3. Painting and recollection, Mayer Kirshenblatt's "The Black Wedding in the Cemetery, ca. 1892," 1996.

3. Painting and recollection, Mayer Kirshenblatt's "The Black Wedding in the Cemetery, ca. 1892," 1996.

This painting and accompanying audio recollection describe a “black wedding” in prewar Poland, similar to Singer's fictional one in which Gimpel is married off to Elka.

Suggested activity: Have students look at the painting first, and see if they can guess what it represents. What do they notice about the way this event is represented in Kirshenblatt’s painting? Listen to his description of the event, and see if it lines up with their perception of the painting. How is this event similar to, or different from, the black wedding described in “Gimpel the Fool”?  

Source: Painting: Mayer Kirshenblatt, "The Black Wedding in the Cemetery, ca. 1892," 1996, in Barbara Kishenblatt-Gimblett, They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland Before the Holocaust (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007).

Audio: Mayer Kirshenblatt and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Paint What You Remember: The Memories of Mayer Kirshenblatt,” <http://www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/ce/kirshenblatt/kirshenblatt-main.htm>, 2009, accessed March 1, 2016.

For more information about the book and the Jewish Museum's 2009 exhibit on the work of self-taught artist Mayer Kirshenblatt, aka Mayer July, see http://www.mayerjuly.com.