Ephraim Moses Lilien

E. M. Lilien, as he in known, personified the belief that a national Jewish art had to be fashioned out of traditional Jewish motifs while incorporating contemporary styles. As a result, he produced modern works that could be immediately identified as Jewish.

As seen in this print, Lilien also integrated designs used in the socialist movement, which he had worked for prior to his involvement in Zionism. Zionists and Socialists shared the utopian vision of a new and better society and he borrowed the Socialist's rising sun motif to represent that vision. As seen in the work to the left Juda (1900), the Jewish exile is contrasted with a rising sun containing the Hebrew inscription Zion, which was set behind the pyramids of Egypt in order to mark a modern exodus from slavery.

Lilien came to Germany shortly before the turn of the century and worked closely with the Young Jewish Movement, the modern literary and artistic Zionist group. However, his artistry appealed to those outside the Zionist Movement. The renowned Austrian writer Stephan Zweig was so impressed with Juda that he wrote a long introduction to Sein Werk. In 1903, Lilien created, Lieder des ghetto [Songs of the Ghetto], which was accompanied by poems by Morris Rosenfeld, an East European Jew with socialist ideals like himself. Where Juda depicted the young Zionist's dreams of Palestine, Lieder des ghetto reflected their parents' world.