My Models Were Jews. A Painter’s Pilgrimage to Many Lands. A Selection of One Hundred and Seventy-Eight Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Etchings. [SIGNED]

Reiss, Lionel S. (illust.); Franz Boas; Dr Cecil Roth; Dr. John Haynes Holmes (Introductions). My Models Were Jews. A Painter’s Pilgrimage to Many Lands. A Selection of One Hundred and Seventy-Eight Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Etchings. [SIGNED]. New York: The Gordon Press, 1938. Limited first edition. 1/1200 (out of series). Folio. 143, [1]pp. Original cloth with blue-stamped lettering and illustration on front cover, and blue lettering on spine. Inside of front cover signed by Mordecai I. Soloff, and dated May 1939. Color frontispiece. Title-page in red and black lettering. Fascinating work being a graphic history of the Jew. Book in 3 sections: Part One: Is There a Jewish Type? (Introduction by Prof. Franz Boas); Part Two: Life in the Ghettos (Introduction by Dr. Cecil Roth); Part Three: A Voyage to Palestine (Introduction by Dr. John Haynes Holmes). Frontis in color (water-color, “Jewish Quarter, Jerusalem). Remaining images (over 175) printed one color in either black or rust brown (drawings, paintings, etchings, water-colors, wash drawings, pen drawings). Some age-toning along edges of binding. Head and tail of spine rubbed. Very minor age-toning along paper margin. Binding in overall good, interior in very good condition. g. Hardcover.

About Mordecai I. Soloff: Mordecai Soloff was born in Russia July 2, 1901. In 1910 his parents and family moved to the United States. In 1920 he received a diploma from the Jewish Theological Seminary’s Teacher’s Institute. He taught Hebrew for three years before becoming principal of Chazuk Amuno in 1923-1937. In 1923 he received his BS from City College in New York and then received his MA from Teacher’s College of Columbia in 1927. He was active with the Jewish Board of Education in various countries from the mid 1920s through the late 1930s. In 1940 he was ordained as a rabbi at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati and also received his MHL. Soloff served in several congregations in New York and California and late in life was a guest rabbi in Australia in 1983-1984. He spent much of his rabbinic career at Temple Israel of Westchester in Los Angeles, California. During his many years of service and study he prepared a series of textbooks in the field of Jewish history published by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and widely used throughout the country in Reform, Conservative and Orthodox religious schools. He is also the author of Jewish Life and Our Prayerbook for the teaching of Hebrew combined with customs and ceremonies. He has written many articles published in journals and the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia. Soloff also wrote How the Jewish People Live and How the Jewish People Grew Up. Soloff married Eve Miller in 1924 and had two children, Rav Soloff who later became a rabbi and Tamar Soloff Brower. Soloff died in September of 1992. (25548) $65