The Rabbi

Simeon Solomon's fascination with faith and the the aesthetic qualities of religious ritual often produced work featuring young men in idealised roles as rabbis, priest or acolytes rapt in mystical contemplation. His young Rabbi is shown in synagogue with the ner tamid (everlasting light) behind him, holding a lulav (palm leaf), one of the four species (arbah minim) usually bound together, indicating that this is the festival of Succot. Although the three other plants used in the Succot ritual are missing from the picture, Solomon had probably not witnessed the celebrations since childhood. Nevertheless, his Jewish subject paintings have been called 'among the best of what is commonly called Jewish art, notwithstanding the fact that the artist, early in life, had become converted from nominal Jewish orthodoxy to a fervent Catholicism'. In 1920 both The Rabbi and Thou Shalt Not Tempt (1894), another charcoal drawing in the Ben Uri Collection, were reproduced in Renesans ('Renaissance'), the short-lived Yiddish journal, which ran for six issues under the editorship of Leo Kenig drawing on a cohort of writers and artists closely associated with Ben Uri.