expressionist painters commonly given credit for founding the movement. 90.3pappas 7/10/03, 8:59 AM 230 A. Pappas: The Picture at Menorah Journal 231 Journal circle. The sculptures of Zadkine and Archipenko, Mourning and Moses Pleads with God, represent the extent to which magazine was willing to entertain abstract tendencies in the name of “Jewish” art. These figurative sculptures are abstracted in that the forms are blocky and lack the embellishment of detail. Yet the works remain strongly figurative and therefore narrative; their subject matter rescues them from possible non-Jewish readings. Archipenko’s sculpture represents Moses, complete with the tablets of the law, and Zadkine’s sculpture depicts a female figure leafing through a book held on her lap. The presence of the book in conjunction with the title, Mourning, suggests the comfort that religious texts may offer in times of grief. Zadkine’s work appeared as the frontispiece in the Summer 1943 issue, which also carried an “Homage to the Christian Poles and the Maccabean Jews of Warsaw” on the pages immediately preceding Zadkine’s sculpture.45 This positioning cast Mourning as explicitly referring to the dead heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, rather than as a generic allegorical figure. Artists whose work more closely approached abstraction, such as Adolph Gottlieb (later to garner fame as an abstract expressionist), at times received mention in print, but did not rate inclusion in the reproductions.46 The problem with abstraction lay in the need to have art within the magazine function as a carrier for Jewishness. Subject matter frequently took care of this, as we have seen. When the subject matter was secular, the imagery could be framed as Jewish by the way it was positioned relative to other works reproduced in the magazine. Abstract art could not be treated in the same way because, unlike secular images, say of Jewish neighborhoods, the viewers did not have a readily available way to insert themselves into the image. Simply put, abstract art could not support a visual narrative of Jewishness of any kind in America. Scholarly opinion at the time also subscribed to this view of “Jewish” art as essentially figurative. Rachel Wischnitzer-Bernstein voiced this directly in her 1944 essay, “Reflections on Jewish Art,” published in Jewish Review.47 Wischnitzer-Bernstein was a prominent scholar who focused on the cultural production of Jews; among other accomplishments, she was a pioneer in several projects aimed at producing a history of Jewish art. As an expert familiar with a wide range of Jewish cultural production, she spoke with authority. After praising the variety of art 45. Zadkine’s work appears in Menorah Journal 31 (1943). Archipenko’s work appeared on the cover of the Winter 1943 issue. 46. William Schack, “A Live Year of Art,” Menorah Journal 29 (1941): 185. 47. Rachel Wischnitzer-Bernstein, “Reflections on Jewish Art,” Jewish Review 2