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Let's start this story at the beginning. The man who later became known to the art world as Mane-Katz was born Mane Leyzerovich Kats in the Ukrainian town of Kremenchuk in 1894. His family was Orthodox, and his father - a synagogue sexton - expected him to attend yeshiva and become a rabbi. Instead, at the age of 19, Mane-Katz went to Paris to study art. There he met and became friends with Pablo Picasso, worked with several important artists of the period, and ultimately became a key figure in the group known as the Ecole de Paris. This predominantly Jewish group of painters consisted of such figures as Marc Chagall, Chaim Soutine, Amedeo Modigliani and Jules Pascin, among others. Mane-Katz built his reputation as an Expressionist, whose paintings became increasingly more vibrant and colorful as his career progressed. And, like Chagall, he became known for his depictions of East European Jewish life, with paintings of hassidic rabbis, beggars, Jewish wedding musicians, yeshiva students, and scenes of life in the shtetl. One of his paintings, At the Wailing Wall, was awarded a gold medal at the 1937 Paris World's Fair.
Mane-Katz made his first visit to Mandate Palestine in 1928, and thereafter visited every year. He liked to say that his real home was Paris, but his spiritual home was Eretz Yisrael. He spent much of his last years in Israel, especially in Haifa. By that time, Mane-Katz had become a world-renowned artist, whose paintings had been shown in some of the most important museums and prestigious art galleries throughout the world. In 1958, four years before his death, he decided to donate a large group of his artworks to the city of Haifa, as well as his extensive collection of Jewish ritual objects from Eastern Europe. The mayor of Haifa gave him a picturesque old dwelling on Mount Carmel to house the artworks and the collection, which today is the Mane-Katz Museum.
The museum, hugging the mountainside along scenic Yefeh Nof Street, boasts not only the largest number of Mane-Katz artworks in the world, but also a spectacular view from its rear outdoor patio. As we sit on that patio with Mane-Katz Museum curator Svetlana Reingold, sipping Turkish coffee and enjoying the late summer...