Art exhibition based on Maitland’s Jewish cemetery
Tel Aviv-born artist Hanna Kay is creating an art exhibition based on the lives of 44 Jews buried in Maitland’s Jewish cemetery.
Maitland Synagogue
The artist, who lives in the Hunter Valley village of Blandford near Murrurundi, is creating a series of 25 paintings based on the migration of the men, women and children buried in the cemetery inthe 1800s.
She told media that she did not want to deal with morbid subjects such as the Holocaust but wanted to do “something different’. Asked to create the works by Maitland Regional Art Gallery director Joe Eisenberg, Kay showed initial reluctance as it did not initially suit her style…but she was hooked when she visited the cemetery and the Jewish symbolism on the stones.
The two other country Jewish cemeteries are in Tamworth and Goulburn. There is no longer a Jewish community in Maitland and the synagogue is today offices.
The exhibition opens at Maitland’s Regional Art Gallery in June.
My Great Grandfather , Rev Solomon Levi was the Minister of the Maitland Synagogue until it closed in 1898. He would have conducted most of the funerals in the Cemetary.
I am in the process of researching and writing his biography.
He was a kind, devoted Minister who loved God and cared for the poor.