Nehemia Azaz

Nehemia Azaz was born in 1923 in Berlin

Nehemia Azaz was born in Berlin in 1923 to a Jewish family whose original name was Zeidman. He was brought to the Land of Israel as a baby and grew up in Zikhron Ya'akov.

During World War II he joined the Jewish Brigade, and after the war he studied marble sculpture as an apprentice in Bologna, Italy. He later learned stained glass from a Dutch artist. In the War of Independence he served in the 8th Brigade, then held intelligence posts until 1953, when he went to study ceramic chemistry in the Netherlands.

In 1955 he returned to Israel and founded the Department of Artistic Ceramics at Harsa in Beersheba, with designs drawn from desert colors and forms. He also designed jewelry for Maskit. In 1960 he left Harsa to focus on sculpture, stained glass and decorative walls.

After a commission at the Sheraton Hotel in Tel Aviv in 1965, he worked abroad. At the invitation of Yitzhak Rabin, he carved a walnut wall for the Israeli Lounge at the Kennedy Center in Washington. From the late 1960s he lived and worked in Oxfordshire, making stained glass for synagogues and other buildings in the UK and US.

He was married to Yaffa and had a daughter, Irit. His grandson is the footballer Finn Azaz. He died in 2008.