Boris Schatz was the founding director of the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts in Jerusalem. His conception of a Jewish art academy and center for a popular crafts industry was formally presented by Theodor Herzl in 1905 at the seventh Zionist Congress in Basel. The school--named after Bezalel Ben-Uri, the biblical artisan who constructed and decorated the Ark of the Covenant--was founded in 1906.

The Bezalel School attracted talented, dedicated students who were to become the vanguard of Israeli art. From its earliest years, the school presented exhibitions world wide, from Odessa to New York City. After the First World War, the school fell victim to the vagrancies of economics and politics--both internal and global. Its doors closed in 1929. Boris Schatz died in Denver, Colorado, while on a mission to raise funds to reopen the school. It remained closed until 1935 when a new wave of immigrants and refugees from Hitler's Europe revived the need for such an institution. Bezalel continues to operate to this day.

Schatz's self-portrait, in its ornate, handmade frame, is painted in a conservative, academic tradition. It is fused with oriental symbols representing his notion of an artistic style suitable for a new Jewish nation. In the background are products of the Bezalel School. The frame bears Schatz's monogram in Hebrew and an inscription from the biblical Song of Songs. As an appropriate plea for his cause this was loosely translated as "I am for my people and my people are for me," instead of the accepted "beloved."