Chapter Four
Judaica
Antique Judaica
My father, a refugee from Slovakia, enjoyed collecting Judaica from his homeland. He returned to Slovakia several times and was able to find silver pieces used in the synagogues of his hometown, and also other nearby towns. Over the years, when my parents travelled, they always searched for more interesting pieces of Judaica.
My father was also the head of the local Jewish burial committee, and as such, he loved collecting antique pieces related to Jewish burial committees (chevre kadisha), especially from Eastern European communities from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. At one point, he was in Israel and entered an antique store across from the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. There he found a beautiful, ornate antique silver Burial Committee charity box, engraved with the Hebrew expression that is often found on such charity boxes, “Charity averts death” and the Hebrew year 5693 which corresponds to the Gregorian year 1932. He bought the piece. Over the decades, he and my mother bought many fine pieces, but they also ended up with some fakes. Following are some examples of those.
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Modern Judaica
As an art dealer, I am regularly approached by members of my synagogue to sell their art for them. Usually, the conversation includes a line such as “My parents left me this very valuable painting and told me that some day I will be able to sell it and use the proceeds to pay for my children’s college educations.”
Unfortunately, these interactions virtually always end the same way, namely, with me examining the artwork and finding out that it is by one of a cadre of painters who paint Jewish themes and whose works have virtually no market value and almost always never will have. A few of the artists of that ilk that have come across my desk of late are David Azuz, Tzvi Ben-Aretz, Charles Bragg, Amram Egbi, Oz El-Hai, Ida Galili, Moshe Gat, David Gilboa, Chaim Goldberg, Ari Gradus, Shmuel Katz, Mark Kazav, Dorit Levi, Benjamin Levy, Sandu Liberman, Zvi Livni, Batia Magal, Isaac Maimon, Moshe Matusovski, Barry Oretsky, Israel Paldi, David Sharir, Calman Shemi, Viktor Shvaiko, Raya Sorkine, Zamy Steynovitz, Itzchak Tarkay and Sami Zilkha. There is nothing fake or fraudulent about their works; they just have no resale value, and will not in the future.
There are plenty of ways to make money investing in artworks while being able to enjoy them over the years as well, but these pieces mentioned above do not fit into that category. If you get nothing else out of reading this book, please take note that if someone offers you one of these, run.
Of course, that is not to say that all art portraying Jewish themes is of no value. There are many artists whose works have been great investments, for example, original oil paintings — but not prints — by Reuven Rubin, Isidor Kaufmann and Mane Katz. The key is to know which category is which, before you bring out your checkbook!
It is interesting to go to eBay and type in the words Isidor Kaufmann. You will find dozens of offerings of original paintings for a few hundred dollars each. A careful reading of the posting will yield the information that these are hand-painted reproductions from China — made to order! Nowhere on the postings does it actually say that they are not by Isidor Kauffman (although the fact that he died in 1921 could be a hint). By the way, the most recent sale at auction of an actual Isidor Kauffman painting was at Sotheby’s in December 2020 and went for $409,500.