From Zurich to Rehovot: Harry Langbeheim’s paintings reveal the visual world of S.Y. Agnon

Following his retirement 10 years ago after a long and successful career in the biotech sector, research scientist and business executive Harry Langbeheim has captured a niche in the art world for his colorful illustrations of S.Y. Agnon’s stories.

“I found that there are hundreds of books and articles interpreting Agnon’s stories in writing, but almost no visual interpretations,” said Langbeheim, a polyglot native of Zurich who studied under the renowned illustrator and graphic artist Alex Diggelmann.

“Diggelmann was a great person; I learned so much from him. He told me never to stop painting, even if I chose another profession for a living.” And that’s exactly what Langbeheim did.

He arrived in Israel in 1973 to earn a doctorate in immunology at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. A year before finishing his degree, he married Rosie, a young immigrant from Germany. Their first child was born when they were living in Silver Spring, Maryland, for two and a half years while he did postdoctoral research at the National Cancer Institute in nearby Bethesda. 

Even though Langbeheim was offered a job there, he and Rosie knew from the start that they would go back to Israel. “We’ve lived in Rehovot for 53 years. It’s a very positive place for everything connected with science,” said Langbeheim. Rosie’s mother, now 105, lives nearby.

Upon their return, he began working as a research scientist with start-ups spun out of Weizmann, moving on to COO and CEO positions at various biotech companies in the Rehovot area at the dawn of the Start-Up Nation era. The list of companies he had a hand in establishing includes, among others, Sigma Aldrich (acquired by Merck in 2015), LSRI, Matis Medical, Ethrog Biotechnologies (now Invitrogen), and Savyon Diagnostics.

In 1999, he started dividing his time between industry and academia, becoming a senior lecturer in biotechnology and entrepreneurship at ORT Braude College (now Braude College) in Karmiel, and later teaching similar courses at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba.

“It gave me the possibility to spend 50% of my time teaching, which I enjoyed very much. And it was also good for business,” he said, noting that he took on several former students as interns or employees.

Langbeheim never stopped drawing and painting

THROUGHOUT his professional career, Langbeheim never stopped drawing and painting.

For 25 years, he produced a parasha-of-the-week cartoon for “Shabbat Shalom,” a weekly newsletter distributed by Oz VeShalom–Netivot Shalom from 1997 to 2025. Chillingly, the last issue in which his cartoon appeared was Simchat Torah 2023.

“I had decided before that this was to be my last issue. You always have to know when it’s time to stop. But after October 7, I don’t think I could have continued anyway,” he said.

Over the years, he illustrated scenes from Bible stories. After he retired at age 67, he turned his attention to Agnon. “You can show Gan Eden however you want – nobody knows what it looked like – but I wanted to illustrate something that could actually be seen,” he explained.

“When I first came here and was learning Hebrew, I discovered the stories of S.Y. Agnon. One of my grandfathers, who was from Poland but knew Hebrew fluently, read Agnon’s stories in the original from a volume printed in 1933. When I read the story, I see it, so why not put it on paper?”

In 2017, he went on a European trip sponsored by Beit Agnon – the Agnon heritage center based in the Nobel laureate’s former Jerusalem house – led by Rabbi Benny Lau and literary scholar Prof. Ruhama Albag. Among the sites they visited was Buczacz, the author’s Galician hometown mentioned in his writings.

“Buczacz is an actual place you can visit. There, I found everything I was looking for, and since then I’ve painted almost 40 paintings just from the stories of Agnon,” said Langbeheim. Using India ink pen and watercolors, he strives to provide an authentic and precise visual expression of the narrative events.

“I paint only what Agnon writes. I’m a scientist. So I put the story in Excel and find a sentence I can illustrate. In one story, an Indian chief takes a concubine, and she is described as having tattoos. This is what I illustrated. Of course, what I draw is not necessarily what other people might imagine when reading the same scene.”

The first exhibition of this collection took place in August 2023 at Rehovot’s Yad Labanim, attracting many visitors, though the events of October 7 truncated the show’s expected run.

Later, his works were displayed in the gallery of the Jerusalem Theatre, and piqued the interest of Galia Duchin Ariel, founder of the Global Art Gallery in Tel Aviv. She booked Langbeheim for a solo exhibition at the gallery, at 13 Merkaz Ba’alei Melaha Street, scheduled for October 6 to November 6. The grand opening will be on October 9 at noon.

Langbeheim creates his paintings in his home studio, which doubles as a safe room. “In the last three years, since we have 11 grandchildren, there have always been people sleeping there,” he said with a chuckle.

The Langbeheims’ three children all live in Israel. The oldest, Avi, resides in Hannaton, a kibbutz in northern Israel, and is working on the rehabilitation of the Gaza border communities. Their daughter, Tanya, is a rabbanit kehilatit (community religious leader) in Kibbutz Tirat Zvi and other northern communities. “And the youngest, Hagai, lives two houses from us, in Rehovot. He works with a medical diagnostics company.”

In January and February 2027, a new series of Langbeheim’s works will be exhibited at the Jerusalem Theatre. These are the fruit of his new project  – paintings illustrating the stories of Rabbi Nahman of Breslov.