Abraham in the Morning
Menashe Kadishman Yehuda Miklaf
1995
Text by Moshe Shamir
"This book was published by Even Hoshen, the press of Uzi and Ido Agassi. The drawings are by Menashe Kadishman, and the text is by Moshe Shamir. They hired me to make bindings for six copies, which were for sale. Since it was about Avraham in the morning, I decided to make a leather On-Lay binding of the oryx (in Hebrew called Raem), getting its horns caught in the thorns."
The description of this book is transcribed from conversations between Yehuda Miklaf and Shiraz Grinbaum held in January 2026. The collection of the legendary Jerusalem bookbinder was photographed especially for the website by Yair Meyuhas. Miklaf's collection includes Design Bindings created over more than 40 years.
- Copies: 175
- Pages: 46
- Type of binding: Design Binding
- Languages: Hewbrew
- Dimensions (cm): 26x17
- Printing: Even Hoshen Press
- Binding: Yehuda Miklaf
- Type of printing: Letterpress, prints on French wove paper
- Publication: Even Hoshen Press
- Place of publication: Ranana
- Book photography: Leafing Magazine
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Menashe Kadishman (1932–2015) was an Israeli painter and sculptor, winner of the Israel Prize in sculpture. From 1947 to 1950, he studied sculpture under Moshe Sternschuss and later under Rudi Lehmann. In 1968, he represented Israel at Documenta in Kassel, Germany, and in 1978, he exhibited 18 sheep painted blue at the Venice Biennale in an exhibition entitled “The Sheep Project: Nature as Art and Art as Nature.” This installation was recreated at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in an exhibition of his works that opened in December 2005 and was called “Draw Me a Sheep.” In his sculptures, he used iron and other materials to create epic environmental art. In the early 1960s, he sculpted in an abstract style using sharp geometric shapes, and later sculpted less abstract sculptures, including “The Binding of Isaac,” located in Tel Aviv in front of the Tel Aviv Museum and the courthouse. His street sculpture “Elevation” is made of steel and stands 15 meters tall, located near the Habima Theater in Tel Aviv. In 1995, he was awarded the Israel Prize in the field of sculpture. Kadishman died on May 8, 2015, at the age of 82, and was buried in the Kiryat Shaul Cemetery.
Yehuda Miklaf was born in Nova Scotia, Canada, in 1942, and educated there and in New York. In 1968, he moved to Toronto and began working at the University of Toronto Library, where he stayed for almost ten years. During this time, he began to learn bookbinding with Emrys Evans at the Rare Book Library. Yehuda befriended two other notable binders in the Toronto area. One was Anton (Tony) Lucas, the binder at the Metropolitan Toronto Library, and Michael Wilcox, who was an independent binder. Miklaf has been working as a professional binder since 1977 with major book collectors, artists, private presses, galleries, and museums in Israel and around the world. He immigrated to Jerusalem in the fall of 1986 with his wife, Maurene Fritz. He is also a professional printer and has made a number of his own artist’s books in limited editions. His own press, based in Jerusalem, is titled Yehuda Shalom Press.
