The Meanings of Shabbat Shira

On the ever Shabbes before Tu B'Shvat, I always try to put some grains in the trees, for the birds to have after their return from the warm continents. This is done before the Shabbat Shira - the Shabbat of the song - stars, which happens this week. But there is more meaning to it than feeding the birds and here are some of them. 

Shabbat Shira is taking place when the Parsha Beshalah is read, with tells the story of Kriat Yam Suf, when Hashem splitted the Red Sea for the Jewish people. A song was sung by the people of Israel, epitomizing the strength given by Hashem to the Jews against their enemies, a song where Gd was praised out of pure joy. Miriam, Moshe's sister, danced and played the tambourines, as an expression of gratitude towards the victory given by Hashem to the Jews against the powerful armies of the Pharaoh. 

According to the Maharal of Prague, when the Red Sea split, fruits grew in the trees and children picked them to feed the birds, who sang and danced together with the Jews - Shirat HaYam. In the memory of their kiddush Hashem, it is customary to feed them the erev Shabbes before. This is a beautiful niggun inspired by the songs of birds on the hills around Jerusalem. 

Following some traditions, birds are fed wheat, and Chabad followers eat kasha on this Shabbes, as a symbol of the manna fed to the Jews by Hashem. 

Especially in the more liberal synagogues, it is customary to celebrate this Shabbat with music and dance, as a way to outline the importance of songs in the Jewish tradition, which comes in different colours and musical tones. 

Discovering a Forgotten Artist, Fritz Ascher

Villa Oppenheim in Berlin, which hosts besides a permanent art collection by local artists also a museum dedicated to the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf neighbourhood, offers until the 11 of March a retrospective of Fritz Ascher, a Jewish-born artist. Originally, the villa, which can be visited for free, belonged to the banker Alexander Mendelssohn and his wife, Marianne, but since 1911 was sold to the then town of Charlottenburg. 

Fritz Ascher, an artist whose value was recognized and supported by Max Liebermann, that survived the WWII into hiding, offers an impressive emotional display of styles and outburst of colours. Most of his works were lost during the bombings, many of the works presented being part of private collections. During the war, he concentrated solely on creating poetry, with his poems being reproduced on the wall near some of the paintings. 

Encouraged and recommended by Liebermann, he studied at the Königsberg/East Prussia Academy, his painting being a mix of influences from various styles, from Goya in his late Golem paintings or Munch - with whom he met in 1914 in Oslo, to the German expressionism of the Blaue Ritter or the Neue Secession of Liebermann. 

Ascher was born in a Jewish family, his father Hugo Ascher being a dentist that co-founder a dental technology company specialized in the development of artificial enamel. As the Mendelssohns, whose house hosts the exhibition of Asher, he decided in 1901 to baptize Fritz and his two younger sisters. Their mother, Minna Luise, born Schneider, stayed Jewish. Once the NSDAP came to power, the the troubles of Ascher started regardless of his assumed - or not - religion. The family villa in Zehlendorf was expropriated and since 1942 used as barracks. Fritz himself was banned from exercising his profession and was labeles as 'degenerate' and 'politically suspect'. He was twice arrested and brought to Sachsenhausen and Potsdam and saved from longer imprisonement by friends who intervened on his behalf. Warned in time that he was on a list of arrests, he was hid by Martha Graßmann who supported him throughout his life afterwards. After the end of the war, he slowly returned to painting, but he remained a recluse refusing many public teaching opportunities. He was burried in Wannsee cemetery in 1970, but the gravesite does not exist any more.