"Eliyahu HaNavi "– Meir Gur-Aryeh – Jerusalem, 1925

"Eliyahu HaNavi "– Meir Gur-Aryeh – Jerusalem, 1925
"Eliyahu HaNavi", stories for infants by Yechiel Heilperin, illustrated by M. Gur-Aryeh, Music [musical notes] by Yoel Engel. Fourth booklet in the series "stories-paintings for infants" edited by Yechiel Heilperin. Jerusalem: "Haginah",[1925].
[14] pp, 20X28cm. Good condition. Stains. Minor damages to margin of cover. Handwritten dedication.
"'Eliyahu HaNavi' is one of the most beautiful books ever published in Hebrew, expressing in a wonderful poem the Zionist dream: a boy in the Diaspora asks to go to Haifa by boat, where" Eliyahu HaNavi" will take him in a carriage of fire to the Carmel Cave where he will study the Torah in the company of angels. The peak of this dream is that the child will study the Torah in Eretz Israel… Gur-Aryeh, a student and teacher in 'Bezalel', drew a Yemenite boy. Many of the Yemenites who came to Eretz Israel in the early days of the 20th cent. worked as jewelers in 'Bezalel', and were considered the most authentic Jews representing the ideal of an oriental Jew as well as the ancient, biblical Jew while seen also as an utopian Jew…In the book 'Eiyahu HaNavi' the boy who just arrived on boat and sees the city of Haifa…sees the vision of Eliyahu in a carriage drawn by horses of fire. The carriage with its red horses resembles not only the fire but also the Russian tradition of the Troika [the carriage drawn by a team of three horses harnessed abreast]. Eliyahu whose face is pleasant and generous, with a white beard, dressed as an Arab…it is obvious that Heilperin was hoping to compose a folk-story for children which reflects the Jewish tradition – on the background of a legendary-biblical and at the same time modern Eretz Israel. The combination of oriental-Arab-Yemenite-Russian-European created most probably the new mix of the 'Hebrew'". (from: Ayala Gordon, Hebrew Illustrations – the Hebrew Illustrated Book for Children, Tel-Aviv [2005], pp 148-149.