Founders of Bet Alpha Editions
Bet Alpha Editions officially came into being in Rochester, New York in 1985 after financial agreements were signed and legal papers were executed. However, from my standpoint, Sharon and Neil Norry became parters with me within about a half an hour after I first met them in a hotel room in Jerusalem several months before.
Sharon’s remarkable parents, Sol and Ruth Singer of Atlanta, had wanted to get us together for quite a while. Sharon and I had corresponded briefly when she first saw the articles on my revival of the handmade ketubah in the early 1970s. But it was through the insistence of the Singers that we finally met. I brought a photographic copy of the Haggadah I had created for the Levy family with me to that first meeting at the Hilton. I remember them carefully looking at the pages one after the other as I explained some of the imagery, ideas and texts I had incorporated.
When I finished, Neil asked me if he could purchase the original. I explained that the Levys had just patiently waited four years for me to execute the work and that I doubted that they would want to part with it. Neil immediately responded, “If I can't have it, then I want to publish it. This should not remain in a safe in Florida. It must be shared with the Jewish world.â€
I told Neil that I'd love to publish it, but I'd want it done as a perfect facsimile copy of the original and that was impossible because of the many unique techniques I used, like gold leaf, papercuts, added mirrors, a seal, moving parts and so forth. Neil Norry—never one to be dissuaded by the impossible—responded that we were going to do it, that I was to find someone, somewhere in the world, who could reproduce it perfectly, and to my standards, and that he, Sharon and I were going to be partners in this endeavor. Bet Alpha Editions came into being at that moment.
Not only did the seed of an impossible-to-reproduce book come into existence that night, but also an unlikely liaison between a practical, highly successful businessman with his wise, sensitive, and talented wife, and a dreamy, Jerusalem artist was formed. It’s hard to guess which one of us was more surprised at our suddenly becoming “publishersâ€. That life-changing evening for me created a wonderful partnership between the Norrys and the Mosses. But more importantly, it gave birth to a deep, abiding and cherished friendship that lasted as long as they lived; it is treasured still and deeply mourned.
The fact that this successful businessman, careful real estate developer, and powerful communal leader had impulsively plunged into the vagaries of the publishing business struck us all as humorously incongruent. Sharon, in fact, used to joke with us that some day in the future she and Neil would be sitting together in their rocking chairs on the veranda of their old age home, and some young visitor would yell into Neil’s ear: “Well, Mr. Norry, how did you first become a publisher?â€
It is certainly one of my life's most gracious blessings that this unique couple entered our lives. And it one of life's most unfair tragedies that neither one of them got even close to those rocking chairs.
– David Moss
|