Jewish Art History

Many scholars view the choral synagogues in the Russian Empire as Reform synagogues, influenced by the German Reform movement. This article analyzes the features characteristic of Reform synagogues in central and Western Europe, and demonstrates that only a small number of these features were implemented in the choral synagogues of Russia. The article describes the history, architecture, and reception of choral synagogues in different geographical areas of the Russian Empire, from the first maskilic synagogues of the 1820s-1840s to the revolution of 1917. The majority of changes, this article argues, introduced in choral synagogues were of an aesthetic nature. The changes concerned decorum, not the religious meaning or essence of the prayer service. The initial wave of choral synagogues were established by maskilim, and modernized Jews became a catalyst for the adoption of the choral rite by other groups. Eventually, the choral synagogue became the "sectorial" synagogue of the modernized elite. It did not have special religious significance, but it did offer social prestige and architectural prominence.

Since the second half of the 1970s, a corpus of studies focusing on the history of women during the Holocaust has been produced. These studies assert that even though Jewish women shared the annihilation threat with the men, Jewish women also underwent unique experiences resulting from their female physiology, their female socialization, and the National Socialist Weltanschauung directed against them. These different experiences were also expressed visually in numerous works of art made by women during the Holocaust era (1939–49). Their art is rife with images of pregnancy, motherhood, feminine crafts such as domestic chores, cooking, female solidarity and mutual assistance, loss of femininity, and sexual violence. This article focuses especially on women's artistic expression of three of these topics: mutual assistance among women, loss of femininity, and sexual violence, all of which have received little attention in Holocaust art research.

In this article I argue that behind the central image of the Ostjude in the Weimar German-Jewish renaissance were twenty years of collaboration and cultural exchange between German Jews and resident Eastern European Jews. I aver that a transnational examination of German-Jewish visual culture reveals the way in which Eastern European Jews helped to fashion their own image in German society. I investigate the bookplate, or ex libris, as a cultural product in the fin-de-siècle,when Jewish iconography rose in popularity. Immigrant Eastern European Jews living in Germany produced and circulated the positive image of the bearded Jew with yarmulke, providing broader German-Jewish society a visual vocabulary for conveying their own idealized selves.

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The remains of a medieval synagogue, in addition to numerous fragments of plaster decoration, have been found as a result of the excavation work done at the Prao de los Judíos archaeological site in the town of Molina de Aragón (Guadalajara, Spain). These remains suggest that the synagogue was built in the second half of the thirteenth century and that it was refashioned later in the fourteenth century following the same artistic model of the synagogues of Córdoba and El Tránsito. Based on comparative analysis, this article studies the Synagogue of Molina de Aragón in relation to other medieval Iberian synagogues.

Numerous images embedded in the painted decorations in early modern Central and Eastern European synagogues conveyed allegorical messages to the congregation. The symbolism was derived from biblical verses, stories, legends, and prayers, and sometimes different allegories were combined to develop coherent stories. In the present case study, which concerns a bird, seemingly a nocturnal raptor, depicted on the ceiling of the Unterlimpurg Synagogue, I explore the symbolism of this image in the contexts of liturgy, eschatology, and folklore. I undertake a comparative analysis of paintings in medieval and early modern illuminated manuscripts-both Christian and Jewish-and in synagogues in both Eastern and Central Europe. I argue that in some Hebrew illuminated manuscripts and synagogue paintings, nocturnal birds of prey may have been positive representations of the Jewish people, rather than simply a response to their negative image in Christian literature and art, but also a symbol of redemption. In the Unterlimpurg Synagogue, the night bird of prey, combined with other symbolic elements, represented a complex allegoric picture of redemption, possibly implying the image of King David and the kabbalistic nighttime prayer Tikkun H. az. ot. This case study demonstrates the way in which early modern synagogue painters created allegoric paintings that captured contemporary religious and mystical ideas and liturgical developments.

This article represents a response to the excavation report by Seyer and Lotz. Weiss discusses the location of the Limyra building within the city as well as its building constructions and its raw materials. Weiss compares the Limyra building with diaspora synagogues with regard to its architectural layout and orientation as well as with regard to the functionality of its excavated rooms and its water basin. Weiss discusses also the chancel screens with the menorah depic-tions and the date of structure in Limyra. As in other Diaspora synagogues, the location of the building, its construction on an earlier structure, the use of spolia, a water installation, and an ornate bima with a decorated chancel screen are the major elements supporting an argument for an identification of the Limyra building as a synagogue but only further excavations could warrant a clear identification.

