Joan Rosenbaum

by Joan Rosenbaum

My home is filled with art. While each work is unique, or part of a limited edition, one I’m especially drawn to that’s neither original, valuable or collectable is a framed exhibition poster.  It’s from a 1995 Jewish Museum exhibition, called Russian Jewish Artists in a Century of Change 1890-1990, and the image is a 1914 painting titled “The Watchmaker” by Yehuda Pen whose life covered a turbulent period of history. Born in Russia’s Pale of Settlement in 1854, he lived under czarist then communist regimes and was murdered in 1937 during the Stalin purges. Trained at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, he founded an art school in Vitebsk where he mentored many notable artists including Marc Chagall. Pen eschewed the emerging avant-garde styles and remained a realist throughout his career, creating paintings of traditional Jewish life that provide a window into a lost world.

In the painting “The Watchmaker,” a man, neither young nor old, with grey beard, cap and rimless glasses, sits at his worktable, surrounded by the accoutrements of his profession and reads a Yiddish newspaper, while smoking a cigarette.  He appears religious, yet with his engagement with the world at large through the paper, I imagine him a person inhabiting two worlds.  The clocks around him likely refer to the passage of time, but given the date of the painting, they could also reflect a time in Russia on the edge of profound social and political change.

I look at “The Watchmaker” and see someone taking a precious respite from work while savoring the pleasure of smoking.  His long fingers reflect the intricacy and precision required of his work yet the nonchalance of his gesture also gives him an air of worldliness. I’ve been drawn to this work for 30 years. I love the way it’s painted, but I also appreciate it as a reminder of my grandfather, known to me as tahti, a diminutive of the Yiddish word for father.  A part of my family’s household until he passed away when I was twelve, tahti had a shop for making men’s suits in the attic of our house and like the watchmaker also smoked and read the Yiddish newspaper every morning. As a child I was very attached to him and loved spending time among the objects of his work – huge scissors for cutting fabric, pinking shears that made pointy edges, a mountain of threads and a large tailor’s form. As I gaze at the poster, I imagine that tahti, like the watchmaker was also a person who straddled two worlds.  He spoke both Yiddish and English, came as a young man from the “old country”, dressed elegantly, read Spinoza and though he attended synagogue, worked on the Sabbath. But I knew so little about him — about where he had lived before coming to America, if he had parents or siblings that perished, or how he became a tailor. These were things never spoken about.

Art evokes many associations and feelings. Pen’s strength as an artist is that he has poignantly communicated the complexity and dignity of an ordinary person through a painting with the capacity to capture one’s imagination and heart.

I worked in and with museums my whole career including directing The Jewish Museum for 30 years.

by Joan Rosenbaum

After a long subway ride, I find a seat on the cross-town bus, and settle into my book. Seated near the front, it’s hard to avoid the drama of transit. At 4:30 pm, leaving Lexington Avenue, the bus is already crowded. There’s a just-out-of-school cheerfulness with boisterous high school boys in back and chatty younger kids with a parent or caregiver in the middle. At Madison Avenue the ramp is let down and two seniors, one with a shopping cart and another with a walker create a barely passable obstacle course for people boarding behind who maneuver toward a seat, pole or strap, while murmuring about the need to fold up carriages and walkers and the misery of the MTA.

Lumbering toward Fifth Avenue, the bus is now uncomfortably stuffed, and the mood has declined.  Close to 5:00 pm, the door opens for a dozen or so waiting passengers who squeeze their way through the crush of human and material impediments. The door finally closes but a few seconds before the light turns green, opens again to take on a young woman who roughly yanks on board a young boy by his arm.  She wedges a space close to my seat where I observe the two—the dark long-lashed eyes of the beautiful, tired looking boy and the stressed look of the disheveled woman who is no more than a teenager—a girl. I contemplate her stretched leggings and tattered jacket and imagine her difficult life.   Is she the boy’s sister? A mother with a son too much to handle for her young life—unable to see this adorable child as anything but a burden?

The bus lurches while inching toward the transverse portal, and everyone is jostled against each other. Groans from the standees and whoops from the boys in the back break the quiet. The girl, barely balancing a backpack, purse and phone, is no longer holding on to the boy, who loses his footing, grabs for the woman’s thighs and, buries his head in her stomach.  Infuriated, she pushes him away and shouts. “Stand up! What do you think you’re doing? You’re going to embarrass me?”  He starts to cry.  I want to reach out and embrace the dark-eyed boy, help him balance, protect him from his unhappy, exhausted caretaker. The surrounding passengers are impassive, with a bare shred of tolerance for the crush of bodies, yet the drama is unavoidable.  An elderly man gives his seat to the boy, but he’s now bawling. The girl slaps the boy’s shoulder and explodes, “What the fuck? Stop! “ Dead silence among the passengers some of whom eye each other with raised eyebrows and shaking heads.  The girl gives the boy her cell phone, and the crying turns to whimpers.

There’s relief at Central Park West as the bus disgorges about a third of the passengers.  We’ve arrived at what feels like the promised land of the West Side with the sun now setting ahead of us. With fewer standees, there’s a loosening of limbs and tension, and the boy has quieted down.  By Amsterdam Avenue, the bus is now nearly empty. The girl and boy get out. I’m behind them and watch as she holds his hand as they silently walk up the avenue.

Joan Rosenbaum:  Worked in and with museums whole professional life. Retired for the last six years.  I’ve been a long-time member of LP², previous known as IRP.  Taking Charles Troob’s writing class for the two semesters over the last year has gotten me engaged in writing for the first time.