The Secret Language of Flowers

B o t a n i c a l D r aw i n g s

f rom

I s r a e l , 1949 1950

In 1984, The Magnes acquired a unique portfolio of botanical drawings made in Israel by
Shmuel (Samuel) Lerner, a Ukraine-born amateur artist from California. While Lerners
biography and many details surrounding this work remain obscure, his drawings open today
a unique window into the landscape, the history and the languages of Israel immediately
afterthe establishment of the State.
Born in 1890, possibly in Baranivka, near Zhitomir (northern Ukraine), Shmuel Lerner
hadimmigrated to the United States, living first in Ohio, then moving to NewYork City,
and finally settling in Los Angeles. In the 1940s he joined his daughter Ritta (UCBerkeley
Class of 1938) and son-in-law Zeev Halperin in Palestine, where he witnessed the 1948
War of Independence and its aftermaths. At this time, he travelled across the new country,
documenting his trip by drawing accurate portraits of the plants and flowers he encountered.
The resulting portfolio, consisting of sixty-four individual drawings, was probably exhibited
in Israel prior to Lerners return to Los Angeles. There, another exhibition may have taken
place, in 1950 or 1951, at the Los Angeles Yiddish Culture Club, a literary organization
established in 1926. Lerner eventually moved to Fresno, California, where he passed away
in1981.
Lerners drawings were made with graphite and color pencils on individual sheets of white
sketch paper, and each sheet was then precariously stapled onto harder paper supports. Each
drawing, refined in the detailed views of the plants and flowers it portrayed, was described
bythe author with precise annotations.
Lerner painstakingly listed the dates and places where the plants had been found, thus
drawing a map of the shifting borders of Palestine, Israel and Jordan around 1949. Locations
included smaller and larger towns and cities, the likes of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Rishon LeZion,
and Rehovot, kibbutz communities such as Mishmar HaEmek in the Jezreel Valley, the site
of a then recent ten-day battle between the Arab Liberation Army and the Haganah, Arab
villages devastated by the war like Zirin, and natural sites across the land, especially the
banks of the Yarkon River andthe Sea of Galilee (Heb. yam kinneret).
Lerners annotations also included the Latin scientific names of the plants he portrayed,
along with the corresponding Hebrew terms. This linguistic effort, which precedes by a few
years the establishment of the Academy of the Hebrew Language (1953), was based on the
use of existing Hebrew terms, on the creation of new ones, and on the phonetic adaptation
of botanical names from Latin or English into Hebrew, thus reflecting the successful attempt
to recognize modern Hebrew as the predominant language of the newly established State of
Israel. To add to the panoply of cultures involved in the project, Lerners portfolio included
two title pages, in English, The Flower-World of Israel, and in Yiddish, Yisroel blumen-velt, getsayerent fun
shmuel lerner (The flower world of Israel, drawn by Shmuel Lerner).
By mapping the new country and providing a direct insight into its recent past, current
events, and linguistic and cultural intricacies, Shmuel Lerners drawings are more than the
individual project of an amateur illustrator. In time, they have become a primary source that
is singularly positioned to inspire further reflection into the complexity of Israels history.
Francesco Spagnolo, Curator