In Ashkenazi Jewish communities, it is customary to promise a donation to charitable causes after being called up to the Torah on Shabbat and on holidays-there is even a Yiddish term for it: shnodern. In our article, we will look at various synagogue objects related to this type of charity, focusing on Hungarian lands. First, we will look at signs and plaques, affixed to the bimah, which mention possible purposes for the charity. Second, since it is forbidden to make a note of, let alone fulfill the promise of a charitable donation on Shabbat, we will look at objects that show ways that these donations were recorded.

"An exploration of the ways in which medieval Jews used art and literature as means of social and political self-expression. Europe's Jewish minority culture was subjected to a barrage of public images proclaiming the dominance of the Christian majority. This book is the first to explore Jewish response to this assault in the development of a visual culture through which they could affirmatively construct their identity as a people. It demonstrates how medieval Jews gave voice to messages of protest and dreams of subversion by actively appropriating and transforming the quintessential symbols of the dominant culture. Using a variety of methodologies drawn from art history, cultural studies, and the history of mentalites, this work illuminates aspects of the inner landscape of medieval Jewry as reflected in animal symbolism in text and iconography, a very rich and hitherto undiscovered realm. Marc Michael Epstein examines the ubiquitous hare-hunt and the cryptic iconography of elephants flanking the ark in the synagogue, dragons straddling the line between the divine and the demonic worlds, and unicorns that seem to have leaped directly from the christological world of the illuminated bestiary into a universe of Jewish messianic symbolism. These images, often marginal in situation, tend to be regarded as derivative of Christian art or as mere decoration, yet they are illustrative of the manner in which Jews subversively recast various symbols from their own tradition and from Christian culture. An understanding of medieval Jewish self-definition through the "secret language" of their iconography is essential for analysis of the roots of intercultural conflict and collusion in the West.

This PDF is fully searchable, simply enter the desired keyword (or note number) in the SEARCH panel of Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader.""

In the center of the first century CE synagogue which was discovered at ancient Magdala (Migdal), a large decorated stone block was found. It is covered with decorative-symbolic elements on four sides and on the upper face as well, standing on four short legs. As the façade is carrying the Temple's Menorah, this article will suggest that all other elements are not decorative but rather symbolic and symbolizing the Temple in Jerusalem. Another conclusion is that the block was used as a base for the Torah reading table in the synagogue. These symbols show that there was a very strong connection between Galileans and Jerusalem with the Temple in its center, and that there is an important reflection and relations between Jewish symbolism and Jewish heavenly mysticism as it appears in ancient Jewish sources, both Biblical and non-Biblical.

Samuel ben Meir ha-Levi Abulafia es un personaje destacado de la historia de los judíos en los reinos peninsulares. Ejerció como tesorero del rey castellano Pedro I y fue el fundador de la Sinagoga del Tránsito.  La fundación de una sinagoga de tal tamaño, belleza y lujo debió suponer para Samuel ha-Levi todo un logro político y personal, que seguramente fue percibido como una proeza por los vecinos de la aljama toledana. En el contexto del complejo sistema de mecenazgo medieval las fundaciones buscaban ser símbolos de nobleza y prestigio dentro del escenario de poder de la sociedad del momento. El análisis de los símbolos de los que se sirvió y rodeó Samuel ha-Levi en su sinagoga esbozan un retrato, no solo de como él se veía a sí mismo, sino también de como él quiso ser percibido y recordado. Este artículo busca analizar la imagen pública que Samuel quiso proyectar, basada en el análisis de la sinagoga y sus textos epigráficos.

Samuel ben Meir ha-Levi Abulafia is a prominent figure in the history of Iberian Jews. He acted as the treasurer of Castilian king Pedro 1st, and funded the Toledo synagogue known as Synagogue of the Transito. The foundation of a building of such size, beauty and luxury must have meant one of Samuel ha-Levi’s major personal and political achievements, and must have been perceived as a main deed by his contemporary fellow Jews. In the context of the complex medieval patronage system, foundations were meant to symbolize nobility and prestige within the power scene of society. The analysis of the symbols utilized by Samuel ha-Levi in the synagogue he founded shows the way in which he viewed himself, as well as the way he wanted to be viewed and remembered. This essay, based in the analysis of the synagogue and its epigraphy, intends to examine the public image that Samuel ha-Levi attempted to project.

