Artist's paintings are donated to local temple
BY CHRIS MURINO Staff Writer

A painting of Moses holding the Ten Commandments

SOUTH BRUNSWICK - Worldrenowned artist Leon Bibel spent much of his life in South Brunswick, and now two of his paintings have been donated to Congregation B'nai Tikvah in North Brunswick, where Bibel's family had roots.

"Bibel lived in our community formany, many years," said Larry Cohen, Congregation B'nai Tikvah's vice president of ways andmeans. "He had quite a large collection of paintings and wooden types of art. Some were Jewish-themed, like these couple of paintings. One is of Moses holding the Ten Commandments and the other is ofHebrew letters."

Bibel died in 1995, and his wife, Neysa, died last year. So now his son, Daniel Bibel, and his daughter, Elaine Cater, are dealing with his estate and paintings.

Cater talked about the family's history with the synagogue.

"My grandfather, along with a number of other people, set up Congregation Sharri Shalom," Cater said.

This merged with two other temples to become Congregation B'nai Tikvah in the 1980s.

"I've lived in the U.K. for over 40 years, so I really haven't had much contact with them at all except through my parents," Cater said about the synagogue. "The people in the congregation were very kind and generous to me, especially after my father died."

Bibel was born in Poland and immigrated to the U.S. with his family. He moved from New York to South Brunswick during World War II and he lived there for many years, raising his children on a chicken farm.

"South Brunswick was far more rural than it is now," Cater said. "It could be a very lonely existence for a child."

However, she had her family there for her.

"My grandparents lived right next door, so it was very family-oriented," Cater said. "We always had the grandparents to talk to and pester."

Bibel, according to Cater, was a religious man but not in the conventional sense.

"It was not in the sense of going to service every Friday night or Saturday," Cater said. "Alarge amount of his family in Eastern Europe had been destroyed by the Nazis in the war.He felt that this hadmade him aware of his relationship to God without actually having to go."

Instead, he did it through his art.

"By creating his art and making people aware of the Judaic themes of his art, he couldmake people aware of the religion and history of the Jewish people," Cater said.

It is important that these two particular Judaic paintings were given to the synagogue because, as Cohen said, "not all he did was Jewish-themed."

"There were quite a large number of paintings," said Cohen. "They are mostly working with a gallery."

It is also important that Daniel Bibel and Cater wanted to give them to the synagogue to sell so they could make money.

"We felt it would be nice if we gave them to the synagogue and it would be a way of making some money."

Daniel Bibel and Cater also wanted the synagogue to have the paintings so they could be "shared within the community," Cohen said.

"We felt the total amount of space they had within the synagogue was not large enough to put them on show," Cater said. "When someone pays for something, then they appreciate it more than when it's only a gift."

She also mentioned that her father was paid for selling his paintings, so why shouldn't the synagogue be paid?

Bibel had built things for the synagogue in the past.

"He built an ark where we have our scroll," Cohen said.

He also built the synagogue's tallit rack.

Bibel's work has been featured at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the B'nai B'rith's Klutznick Museum, and museums at Rutgers University and Princeton University.

The 24-inch-by-30-inch paintings are being sold for $1,200 each and are signed by Bibel. The priceswere set byBibel's children.