TEMIMA GEZARI'S LIFE

Temima Gezari came to the United States as a nine month old baby. She was born Fruma Nimtzowitz on December 21, 1905 in Pinsk, Russia. She grew up in Brownsville, Brooklyn with her parents, sister Etta and brother Ruby. The family lived in the back room of her father’s hardware store on Pitkin Avenue. When things got better they moved to an apartment above the store, which was heated by a coal stove in the kitchen.

Her mother Bella (Nee Cohen) was a gentle, traditional and observant woman who loved things of beauty. She appreciated Temima’s art but gave the practical problems of life higher priority, and never understood the importance of it until she saw Temima’s synagogue mural in 1935.

Her father Yisroel was a serious and philosophical man who became progressively more disillusioned over the condition of the world. He worked hard, and often found comfort with his friends at the Labor Lyceum. He was not a religious man, yet he placed great importance on culture and tradition.

Her father recognized her artistic talent as a very young child and actively encouraged it. At the age of seven he took her into Manhattan to the Education Alliance with the hope of enrolling her in art classes. He told her he would take her to school every day from Brooklyn by train, a personal gesture which had a powerful effect on little Temima, her first realization that her art was being taken seriously. As it turned out there were no art classes for children, so her father invested in the art supplies and piano lessons for her instead.

Temima graduated from Brooklyn Girls High School in 1921 and the Teacher’s Institute of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 1925. Her first art teacher was Bulah Stevenson, an inspiring woman who had a great influence on Temima’s early development as an artist. She went on to study art at the Parsons New York School of Fine and Applied Arts with Emil Bisttram and Howard Giles (1923-1927), the Educational Alliance in New York with Raphael Soyer (1926), and the Art Students League in New York. She painted with Diego Rivera on his murals at Rockefeller Center (1933). She also studied at Columbia University, the New School for Social Research, and Hunter College.

Professor Mordecai Kaplan was person who had a great influence on her professional life. In 1935, as Dean of the Teachers Institute of the Jewish Theological Seminary, he appointed her to the faculty, where she taught art education and art history for forty-two years.

In 1940, Dr. Alexander Dushkin, director of the newly formed Jewish Education Committee (now the Board of Jewish Education og Greater New York) asked Temima to be the Director of the Department of Art Education. She worked there for 65 years, retiring at age 95. She taught art history and art education at Columbia University and at the Jewish Theological Seminary of New York, and received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary at the age of 85 for her lifetime work in art education.

Temima’s book, Footprints and New Worlds (1957), in its fourth edition, deals with her philosophy of education and child development through her experiences in art with children and adults.

Temima Gezari was an uncompromising humanist and staunch advocate for human creativity. She discovered, and actively promoted, a new approach to the development of children’s full human potential—to recognize their great innate creativity and encourage them to express and develop it through their original art. She has dedicated her life to helping others find this creative self, while exploring the dimensions of her own spirit. Temima worked actively for 95 years as artist and professional educator with skill and energy. She brought an opportunity to recognize in her art, and in ourselves, the creative capacity of the human being.

Temima met Zvi on the Kibbutz Mishmar Haemek transport bus when she arrived in Haifa, Palestine to paint as artist-in-residence in 1936. The bus was full, so the driver invited her to sit on a gas can next to him. She thought this would be great fun, to be able to talk to the driver and see the sights. Just as she sat down, a very handsome young man called from the back to offer her his seat. She declined, but he persisted. Zvi rode on the gas can, chatting with the driver, while Temima simmered with anger in his seat. She swore she would never have anything to do with that fresh guy again. They were married in Tel Aviv in 1938 and moved back to New York, where their sons Daniel and Walter were born in 1942 and 1944.

Zvi was born in Poland in 1910 and went to Palestine in 1928 where he worked building new kibbutzim and studied. In 1958 he arrived in New York speaking only a few words of English. On his first day in New York he registered for engineering courses at Columbia University. By 1940 he spoke standard American English without any trace of an accent. He became an industrial engineer, and went on to develop and manage a large steel fabrication factory. Zvi is a very progressive man, deeply interested in history and science. In 1954 he built a telescope for Albert Einstein.

In the Spring of 1947, Temima and Zvi took the boys for a ride on Long Island, to the beach town of Rocky Point. With the last ten dollars in his pocket, Zvi gave a deposit to a farmer for a piece of apple orchard on a hill overlooking the sound. The house, studio and observatory he designed and built there, have been the creative and idealistic focal point of the family and local community ever since.