Benjamin Senior Godines was a Dutch Jewish engraver and calligrapher active in Amsterdam, ca. 1679–1690. He is credited with several paintings and illustrations for birkonim (Grace after Meals booklets). He was the brother of the prominent poet and translator Moses Belmonte.
In 1934, the German-Jewish entrepreneur and philanthropist Salman Schocken (1877–1959) commissioned Mendelsohn to design a villa for him and his family in Jerusalem, where they had fled from Nazi…
Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the poor.
—Thomas Gray, “Elegy Written in a…