimpse into the treasure box of calligraphy projects from the late ’50s and the early ’60s created by students of the legendary teacher Yerachmiel Schechter, courtesy of the Schechter archives at Emuna college.
The first project is unsigned and not dated. The second project was created by the student Eliahu (Metuka) Schwartz who, after graduating from Bezalel and training at École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, would establish and head the department of graphic design at the academy of design and education, Wizo Haifa, for years to come.

Art critic Gideon Ofrat writes on his website: “….at the script department of ‘new’ Bezalel, Yerachmiel Schechter seeks the connection between the design of a letter to the instrument it was written with. After the period of writing letters in the style of the bible during Shatz’s Bezalel (Raban type for example), ‘new’ Bezalel searched for a more ‘scientific’ and functional approach to the question of designing a letter.”

Yerachmiel Schechter, who was head of the “new” Bezalel academy for two years (1955-1957), was known for his strict typographic design education. As an independent designer he created, among other things, letters for the sole use of the young El-Al company, as well as the logo of “Am oved” publishers.

This exceptional “Shiviti” sample, was painted in 1852 by Abraham Ben Zundel, who was an immigrant from the Greek island Corfu arriving to Moravia (a region in today’s Czech Republic).
It is characterized by it’s naïve Sephardi typographic style (unlike the acceptable Ashkenazi-style of that time that was common in that area), decorative additions (flowers, leaves, stars and even fish) and a composition derived from the Kabbalistic visual lexicon.

At the bottom, Ben Zundel encloses an inscription to the local Rabbi (who probably ordered the job), and spares no praise: “In honor of the famous genuine genius and sharp rabbi, teacher of the Torah to Israel, Moharar Avraham Neida… his light will shine as the sun in the east”.

© Jewish Museum in Prague