Menorahs of the Heart

[Editor's note: The following article was penned by Robert Gluck for JointMedia News Service.]

Maurice Sendak is best known for his children’s book, Where the Wild Things Are, but these days he is bringing menorahs to the masses.

An exhibition titled, “An Artist Remembers: Hanukkah Lamps Selected by Maurice Sendak,” featuring 33 menorahs of varied eras and styles, opened Dec. 2 at The Jewish Museum in New York City and is on display through Jan. 29, 2012.

Sendak, the renowned author/illustrator, selected the menorahs from The Jewish Museum’s existing—and extensive—collection. Born in Brooklyn to Polish Jewish immigrants, Sendak has described his childhood as a “terrible situation,” as much of his extended family died in the Holocaust, exposing him at an early age to death and the concept of mortality.

He said in an interview that the simplicity of the museum exhibition’s menorahs reminded him of the Holocaust.

“It is inappropriate for me to be thinking of elaboration,” Sendak told JointMedia News Service. “[The menorahs] are very beautiful. But this is not what instinctually I want to say about this kind of thing. So, I surprised myself, because there are some very beautiful ones. The beauty is contained in the fact that it’s a menorah, and that you never forget what its purpose is. So all the elaboration goes into what the purpose of the ornament is. It’s charming, and this is taking elaboration and making much beauty out of it.” 

According to Susan Braunstein, one of the organizers of the exhibition and curator of Archaeology and Judaica at The Jewish Museum, the highly personal selection of lamps—many never before exhibited—echoes the depth of emotion that defines Sendak’s work.

“For Maurice Sendak they are powerful repositories of memory, embodying stories that illuminate the past for new generations,” Braunstein told JointMedia News Service. “The lamps speak to us of their survival through time and of the people that once made or owned them.”

Braunstein said visitors will be able to understand the deep connections between the emotions they evoked in Sendak and his aesthetic choices, and selected visitor memories will periodically be posted on the museum’s website at www.thejewishmuseum.org.

After viewing Walt Disney’s film “Fantasia” in his early teens, Sendak (born in 1928) decided to become an illustrator and eventually drew up his first of 100 books, Peter and the Wolf. Sendak’s love of books was partially inspired by his development of health problems, confining him to his bed at an early age.

One of his Sendak’s first professional commissions was to create window displays for the F.A.O. Schwarz toy store. His illustrations were first published in 1947 in a textbook titled Atomics for the Millions, by Dr. Maxwell Leigh Eidinoff. He spent much of the 1950s working as an artist for children’s books before beginning to write his own stories. 

Over a 60-year career, Sendak has taken characters, stories, and inspirations from his neighbors, family, pop culture, historical sources, and long-held childhood memories—winning every important prize in children’s literature along the way.

Roger Sutton, editor of The Horn Book, said Sendak remains a great storyteller. 

“I’ve known Maurice for 30 years now, and while at eighty-three he is physically fragile, he is still the most vivid raconteur I have ever met,” Sutton told JointMedia News Service. “Nobody enacts scandalized outrage better. I don’t envy his biographer, though, as Maurice is completely capable of telling the same allegedly true story five different ways, all equally convincing.”

Read more at JointMedia News Service