The Jewish 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Jews of All Time (47 page)

Self portrait.

Son of a Jewish immigrant vest maker, Emmanuel was raised in Brooklyn. When he graduated from Boys’ High, he accepted the award for best English student (a copy of Walt Whitman’s
Leaves of Grass)
wearing an unconventionally bright red shirt. Just after the turn of the century, New York was slowly starting to become home to important artists such as those of the “Ashcan School,” an indigenous form of social realism depicting urban scenes in an almost pre-Cubist style. Man Ray was also exposed to great European art of the period, viewing works by Auguste Rodin and others at the 291 Gallery of the American Jewish creative pioneer Alfred Stieglitz, an innovative photographer, supporter of the latest artistic trends, and the future husband of the American painter Georgia O’Keeffe. Hours were also spent at the massive Brooklyn Museum carefully studying its Old Masters collection. Although Man Ray would be at the vanguard of one of the most truly avant-garde artistic movements in history, he remained devoted to tradition and its discipline.

On February 17, 1913 the International Exhibition of Modern Art, commonly known as the Armory Show, opened in New York. The Armory Show exhibited works of the Ashcan School as well as paintings by Paul Cezanne, Andre Derain, Francis Picabia, Constantin Brancusi, Georges Braque, and Pablo Picasso. But the work that aroused the greatest controversy was Duchamp’s
Nude Descending a Staircase.
The painting was an attempt to end the reliance on representing nature in realistic forms. Rather, the nude was painted in almost falling slats of wood; others called them saddlebags. Duchamp viewed these forms as containing “an expression of time and space through the abstract presentation of motion.” Man Ray was overwhelmed by the thoughts and talents exposed at the Armory.

Soon thereafter at a mutual friend’s house, Man Ray met Duchamp for the first time as they squared off against each other in a tennis match. They began sharing ideas, molding each other’s visions of what art should be and do. At about the same time, a movement in Europe reacting savagely to the carnage of the First World War burst forth in Switzerland, led by the Rumanian Jewish poet, Tristan Tzara (born Sami Rosenstock in Bucharest). Thumbing their noses at the world, the Dadaists sought to liberate artistic expression from all rules. Anything was possible and doable; nihilism reigned. Dada (“yes, yes”) had its roots in cabaret, gaily ridiculing accepted values. Duchamp, Ray, and Picabia joined together in the United States to create a group later called the New York Dadaists. Examples of their artistic decisions at this time include Duchamp selecting a urinal and Ray choosing nonreflecting mirrors or buttons that did not start anything when pressed as objects of art. Man Ray also started to experiment with a simple Brownie camera, first photographing his Cubist-style paintings, then creating portraits. He began to photograph what he did not wish to paint. Sheets blowing in the wind on a backyard clothesline created meaningful forms and movements. Portraits could be taken by shooting the camera over one’s shoulder, photographing the subject when least aware.

Unable to support himself and escaping an unhappy marriage, Ray left New York in 1921 for Paris, where he made his home for most of the next fifty years. Emmanuel, the free spirit, transformed himself into the expatriate artist, Man Ray. Aligning himself with both Tzara and the poet Andre Breton, the promoter of the new art form, Surrealism, Man Ray quickly impressed influential artists and critics with his virtuosic and varied abilities. Surrealism became the rage in Paris as artists applied the psychological discoveries of Freud to artistic expression. The Surrealists believed that the fantasies of the unconscious world possessed a reality more important than real life. Only in tapping the unconscious could one’s imagination be made free.

Dada had in its fierce anger and rebellion a destructive streak. Surrealism, on the other hand, was a more positive movement seeking to liberate expression by revealing man’s deepest and most hidden emotions. Like Dada, all reason and morality was eschewed. But for the Dadaists, the rebellion
was
the art (Groucho Marx’s later chant “whatever it is, I’m against it!” was a popularization of Dada). In sharp contrast, the Surrealists wanted to create great art out of their greatest fantasies—usually based on realistic forms.

Man Ray’s contribution to the art world of this period was his combination of Dada with Surrealism filtered through a uniquely American imagination. He created objects of new artistic expression, like attaching a photograph of an eye to a metronome or using utensils as male and female forms. While Man Ray considered his painting to be his true serious work, his photographs and experimental filmmaking brought him the greatest exposure. His short films incited riots. Yet he became the favored photographer of the great artistic figures of his time. His photos of fashion models liberated commercial photography from traditional constraints. The broad expression found in commercial advertising today largely owes its freedom to Man Ray. Experimenting with the photographic process itself, he perfected photogenic drawings or what he called “rayographs.” Playing with the effect of light on exposed film by moving objects on and off a developing photo, Man Ray created a new art form of amazing subtlety and spontaneity. After him, there would never again be any limits to what a photographer could do.

H
er biographer, Irving Fineman, dubbed her a “woman of valor.” Henrietta Szold, the founder of Hadassah, the women’s Zionist organization, and a leading force in the development of social and child welfare, was an exemplary Jewish woman in a long line of impressive Jewish women stretching from Rebecca, Deborah, and Esther in ancient times to Golda Meir and Betty Friedan in the twentieth century. Like them, Henrietta Szold overcame the severe restraints imposed on women to change society in ways that perhaps only a Jewish woman could. Szold’s importance and influence lies not only in her great deeds (and there were many, compressed into a relatively short time frame despite her long life), but in her remarkably inspiring and selfless example.

