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Israel Hirschfeld, Israeli, born Russian Empire, Late 19th century. He died in 1957 Israel Hirschfeld was born at the end of the 19th century in the Russian Empire, in what is now the Ukraine. His parents, Shmarya and Brina, were ultra-Orthodox Jews. The family emigrated to Chicago following pogroms in their area, and around 1912 Hirscheld immigrated to the Land of Israel, following which he lived in a Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem outside the walls of the Old City. During World War I he was forced into hiding with his brother Tzvi, one of the founders of Moshav Nahalal, in the attic of their house, because of their American citizenship. From 1915–1917 he studied art at “Bezalel.” In 1917, like most of the Bezalel students, he joined the “Jewish Battalion.” On Boris Schatz’s recommendation he was sent to study lithography in Vienna around 1920, after which he was offered a teaching position at Bezalel. In the 1920s he was one of the founders of the Beit HaKerem neighborhood in Jerusalem, where he met his wife Adele (Lvovna) Yaroslavsky. In 1922 Hirschfeld was nominated to the governing board of the "Hebrew Artists Association." In 1929 he retrained as an accountant, and was later employed in at “Hachsharat Hayishuv,” British company ICI, and “Mishan,” all but abandoning his artistic work. Hirschfeld was killed in an automobile accident in 1957.

Education

1915–17 The Bezalel School of Art and Craft, Jerusalem
1921 Institute of Design, University of Applied Arts, Vienna
1928–29 Accounting, night school, HaHistadrut HaClalit [General Confederation of Labor] in the Land of Israel, Jerusalem