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AM1SHAI-MAISELS / STEINHARDT AND BIALIK
145
Fig.4.
Winter in Lithuania,
1915, etching.
BIALIK’S INFLUENCE
This drawing — Steinhardt’s first illustration for a modern Jew
ish writer and one of his rare non-commissioned illustrations —
raises a basic question. Although Steinhardt had studied Hebrew
in the cheder, he never had a complete mastery of the language.
Why then did he turn to Bialik for inspiration for a subject on
which he had already worked? To understand his motivation,
one must take into account his experiences in Lithuania, espe
cially as he recounted them in his war diaries and autobiograph
ical sketches of 1936-37 and 1947.
Steinhardt regarded this period, in which he consciously re
turned to his Jewish roots, as a turning point in his life. He not
only concentrated on portraying the Jewish life around him — a
subject he had previously used sporadically — but fully identified
with it to the point o f stating: “It was my firm intention to stay
here in this Jewish village. I was so involved in this small town life
that at the time there was simply nothing else for me.”14 Em
ployed by the army as a photographer of war graves, he had
plenty o f time to integrate into the lives o f the Jewish shtetls in
which he was stationed. He not only enjoyed sitting in the Beth
Midrash, but in Darbenai in late 1915-early 1916, he befriended
a Zionist named Kahn with whom he began studying Hebrew,
14 Minni Steinhardt, p. 44, quoting from Steinhardt’s war diary.