Edited by Josef Meri

The Routledge Handbook of Muslim-Jewish Relations invites readers to deepen their understanding of the historical, social, cultural, and political themes that impact modern-day perceptions of interfaith dialogue. The volume is designed to illuminate positive encounters between Muslims and Jews as well as points of conflict within a historical framework. Among other goals, the volume seeks to correct common misperceptions about the history of Muslim-Jewish relations by complicating familiar political narratives to include dynamics such as the cross-influence of literary and intellectual traditions. Reflecting unique and original collaborations between internationally renowned contributors, the book is intended to spark further collaborative and constructive conversation and scholarship in the academy and beyond.

The Magdala synagogue ashlar is an excellent test case for the ways we interpret Roman period iconography, and particularly that of ancient Judaism.  The interplay of text and artifact is particularly significant within Jewish contexts, where a wide range of both visual and literary sources are available.  This essay discusses the circumstances of this discovery and recent interpretation, before offering my own tentative interpretation of this artifact.

in the initial volume of Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde. It is here, for one of the first times, that "the Jew" was not understood as a singular type, nor was the Jew acquired by the colonizer. We can only understand why Picart was so interested in portraying the Jew as two separate types by considering his work in the context of extra-aesthetic factors. Picart's imagery functions as a critique of the mass influx of a second "type" of Jew, the Ashkenazi or east European Jew, who dominated Amsterdam by the eighteenth century.

"There is simply no other book like this. Enlightening, accessible, and superbly written in a clear and jargon-free style, it makes a much-needed contribution to our knowledge of Jewish visual and literary cultures. It will no doubt be a coveted volume."--Maya Balakirsky Katz, Touro College

The love of books in the Jewish tradition extends back over many centuries, and the ways of interpreting those books are as myriad as the traditions themselves. Skies of Parchment, Seas of Ink offers the first full survey of Jewish illuminated manuscripts, ranging from their origins in the Middle Ages to the present day. Featuring some of the most beautiful examples of Jewish art of all time--including hand-illustrated versions of the Bible, the Haggadah, the prayer book, marriage documents, and other beloved Jewish texts--the book introduces readers to the history of these manuscripts and their interpretation.

Edited by Marc Michael Epstein with contributions from leading experts, this sumptuous volume features a lively and informative text, showing how Jewish aesthetic tastes and iconography overlapped with and diverged from those of Christianity, Islam, and other traditions. Featured manuscripts were commissioned by Jews and produced by Jews and non-Jews over many centuries, and represent Eastern and Western perspectives and the views of both pietistic and liberal communities across the Diaspora, including Europe, Israel, the Middle East, and Africa.

Magnificently illustrated with pages from hundreds of manuscripts, many previously unpublished or rarely seen, Skies of Parchment, Seas of Ink offers surprising new perspectives on Jewish life, presenting the books of the People of the Book as never before.

Marc Michael Epstein is the Mattie M. Paschall (1899) and Norman Davis Chair of Religion and Visual Culture at Vassar College. His most recent book, "The Medieval Haggadah: Art, Narrative, and Religious Imagination", was named one of the best books of 2011 by the "Times Literary Supplement". Eva Frojmovic is lecturer in the history of art at the University of Leeds. Jenna Siman Jacobs is curatorial manager at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Hartley Lachter is the Berman Chair in Jewish Studies at Lehigh University. Shalom Sabar is professor of folklore and the arts at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Raymond P. Scheindlin is professor of medieval Hebrew literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Ágnes Vet? teaches religion at Vassar College. Susan Vick is curator of Judaica at Goldsmith Museum of Chizuk Amuno Congregation in Baltimore and associate professor of art history at the University of Maryland. Barbara Wolff is a New York-based illuminator of manuscripts using medieval methods. Diane Wolfthal is the David and Caroline Minter Chair in the Humanities at Rice University.

Ceramic lamps were produced at the Hellenistic and Roman-period village of Shiḥin. After an overview of archaeological evidence for lamp manufacturing in the village and elsewhere, we show that Shiḥin produced the well-known wheel-made Herodian lamp and at least two types of mould-made lamps for local distribution, including the Darom or ‘Southern’ lamp. Furthermore, many of the moulds for these lamps were carved into waste from a nearby chalk vessel industry. Darom style lamps were made in both northern and southern Palestine at the same time. Anastasia Shapiro’s study follows with a petrographic analysis of a corpus of lamp fragments from Galilean (including Gamla) and Judean sites.

