SCHATZ, BORIS. Yerushalayim ha-Benuyah: Chalom be-Hakitz ["The Rebuit Jerusalem: A Daydream"]

(BEZALEL).

n.p.

Jerusalem

1924

FIRST EDITION. Additional title, featuring Schatz on Jerusalem rooftop beckoned to by the prophet of the future

“Boris Schatz's exile on the shores of the Sea of Galilee during World War I, was a time of fruitful contemplation and writing. He composed this fictional story, set in Palestine one hundred years in the future, which offered a sublime alternative to the miserable reality of strife and struggle that had engulfed him in recent years. His utopian novella, was a programmatic manifesto written acording to the conventions of the then popular literary genre of the futuristic novel. The story opened with the Biblical artisan Bezalel ben Uri miraculously appearing at the Bezalel School one day in the midst of the war and inviting Schatz on a tour of Palestine in the year 2018 (see p. 108). This device allowed the author to present a detailed description of Bezalel and the Land of Israel of the future” (Boris Schatz: The Father of Israeli Art [Israel Museum Catalogue, 2006], p. 27)