Moses Jacob Ezekiel
(1844 - 1917)
One of the most striking monuments at the Arlington National
Cemetery in Virginia, United States, is the Confederate Memorial. Commissioned by the United Daughters
of the Confederacy, the Confederate Memorial was designed and executed by Sir Moses Jacob
Ezekiel of Richmond, Virginia, the first great American
Jewish sculptor, who was living in Rome.
Ezekiel was 16 when Fort Sumter was attacked in 1861. An ardent believer
in states rights, Ezekiel begged his parents to allow him to enroll
at the Virginia Military Institute. They consented, and he became the
first Jew to attend VMI. Three years later, when the cadets were summoned
to aid Confederate General John C. Breckenridge at the Battle of New
Market, Virginia, Ezekiel joined the cadets charge against Union
When the war ended, Ezekiel completed his studies at VMI and graduated
in 1866. According to Ezekiels memoirs and letters, which repose
at the American Jewish Historical Society, Ezekiel met General Robert
E. Lee during this period. Lee counseled Ezekiel, "I hope you will
be an artist
and do earn a reputation in whatever profession
Living up to Lees injunction, Ezekiel won worldwide fame as a
sculptor. Had he been born a century earlier, Ezekiel would almost certainly
never have become a sculptor at all. Until the early 1800's in America,
the phrase "Jewish artist" was an oxymoron. American Jewish
painters were rare and Jewish sculptors rarer still because of the Second
Commandments prohibition against making images. By the time Ezekiel
was born in 1844, however, most American rabbis interpreted the Commandment
to mean that Jews should not worship graven images, as opposed to painting
or sculpting them. By the 1860's, Ezekiel was free to give three-dimensional
expression to his Judaism without violating his faith.
Judaism was a major theme of Ezekiels art. At age 13,
he executed a bust of "Cain Receiving the Curse
of the Almighty." His second work, "Moses
Receiving the Law on Mount Sinai," collapsed during
a storm, which disaster his grandmother, who remained
a Second Commandment strict constructionist, attributed
to divine justice.
In the late 1860s, Ezekiel studied painting and sculpture in
Cincinnati and Berlin. In the latter city, his bas-relief "Israel"
won a prestigious prize that enabled him to study in Rome. One critic,
who took note of the fact that the talented young winner was a Jew,
expressed the hope that Ezekiel "would disprove the prevailing
notion that the race of Shem has no genius for the plastic arts."
Ezekiel became an expatriate, living
in Rome for more than
40 years. Nonetheless, his most important sculpture
commissions were for works erected in the United States.
In 1876, the Independent Order of Bnai Brith asked Ezekiel to create an allegorical sculpture of
"Religious Liberty" for the Philadelphia Centennial
Exposition. The resulting marble statue, featuring an
eight-foot tall woman wearing a coat of mail against
the shaft of tyranny, now stands outside the National
Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia.
Ezekiels work also adorns the
Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. and the Confederate
Cemetery at Johnsons Island, Ohio, among other
sites, and he designed the seal of the Jewish Publication
Society of America. In 1899, Rabbi
Isaac Mayer Wise, the leader of American Reform Judaism and founder of Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati,
posed for Ezekiel. Ezekiels father Jacob was the
first secretary to the Board of Governors of HUC.
Ezekiel did indeed "earn a reputation"
as Robert E. Lee had hoped, and he proved that Jews
could be sculptors. When the United Daughters of the
Confederacy approached him to execute the Confederate
Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery (1914), Ezekiel
felt he could dictate the terms of his commission. He
insisted that the Daughters give him full artistic license
for the monument, which was based on the words of the
"And they shall beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks." They agreed
nervously to Ezekiels conditions, but were delighted
with the results.
As a tribute to the beauty of his work, Ezekiel was knighted by Emperor
William I of Germany, and Kings Humbert I and Victor Emmanuel II of
Italy hence his title "Sir." Despite his Roman
residence and his familiarity with celebrities and kings, no one remained
a more loyal son of the South or proud American than this expatriate
Jew from Richmond. When Ezekiel died Rome in 1917, he left behind
a specific request that his body be returned to America and buried at
the base of his confederate Memorial in Arlington, alongside his comrades-in-arms.
Jewish Historical Society