MORRIS WINCHEVSKY SCHOOL

There's more than one way to be Jewish!

"While Shaina looks forward to her engaging, hands-on Sunday morning classes every week, my husband and I have come to look forward to the relaxed, welcoming atmosphere of Winchevsky events, and the opportunities to schmooze with our fellow Shule parents."
Sylvia Hunter,
MWS parent

A Shtetl Childhood Remembered in Paintings and Stories

Always an inquisitive and rambunctious boy, Mayer Kirshenblatt remembers everything about his childhood and life in his shtetl. He will draw children into the lost world of his shtetl, roam Apt’s streets and courtyards, share the details of daily life, and meet those who lived and worked there: his mother giving birth, the cobbler's son, who was dressed in white pajamas all his life to fool the angel of death; a "black wedding” in the cemetery to avert a cholera epidemic, the kleptomaniac, the holidays, kheyder, and play and toys.

Mayer Kirshenblatt was born in 1916 in Opatów (Apt in Yiddish) and left Poland for Canada in 1934. He taught himself to paint at age 73. Since then, he has made it his mission to remember the world of his childhood in living color, "lest future generations know more about how Jews died than how they lived." He has created more than 270 paintings. Each painting tells a story and together they make a world. Mayer has exhibited his work in several solo as well as group exhibitions at The Jewish Museum (New York), at the Aird Gallery, Koffler Gallery, and Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto, and in a traveling exhibition organized by the Smithsonian Institution. Shtetl, a video documentary about his work, premiered in 1995. They Called Me Mayer July received the 2008 Canadian Jewish Book Award (Samuel and Rose Cohen Memorial Award in Biography/Memoir), J.I. Segal Book Award, AAUP award for book design, and was a finalist in three categories for the National Jewish Book Award.

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