Rabbi with Torah

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Resurrecting a Family Heirloom (Part 2)

Recap from Part 1

I discovered that a long‑cherished family art piece—an old, faded print my mother displayed for decades—is actually a reproduction of Marc Chagall’s “Rabbi with Torah,” a connection deeply tied to her family’s Jewish and Ukrainian heritage. This revelation sparks a quest to restore or replace the artwork, culminating in an unexpected twist when an eagerly purchased replacement is abruptly refunded.

Part 2

I immediately emailed the eBay seller as to why I received a refund after my purchase was confirmed just minutes earlier.  He replied, “I pressed the wrong button. The correct is I’m refunding you.”

You mean this work had already been sold?

“Just to be clear—I am not getting this painting?  It meant so much to me.”

Seller: “I do have quite a few Chagall works so let me show you if you’re interested.”

Wow.  I was beside myself with a mixture of confusion, anger and despair.

Was this an honest mistake by the seller, or a calculated ploy to sell other items he had?

I was so distraught over this news I couldn’t think straight.  My wife encouraged me to just reframe the original and display it. 

But I couldn’t help myself.  I was determined to keep hunting.

By 11:30 a.m., I found one on Etsy.  However, the photo of the item looked digitized and fake. I asked the seller if he would upload actual photos and he did.  Unlike the one I had originally purchased on eBay, this one had visible folds and other imperfections, plus was more expensive than the other.   I hesitated to buy it.

All day Sunday and into Monday I kept checking for any more available copies.  I found an excellent reproduction from an eBay seller who had a physical art store.  As I was on the page, a notification popped up on my screen that this item was in another potential buyer’s shopping cart. 

I panicked.  I had to act fast.  I didn’t want to lose another chance.  I frantically pressed the BUY IT NOW button. 

On Monday, Feb. 2 at 11:49 a.m. I got confirmation of my purchase.  Yes!  But after what happened to me on Saturday, I stifled my enthusiasm.  I had to make sure that the sale was for real this time.

At 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday, I received an email directly from Mark, who works for Meibohm Fine Arts in East Aurora, New York.  Celebrating their 125th anniversary, the granddaughter of the founder runs the family business.  He thanked me for the purchase.  Whew!

He shared with me that “most of the New/Old Stock items in our archive have not seen the light of day in over 75+ years, a rarity indeed, and that this vintage mid-century lithograph has never been framed.”

Mark would mail the litho via UPS later that day, with an expected delivery on the following Monday.  However, this was occurring during the intense cold storm that pummeled much of the country with snow and ice so I had to keep watch over the progress of its movement to notice if there were any delays.

Anxiety came over me as the week wore on without any progress on the UPS tracking website.  I checked it on Wed., Thur., Fri., and Sat., but the needle hadn’t moved from the “dropped off” status.  Steps still to come: “on the way,” “out for delivery” and “delivered.”  

Mark kept checking on it as well, even on his days off.  I wouldn’t be able to contact UPS until Monday so I had to sweat it out that the item was not lost.

In the middle of Sunday, I received a notification from UPS that the lithograph was arriving on Monday after all.  However, the status had not changed.  Which one was correct?

On Monday morning, movement finally occurred on the UPS tracking tool.

9:56 a.m. “on the way”

10:53 am. “out for delivery”

With an expected delivery by 9:00 p.m., that gave me 10 more hours to wait; throughout the day, Mark and I exchanged emails.  Now that’s remarkable customer service!

Sure enough, at 6:11 p.m., “ding-dong.” 

I opened the door to see the UPS man holding on to a long-tubed package.  Finally—relief.  As I signed for it, I gave the driver a 30-second recap of the whole story.

I had my wife videotape me as I opened the tube and gently pulled out the rolled-up lithograph.  Marc did a meticulous job of wrapping it with arrows marked on the tiny pieces of tape guiding me on the correct direction to pull the tape.

When I removed the print out of its protective bubble wrap and unfolded it, I was quite impressed by the pristine condition of something that was manufactured several decades ago.  In the at the bottom in the white margin surrounding the poster was information about it, including the following:

Marc Chagall (1887-    ). 

In other words, when these lithographs were produced by the New York Graphic Society in the 1950’s and 1960’s, Chagall was still alive (he died in 1985).

And there it was, side-by-side with my Mom’s version.  Quite a difference.  If I had any doubt about buying a newer one, it vanished:  this beautiful lithograph was the proper decision. 

With this enhanced reproduction, the details of the work can more clearly be seen.

In the foreground is the rabbi wearing traditional dress appropriate for praying.  He holds a Torah scroll, the most important text in the Jewish religion.  A snow-covered scene of a Russian village emerges in the background (condensed from the Stedelijk Museum’s website).

In the upper left of the painting, there is a pig and a lamppost; in the upper right, there is a horsedrawn sled with an occupant or two.  Behind that are a few straw-roof houses that complete the depiction of a shtetl.

The work symbolizes that Judaism survives even in a bleak world.  And unlike Mom’s poster, Chagall’s signature is clearly visible in the bottom right corner.

