And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made...He sent forth the dove out of the ark; And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth. (Genesis 8:6,10-11, KJV)
For religious traditions down the ages, the dove and the olive branch have been archetypal symbols of peace. They come together in the narrative of the Great Flood in the Hebrews Scriptures, when a dove returns to Noah in the ark with an olive branch, signaling the ebbing of the waters and the end of God's wrath against humanity. Benzion Weinman, who shortened his name to Ben-Zion when he emigrated to the U.S. from Eastern Europe in 1920, created this stark depiction of the story in a 1950 portfolio of etchings on biblical themes. It was a time when American Jews were coming to terms with the full magnitude of the horrors of the Holocaust in World War II, while looking with hope toward the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. Our eyes are drawn to the open hand accepting the fragile peace offering from a fluttering dove whose wings cross a rainbow, but we cannot help but see the palm of a hand at the lower right of one who perished in the great "deluge" of modern history. (John Kohan)