Nechemia Bedarshi (1897-1953) was a Jewish painter who studied at the Bezalel Art Academy in Jerusalem between 1913 and 1917.
Nechemia Bedarshi (Beressi) was born on Yom Kippur, October 6th, 1897, in Thessaloniki, Greece (by that time, Thessaloniki was a part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, and was populated mostly by Jews).
His parents, Benjamin and Sarah Beressi, were Jews from Sephardic origins. Nechemia was the youngest of eight children - Avraham, Shabetay, Yossef, Benuta, Palomba, Clara, Rachel, and himself.
As a child, he attended the Hebrew school "Talmud Torah Hagadol" in Thessaloniki. His teacher, Yitzhak Epstein, was a linguist and pedagogue who came from Palestine to teach Hebrew there.
Epstein, who researched Jewish names and their origins, suggested that the name Beressi originated from Bedarshi, a family from Beziers, a town in the north of Spain. During the middle ages, the town was called Beteris, and in Hebrew – Bedersh. Avraham Ha Bedarshi and his son, Yedaya Ha Pnini Bedarshi, philosophers and poets, belonged to this respected family of intellectuals. According to documents found at the library of the Synagogue Catalan Chadash in Thessaloniki, members of the Bedarshi family emigrated to Thessaloniki from Barcelona prior to 1492. The name was then modified to Beressi.
Young Nechemia decided to change his name from Beressi to Bedarshi, and convinced his brothers to do so too. Therefore, they were the first Bedarshi family that revived this name in the modern ages. (This assumption proved to be true. A 100 years later, Nechemia's great-nephew, Yossi Bedarshi, found documents at the Thessaloniki Jewish museum, which prove that the family Berissi was the same Bedarshi family - the family kept both names Berissi-Bedarshi in the documents, ever since the 16th century).
In 1913, aged 16, Nechemia was selected by Epstein for a special scholarship. Epstein formed a group of 14 exceptionally talented Jewish youth from Thessaloniki and organized a German fund, "Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden" for their studies in Palestine.
This group of Sephardic Jews was quite an exception at the Jerusalem academies, as most of the students came from Ashkenazi origins.
The young Nechemia, who showed a special artistic talent, was chosen to attend the Jerusalem new art Academy, "Bezalel". Among his teachers were Bezalel's founder, Boris Schatz, as well as Ze'ev Raban. His fellow students were artists such as Nachum Guttman, Ziona Tager, Thelma Yelin, and others.
After graduating with distinction from Bezalel, he found a job as a graphic designer and a painter at the ministry of health in Jerusalem. One of his projects there was an illustrated research book about the Anopheles mosquitos.
Nechemia lived in Jerusalem. Most of his family, which remained in Greece, was murdered later in Auschwitz. His siblings Shabetai, Benuta and Joseph Bedarshi followed him and came to Israel, his sister Rachel Attas that immigrated to the U.S.
Nechemia married Yona Palomba Yehuda in 1932. They had two children, Benjamin Bedarshi and Sarah Levkovitch Bedarshi.
He died on January 21st, 1953 in Jerusalem, Israel, aged 56.