Rudi Weissenstein, born in Czechoslovakia in 1910, studied photography in Vienna and became a press photographer for a Prague newspaper. Arriving in Eretz Israel in 1936, he was immediately commissioned by various institutions to take pictures and within a few months time produced a body of documentary work of distinction. That same year, violinist Bronislaw Huberman gathered Jewish musicians who had fled the Nazis and established the Palestine Philharmonic. The opening concert, conducted by the legendary Arturo Toscanini, nearly ended in disaster when a photographer used a flash to photograph Toscanini in the middle of a piece, prompting the infuriated maestro to walk off the stage. Only after considerable coaxing did he consent to return, and the event ended in success. Meanwhile, Weissenstein, unnoticed, caught Toscanini and Huberman in a series of rare candid photos using his small, flashless camera, producing some of his most unforgettable portraits. From then, he served as the Philharmonic’s photographer for a period of 40 years. He photographed the international Levant Fair held in Tel Aviv in 1936, and the opening of the Tel Aviv port soon thereafter. Throughout the period of the Arab riots of 1936-39 he photographed the establishment of new settlements, the arrival by ship of European children as part of the Youth Aliyah rescue effort, and the clandestine arrival of other ships with “illegal” immigrants fleeing Europe, hastily disembarking at the Tel Aviv shore before they could be caught by the British police. With the outbreak of World War II, the institutional demand for photos of Eretz Israel declined. Weissenstein and his wife, Miriam, opened a photography shop in Tel Aviv opposite the Mograbi Theater, while he continued photographing the city and its people. Only in 1948, during Israel’s War of Independence, did the local press begin to run photos of events and use press photographers.
