Yartzeit: Reb Hendel, The First Chasidic Artist

A lively Lubavitch Chasid, Reb Hendel was considered the first Chasidic artist, having studied art at the Moscow School of Art. Author and Historian Rabbi Chaim Dalfin delves into the life of this special man.

Hendel was born in Pleshchenitsy, Belarus (then part of the Russian Empire) as Chenoch Hendel Futerfas. In 1925 he married Breina Freidman, with whom he had two daughters. Breina and the two girls were killed by a Nazi Einsatzgruppe in 1941, in Brahin, Belarus, while Hendel was serving in the Red Army.

In 1946, Hendel left the USSR using forged Polish papers; afraid that the KGB would track him down, he changed his surname to Lieberman. After short stays in Paris and London, in 1951 he settled in Brooklyn, New York, where he became a devoted Hasid, follower of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe.