As Hirszenberg gathers together three generations of one family to celebrate the Jewish Sabbath (Shabbat), he contrasts their traditional way of life with the new industrialisation symbolised by the cityscape seen through the window beyond. The star-shaped lamp, designed to burn for 24 hours (because it is forbidden to do work of any sort, including the lighting of lamps during Shabbat) indicates the family’s piety; the muted palette illustrates their poverty.

Hirszenberg was born in Lodz, Poland and studied in Munich, Crakow and Paris. He exhibited regularly in Paris before moving to Jerusalem in 1907, where he taught at the newly established Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts until his death in 1908. Hirszenberg was well known for his monumental paintings depicting the plight of the poverty-stricken Jews of his native Poland, where frequent anti-Semitic violence (or pogroms), caused many of them to flee Eastern Europe for the West.