The People's Painter Flashcards
His name Gittel’s hands molding sturdy plates from slippery clay
The People’s Painter
Then - he couldn’t stop himself - he sketched in the margins!
The People’s Painter
But paper was a luxury in the shtetl, and there was none to spare
The People’s Painter
That’s not right!
The People’s Painter
After a classmate pulled a prank, the teacher kept everyone indoors, demanding the culprits’s name
The People’s Painter
I’m not going to tell who did it
The People’s Painter
Refusing to tattle, he walked out.
The People’s Painter
He was only four when Czar Nicholas II’s soldiers hurled rocks through his window and dragged his father away.
The People’s Painter
Just because Tate had been demanding fair pay for working people, he was banished to frigid, far-off Siberia
The People’s Painter
But, feeling his father’s boldness inside himself, he marched up to the sentry at the end of the street and shouted, “Down with the Czar!”
The People’s Painter
He wrote to Gittel: Come.
The People’s Painter
But Zayde could not leave the shtetl, the only home he knew.
The People’s Painter
He wailed.
The People’s Painter
America bewildered the new immigrant
The People’s Painter
Trains overhead and underground
The People’s Painter
A cramped two-room tenement apartment for the whole family.
The People’s Painter
A chair that rocked and nearly dumped him over backwards - not at all like Tate’s.
The People’s Painter
Tomatoes - ick!
The People’s Painter
All different from Hebrew.
The People’s Painter
Even worse, bullies tormented him about his clothes and accent, and they called him names just because he was Jewish.
The People’s Painter
Sometimes, though, they’d pause if he chalked their portraits on the sidewalk
The People’s Painter
See his craving to draw, a teacher gave him watercolors.
The People’s Painter
Another paid him to pen calligraphy - elegantly curving letters, all in English.
The People’s Painter
TEACH THY TONGUE TO SAY I DO NOT KNOW AND THOU SHALT…
The People’s Painter