Dad sitting in his recliner he got for Father’s Day and Mom showing off roses she got for their wedding anniversary with the Chagall painting on the wall (left); the new lithograph framed and hung in our dining room (right).

It took two weeks and now it is on display in our dining room.  The rabbi is looking to his left where the opening is to our living room, welcoming visitors who walk through the portal.

My mother would have been impressed to see the full beauty of the work that captured her eye so many decades ago, now protected for generations with museum-quality UV-resistant glass and frame, a fitting, living tribute to her and my maternal grandparents who I never knew.

It makes one think of the serendipity of this adventure.

If not for having watched that “CBS Sunday Morning” show, none of this would have happened.

If not for that eBay seller canceling my purchase, I would not have ended up with a high-quality lithograph from a high-class business as Meibohm Fine Arts.

I wish I could share with Mom everything I’ve learned—but maybe, just maybe, she already knows.

Leave a comment Posted on CBS Sunday Morning, Marc Chagall, Rabbi with Torah

Resurrecting a Family Heirloom (Part 1)

As I went through my Sunday morning routine of making coffee and turning on the “CBS Sunday Morning” show, I watched a segment about people who rescued Jews during Nazi Germany.  Varian Fry was one of those people, an American journalist working for the Emergency Rescue Committee that helped refugees escape from France during 1940–1941, including some artists such as Marc Chagall.  On the screen flashed a montage of his art, and suddenly one caught my eye—a painting of a rabbi.  It seemed so familiar.

Four days later over lunch with my sister, as is our practice, we each took out little pieces of paper with topics to talk about since our last get together.  The first item on her list was the “CBS Sunday Morning” Chagall piece.

“Did you see that painting of a rabbi?” she asked me.  Suddenly, I knew instantly why that piece stuck with me.  “That’s like the painting Mom had hanging on the wall all those years.”  While not the same painting, it was similar in its subject matter.

When I returned home, I took a photo of Mom’s painting, researched the image, and, bingo, discovered that it was by Marc Chagall!  Titled “Rabbi with Torah” or “Rabbi met wetsrol,” the original is in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

Two similar Marc Chagall paintings: “The Praying Jew” (left), “Rabbi with Torah” (right), my mother’s original print.

The painting Mom most admired, that she took with her from rental house to rental house, prominently displayed on a living room wall, turned out to be a famous work by a giant in the 20th century art world. I’m certain Mom never knew any of this; otherwise, she would have enjoyed regaling us with such joyous information.

Her eyes must have fixated on the Jewish-ness of the painting, a symbol of her heritage.  None of us three kids remember our house without it.

My guess is she spotted this framed poster in a furniture store which back in the day would have inexpensive art for sale. 

Another aspect of the painting which she didn’t realize was that the background depicted an aspect of her family history:  a scene from a shtetl, a small village common in Ukraine in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Like Chagall, her parents were born in Ukraine’s shtetls.  That connection would have meant so much to her.

Behind the rabbi figure, off in the distance, the ground is draped in snow, with a pig, a lamppost on the left, an adult and child on a sled pulled by a horse on the right, with a handful of small buildings on either side.  

Oddly, we never bothered to talk to Mom about this piece, its presence so constant like a light fixture, there all the time but not thought about.

When Mom passed away 20 years ago, it was one of a few items that I took.  Since the frame is dingy and the print faded and chipped (it never had glass), I didn’t consider displaying it in our house; instead, I secured it in the hall closet, with hanging jackets keeping it from tipping over.

Now, however, I had an urge to display it, most likely in our dining room where we had an empty wall as well as a special original charcoal drawing that was given to my wife’s great grandmother, who then gave it to her.  What better place to hang my mother’s dearest picture, further establishing the dining room as a place for family history.

I brought the artwork to a professional framer who had done quality work for me in the past to see if there was any way to bring it back to life.  The first question he asked upon laying eyes on it was, “Did either of your parents smoke?”  The answer was “yes.”  That was the main reason for the erosion of color in the print.  Not having glass to protect it was a contributing factor.  Using a Q-tip dipped with a solution of distilled water and Dawn dishwashing soap, he carefully touched a small portion of the poster.  While it lightened the work a bit, it wouldn’t be sufficient for it to look presentable. 

I made up my mind that if I hung my mother’s original, I had to get a new frame for it.  Of course, there was another option—locate a better print.

With the excitement of this family treasure consuming me, I quickly set out to find a higher quality version online.

While price was a factor, my number one priority was finding a copy of “Rabbi with Torah” that looked as closely to the original painting.  Of the half a dozen copies available, a few were poor reproductions; one was in worse condition than mine.

I settled on an eBay seller.  The price and condition were fair plus it was already framed.

On Friday, Jan. 30, at 2:00 p.m. I bought it. I was so thrilled; I couldn’t stop thinking of how it would look on my dining room wall, and how I would surprise my sister and brother when they’d come over to see it.

The next morning, I received the following emails from eBay:

10:12 a.m. – “The seller marked your order as shipped!”

10:41 a.m. – “Your refund is on its way!”

Wait, what?!  What did this mean, “refund”?

[To be continued.]