Obj. ID: 34909
Modern Jewish Art Illustration for Ch. N. Bialik's poem "Seer, Run Away!" (Choze, Lech Brach !), 1923
The following description was written by the researcher Alec Mishory.
Budko's illustration for Seer, Run Away! shows a man dressed in a long caftan, a sash on his waist, wearing large shoes. In his right hand he signals "slowly"! or "wait"!. In his left he holds a staff, an object that generally serves as an attribute of a wanderer, setting out on his journey. He turns his head backwards, in an opposite direction of his walk, probably because something has spurred his attention. At the extreme upper corner, on the left, appears an abstract shape.
Bialik had a few reservations about this illustration: "… I imagined a mature man, with black curls, and not necessarily an old man. His gesture, turning to go with his staff in his hand and the sash he wears are very good. It seems to me that his facial features are not oriental enough, too much a face of a gentile". His claim that the image of the prophet did not look 'Jewish enough stems from a 19th century Romantic concept that regarded the physiognomy of contemporary Oriental (Sephardic) Jews as a modern embodiment of the original, ancient physiognomy of Jews who lived in Biblical times.
Budko, as far as one can tell from his small sized illustration, did not adhere to this notion. He followed an iconographic tradition that depicts the image of a 'prophet' as a proud, robust man in the prime of his life. The first verse in Bialik's poem - "Run away? - a man like me shall not run away!" impressed him immensely and became one of his repeated motifs in his artistic work (see Jospeh Budko's illustration for "A man like me shall not run away!" (Lo Yivrach Ish Kamoni!).