Saul Raskin

Career

Yiddish press As a Russian speaker, Raskin became fluent in Yiddish after having come into contact with the literary community of the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan. Raskin's cartoons sometimes portrayed the differences between Jewish life in Eastern Europe and in the United States as tales of "metamorphoses". In a cartoon from Der Groyser Kundes in 1909, Raskin employed a cantor, a person ethnomusicologist Mark Slobin, Professor of Music at Wesleyan University regards as serving as "representatives of the group's strivings" for American Jewish audiences in 20th-century America. In 1907, he wrote an article for the weekly Zeitgeist published between 1905 and 1908 by The Forward, titled Der proletariat un der kunst (The proletariat and art). Raskin was the art and theater critic for Abraham Reisen's Yiddish language weekly Dos Naye Land (The New Country), an "illustrated weekly of literature, art, criticism and culture", launched in 1911. In the 17 November 1911 edition, Raskin wrote an article titled An Exhibition of Jewish Artists, A Proclamation in which he proposed that Jewish artists exhibitions should be held and suggested practical ways to organize them. The following week, Dos Naye Land published a letter to the editor from a writer opposing Raskin's suggestion on the grounds that "good artists" would refuse to exhibit and suggesting that art appreciation in the Jewish community should be cultivated by first exhibiting reproductions of good art in public places. Raskin suggested that rather than examining the various techniques, forms, and styles used by Jewish artists, "Jewish Art" might emerge by examining the common subject matter and themes in his contemporaries' work, specifically in genre and history paintings.

Educational and cultural work Raskin worked to bring Jewish art to the attention of the Jewish public. He believed that art should not be the exclusive preserve of the wealthy and that by collaborating with artists, the public's interest in art could be cultivated. In 1914 the EC organized ten guided tours of New York art museums most of which were conducted by Raskin. The "shpatsirungen" (strolls) as they were called could draw as many as four to five hundred people.

Visual art Raskin was probably known more as a painter and caricaturist within the American Jewish community than as a critic. He worked in various media and was known for his realist approach and attention to detail. The lobby of a theater at the corner of Second Avenue and Eleventh Street, at the northern end of the "Yiddish Broadway" in the Yiddish Theater District on the Lower East Side was decorated with his paintings of Palestine. He made a number of trips to Palestine, at least four between 1921 and 1937, In 1947 Raskin published Land of Palestine which contained "more than 300 drawings and paintings made during the artist's five visits to Palestine, together with short essays on Palestinian life." He produced poster art to support the Zionist movement. His poster Stand Up and Be Counted from the 1930s shows a central figure of a tall and determined American Jew holding up a Shekel surrounded on one side by images of destruction and on the other by images of a brighter future in a Jewish homeland promised by contributing to the Zionist organization.

Illustrated books Raskin provided illustrations for a number of Hebrew texts such as Pirkei Avot: Sayings of the Fathers (1940), the Haggadah for Passover (1941), Tehilim. The Book of Psalms (1942), the Siddur (1945), Five Megiloth: Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther (1949), the Kabbalah in Word and Image (1952), and other books such as Aron Hakodesh: Jewish Life And Lore (1955) and Between God and Man: Hebrew Rhapsody in 100 Drawings (1959). Aron Hakodesh (The Holy Ark) illustrates the life of a boy named Moishele from his Bar Mitzvah to marriage, to teaching his own children and in his old age, his grandchildren reflecting the idea of passing down traditional Jewish wisdom. The last pages are about Israel and the Promised Land.

On Raskin's eightieth birthday he said "I am an artist and I am a Jew, but first and above all, I am a Jewish artist, for Jewishness is the source, the centrality, the essence of my art, as it is the essence of my being."

Artists' societies membership Raskin was a member of the American Watercolor Society, the Society of American Etchers, the Audubon Artists and the New York Watercolor Club.

Personal life Raskin married Rae Malis. They had at least one son, Eugene Raskin.

Published works

Books illustrated by Raskin

(Volume I,Volume II)