This is one of the best known Jewish Avant Garde covers. The cover illustration is by Iosif (Joseph) Moiseevich Chaikov (Tchaikov)

BERESHIT

Moscow; Leningrad : [publisher not identified] [Printed by Druckerei Gutenberg in Berlin], 1926. 

1st edition. 

Original colorful printed avant-garde cover designed by Iosif Chaikov, 

8vo, 199 pages; 23 cm. In Hebrew.

Hardcover RARE HARDCOVER

A collection of poems and stories by Hebrew writers in the Soviet Union. Type-set in Leningrad, the work had to be printed in Berlin.

The work was edited by Abraham Krivochko (A. Kariv) and includes a story by Isaac Babel. 

The front cover, which is featured on the home page of YIVO's Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe (yivoencyclopedia.org), was created by Tchaikov bringing together a striking amalgam of Revolutionary ideas. The letters of the title are dramatic, symbolically beginning and ending with the color red. “The combination of colors and theatrical effects is striking…[the cover design] has the challenging element of a dramatic opening.” See Ch. Abramsky, “Yiddish Book Illustrations in Russia: 1916-1923” in Israel Museum Catalogue, Tradition and Revolution, p. 68. 

The writers' group that published the book was unable to find a printing press in the Soviet Union prepared to print a Hebrew book, and the manuscript was therefore sent to Berlin for printing.

Iosif Moisevich Chaikov (also spelled, among other spellings, Tshaykov, Tchaikov, and Tchaikovsky; 1888 – 1979) was a “Russian Imperial and Soviet Russian sculptor, graphic designer and teacher of Ukrainian Jewish descent….

Chaikov studied in Paris in the years 1910 through 1914. In 1912 he co-founded a group of young Jewish artists called Mahmad, and published a Hebrew-language magazine with that name; in 1913 he participated in the Salon d'Automne. He returned to Kiev in 1914. He was co-founder, along with El Lissitzky, Boris Aronson and others, of the Jewish socialist Kultur Lige in Kiev, led sculpture classes there, supervised a children's art studio and illustrated children's books, and in post-revolutionary Kiev focused on billboards and agitational propaganda. In 1921 he published the Yiddish-language book Skulptur, advocating avant-garde sculpture as a contribution to a new Jewish art. This book was also the first book on sculpture to be published in Yiddish. Chaikov moved to Moscow to teach at Vkhutemas from 1923 to 1930, alongside fellow sculptors Boris Korolev and Vera Mukhina. All three designed and taught cubist sculpture in the distinctively Russian Cubo-Futurism style, radically geometric and highly dynamic. From 1929 Chaikov was the head of the Society of Russian Sculptors.

OCLC: 15005057.

The book overall is in very good condition. See photos for condition. There is some slight separation of the front and back covers. The spine cover shows wear. The edge of the pages are slightly browning.

Compare at $600 online. Most of the copies of this book that come up at auction are in poor condition.