English: Lazar Krestin (1868-1938), [Birth of] Jewish Resistance (1905), oil on canvas, Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life. Lazar Krestin was born in Kaunas, Lithuania in 1868, and died in Vienna in 1938. Krestin studied art in Vilnius and Vienna, among his teachers was the Austro-Hungarian Jewish painter Isidor Kaufman (1853-1921). This painting stands out in Krestin's oeuvre, which is comprised primarily of portraits and genre scenes of Eastern European Jewish life. The Birth of Jewish Resistance was painted in 1905 as a reaction to the wave of anti-Jewish riots that took place in Eastern Europe following the 1903 Kishinev pogrom. The two-layered painting composition conveys a complex narrative, juxtaposing old and young characters. While the young figures in the front are depicted in modern garb and holding weapons, the men rendered in the background represent a passive group of bystanders from a bygone era. The painter’s use of facial hair represents the contrast further, the young men in front of the crowd are clean-shaven, while the older men cowering in the back have long beards symbolizing adherence to tradition. Krestin forefronts the new "garde," youthful, modern, and eager to fight, leaving the past, literally, to disappear behind them.[1]