Hasid Studying

Lazar Krestin (Lithuania 1868–1938 Vienna)
Oil on canvas, h. 36 x w. 42 ¾ in.
Lithuania, 1909
Cincinnati Skirball Museum; gift of Mrs. Arthur Hays Sulzberger, 41.82

The Jewish people are considered the People of the Book because they were bonded together by the Torah, or Five Books of Moses, throughout their years of wandering. Lazar Krestin captures reverence for study and religious life in this realistic painting of a learned and pious man.

The man depicted here is a Hasid, which means “pious.” The Hasidic movement originated among the Jews of Poland in the eighteenth century. The founder of Hasidism was Israel Baal Shem Tov, who taught that sincere devotion, zeal, and heartfelt prayers are more acceptable to God than great learning and that God can best be served through deep-seated joy rather than solemnity and intellectualism. The elderly bearded man shown here wears the characteristic fur hat of Hasidic Jews. He is seated at a table deeply engrossed in a religious text.

Krestin was one of a number of Eastern European Jewish artists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who were primarily genre painters. Highly realistic scenes of Jewish life were particularly popular among assimilated Jews who were moving away from traditional observance and found in these works a sense of nostalgia for Jewish customs and traditions. Krestin was born in Kaunas, Lithuania and studied art in Vilnius, Vienna, and Munich. He was one of the most prominent students of Isidor Kaufman. He worked in Munich, Vienna, and Odessa before going to Jerusalem in 1910 at the request of Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design founder, Boris Schatz. He later returned to Vienna where he died in 1938.

Publications:
Artistic Expressions of Faith in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, ed. Abby S. Schwartz, 1997, p. 8.