Henrietta Szold was somewhat similar to other reformers of her day, but also something more. Before John Dewey, Szold lectured and developed new methods of education, for example, establishing night schools for Russian immigrants. During the same era when Jane Addams was providing social services to the needy in Chicago, Szold created welfare programs in Palestine to help Arabs and Jews alike where there had been no aid whatsoever before. With Florence Nightingale as her example, Szold introduced contemporary nursing care in impoverished areas of the Holy Land, conquering superstition and medieval medical practices.

Born in Baltimore at the beginning of the American Civil War to German-speaking Hungarian-born parents, Henrietta’s earliest memory was witnessing President Lincoln’s funeral cortege passing through her town. Her father, Rabbi Benjamin Szold, was the religious leader of their community, a stern, scholarly man. The family conversed in German, the language of cultured Jews of the time. Henrietta, the eldest of six girls, was a substitute mother for her sisters and her father’s best “son” and assistant. She grew up in a comfortable yet sheltered religious environment, encountering anti-Semitism only from the taunts of children in the streets.

Her life was relatively staid until her late forties. She lived the role of the cultured, educated, yet socially committed old maid, doting on her father and devoted to public causes. Szold taught in public and religious schools, lectured on educational topics, translated, edited, and wrote articles for Jewish publications, became an editor at the prestigious Jewish Publication Society, and, most important, in her early maturity established a night school for Russian immigrants. The school was a trailblazing enterprise during years when the downtrodden masses newly arrived in America were largely forgotten, abused, resented. What she learned of the horrors of pogroms in Russia, government-sanctioned persecution, she was stirred her to greater action on behalf of her people.

Citing Theodor Herzl’s example and inspired by a visit to the Alt-Neu Shul in Prague, Szold organized a circle of Jewish women to meet as a discussion group interested in Zionist activities. The first meeting of what she called Hadassah, the Hebrew for Esther, took place at Temple Emanu-El in New York City in 1912 with a talk “illustrated by stereopticon views” of Palestine. Hadassah was founded for many of the same reasons as the suffragette movements of the period. Women simply wanted to take part in the great issues of their day. These Jewish women would not tolerate being separated from pursuing Zionist ideals. Hadassah or the Women’s Zionist Organization of America became one of the most important philanthropic and socially committed volunteer groups in modern history.

After the death of her father and a sour love affair with a prominent Jewish scholar ten years her junior, Szold traveled to the Middle East to attempt to help transform Palestine into a place where women could prosper. She organized women’s societies for public welfare, established a training school for nurses, and founded the famed Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. Elected in 1931 to the National Council of the General Assembly of the Knesset, the Jewish autonomous ruling body, Szold served as a virtual clearinghouse for social service activities in Palestine. Her name became internationally synonymous with the providing of health and childcare. Influential methods of family casework were developed under her auspices. In her final years, she helped many Jewish children flee Nazi hatred to Palestine, made the words “Youth Aliyah” or immigration of young people into the land her clarion call. The old maid had become the “Mother of Israel.”

P
opularly known as the King of Swing (and to musicians of his era simply by his initials “BG”), Benny Goodman was more than a great clarinetist and bandleader. BG developed ensembles known for their remarkable cohesion and integration (musically as well as racially). He had enormous societal influence by placing black musicians in his bands at a time of intense bigotry and segregation. Goodman commissioned important compositions from the greatest composers of his time, including Béla Bártok, Paul Hindemith, and Aaron Copland, as well as performing And recording works of Leonard Bernstein, Igor Stravinsky, Johannes Brahms, Carl Maria von Weber, and many others. His solo virtuosity set a standard for clarinetists to emulate. As a touring artist, BG introduced his unique classical swing to Asian and Russian audiences, bringing his special way of making jazz to international prominence.

Benjamin Goodman was born in Chicago, Illinois on May 30, 1909. His parents were Eastern European immigrants who brought their three sons to synagogue for special musical programs. The smallest of three boys, Benny, was given the clarinet to play because it was lighter than the trumpet and tuba given to his bigger brothers. His real studies began at age twelve when he studied with the first clarinetist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The great jazz musician would always be marked by the rigorous classical training he received in his teens. This training separated him from many of the jazz musicians of his era, several of whom were self-taught, educated in what was quite literally a school of hard knocks, one-night engagements in small towns and taverns. Also in his early teens, BG played in many local dance bands, meeting several important jazz artists such as the great cornet player Bix Beiderbecke.

Influenced by the New Orleans players who voyaged up to the Windy City on party boats, Goodman’s playing gained the maturity and variety necessary for him to venture to and compete first in Los Angeles and then in New York. For the first five years of the Depression (1929—1934), Goodman free-lanced in New York City, establishing himself as a force in popular music. Freelance work during this period included playing in Broadway show pit orchestras, radio shows, and recording sessions. The first-night audience in 1930 of George Gershwin’s musical
Girl Crazy
witnessed not only the ingénue Ginger Rogers and the debut of Ethel Merman belting
I Got Rhythm,
but a pit band consisting of future jazz greats Jimmy Dorsey, Jack Teagarden, Glenn Miller, Red Nichols, Gene Krupa, and Benny Goodman. Imagine what it must have sounded like!