Yosl Bergner

Yosl Bergner (1920 – 2017), also known as Josl, was an Israeli painter. He was born in Vienna, Austria, grew up in Warsaw, Poland, lived in Melbourne, Australia from 1937 until 1948, when he moved to Israel. Bergner designed scenery and costumes for the Yiddish and Hebrew theatres, particularly for the plays of Nissim Aloni, and has illustrated many books. The acme of Bergner's paintings is his allegorical works; he uses kitchen tools such as squashed pots, oil lamps, wrecks and cracked jugs and he anthropomorphizes them. These old instruments symbolize distorted and poor world of wars, secrets and darkness.

Ambassador Yosef Shagal, Israel Maimon, Chaim Chesler, Gilad Sharon

Gilad Sharon and Chaim Chesler at the conference

Gilad's Sharon's session at Limmud FSU Belarus 2014 conference

Chaim Chesler and Gilad Sharon at Limmud FSU Belarus

Gilad Sharon speaks about his father at the conference

Gilad Sharon, with his father in the background

Celebrating Bergner's 95 birthday

The late Israel Prize laureate and celebrated painter Yosl Bergner celebrated 95 in 2015, and one of the events was a special meeting in his Tel Aviv studio with the President of the Zionist Federation of Australia Dr. Danny Lamm and Chaim Chesler, founder of Limmud FSU.

The reason for the special visit: announcing a new exhibition presenting some of Bergner's best work that will be held at the upcoming Limmud FSU conference in Sydney, Australia. Bergner's father, the Yiddish poet Melech Ravitch, was the initiator of the legendary Kimberley Plan, whose purpose was the creation of the Jewish state in Australia. Despite gained momentum and even a broad support from Albert Einstein, as a result of the Holocaust and the establishment of the state of Israel the plan was eventually abandoned. And yet, Bergner's family settled in 1930's in Australia, before the Aliyah in the 1950s.

During the meeting, Bergner told the guests that not everything went smoothly in Australia after leaving Poland. "They told me I was an intruder, a stranger," he said. "The newspapers wrote about me as a Polish Jew who comes to Australia and dare to paint its landscapes, the Aborigines, and the shepherds."

However, there were also some Australians who supported the idea of Jewish state in their country. "One Irish born intellectual used to say to me again and again, 'the Jews need a place where to put their weary heads," Bergner recalled.

"I always knew that my father saved us," he continued. "His hope to establish a Jewish state in Western Australia stemmed primarily because of the location: far away from civilisation and anti-Semitic incidents, that gradually gained momentum - very similar to what is happening in Europe nowadays."

In March 2015, Limmud FSU Australia opened indeed the exhibit of paintings by Bergner, “A Land for the Jews.” The event was attended by more than 400 participants.