The Arch of Titus, constructed circa 81 CE under the emperor
Domitian, commemorates the victory of the general, then
emperor Titus in the Jewish War of 66–74 CE. Located on
Rome’s Via Sacra, the Arch has been a “place of memory”
for Romans, Christians and Jews since antiquity. This essay
explores the history of a Jewish counter-memory of a bas
relief within the arch that depicts the triumphal procession
of the Jerusalem Temple treasures into Rome in 71 CE. At
least since the early modern period, Jews—as well as British
Protestants—came to believe that the menorah bearers of this
relief represent Jews, and not Roman triumphadors. This essay
addresses the history of this widespread belief, particularly
during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and continuing
in contemporary Israel.

Cantor Yossele Rosenblatt was offered an opportunity that would make any performer swoon: a star role in the ground-breaking film The Jazz Singer (1927). Yet Rosenblatt refused this artistic opportunity of a lifetime. This paper contextualizes Rosenblatt’s baffling decision, by exploring one possible relationship between the arts and law; in this case—the art of storytelling and the Jewish legal system. The study demonstrates where the two pursuits tread separate, unlinked paths to a common end. This vector is refracted through the lens of liturgical performances outside the religious synagogue service; specifically the propriety of cantorial concerts featuring prayers from the High Holy Days. This issue is addressed in legal writing and in storytelling, each modality using its own tools to tackle the trend. It is noted that legal systems without effective enforcement mechanisms—such as Jewish law in the late modern period—could use arts as compensatory media for achieving societal order. More significantly, however, arts and law are not umbilically connected; each cultural creation independently strives to fashion society.

La  importancia que  tiene el relato de la creación del mundo (Gen, 1-2) para judíos, cristianos y musulmanes, se refleja en diferentes manifestaciones artísticas medievales. Este artículo analiza algunas de las representaciones a que dio lugar dicho relato, y al uso diverso del lenguaje artístico - figurativo y no figurativo – a que recurrieron los artistas. La segunda parte del artículo se centra en el examen de la Sinagoga del Tránsito de Toledo y propone, a través del estudio conjunto de decoración y epigrafía,  y de algunos referentes culturales judíos, una interpretación que descubre en sus muros una representación no figurativa y simbólica del capítulo primero del Génesis.
The significance that the account of Creation in Gen 1-2 has for Jews, Christians and Moslems is evident in different medieval art works. This essay analyses some of the art works derived from this narrative, as well as the use by artists of figurative and non-figurative artistic language in portraying it.  The second section of the essay focuses on the Synagogue of the Transito of Toledo. There, I put forward an interpretation based on the joint analysis of decoration and epigraphy, as well as of some cultural Jewish elements. It unveils a non-figurative and symbolic depiction of first chapter of Genesis represented in the synagogue’s walls.

On the eve of Passover, April 19, 1943, Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto staged a now legendary revolt against their Nazi oppressors. Since that day, the deprivation and despair of life in the ghetto and the dramatic uprising of its inhabitants have captured the American cultural imagination. The Warsaw Ghetto in American Art and Culture looks at how this place and its story have been remembered in fine art, film, television, radio, theater, fiction, poetry, and comics. The book explores seventy years’ worth of artistic representations of the ghetto and revolt to understand why they became and remain touchstones in the American mind, including iconic works such as Leon Uris’s best-selling novel Mila 18, Roman Polanski’s Academy Award–winning film The Pianist, and Rod Serling’s teleplay In the Presence of Mine Enemies, as well as accounts in the American Jewish Yearbook and the New York Times, the art of Samuel Bak and Arthur Szyk, and the poetry of Yala Korwin and Charles Reznikoff. In probing these works, I pursue key questions of Jewish identity: What links artistic representations of the ghetto to the Jewish diaspora? How is art politicized or depoliticized? Why have Americans made such a strong cultural claim on the uprising? The Warsaw Ghetto in American Art and Culture shows the importance of the ghetto as a site of memory and creative struggle and reveals how this seminal event and locale served as a staging ground for the forging of Jewish American identity.

This study addresses the figural mosaic floors of the late third or early fourth century synagogue at Khirbet Wadi Hamam and the fifth century synagogue at Horvat Huqoq. While mosaic floors were common in Palestinian synagogues in Late Antiquity, Wadi Hamam and Huqoq differ significantly from the compositional norm. Instead of the typical arrangement in which Biblical figurative scenes were laid in the nave, both of these synagogues chose to include figurative panels in their aisles. Additionally, the synagogues at Wadi Hamam and Huqoq are the only buildings from Late Antiquity to include scenes from the life of the Biblical Judge Samson in their mosaic programs. Although synagogue mosaic floors have been studied extensively for many years, these floors, being recently excavated, have not received much scholarly attention. The similarity in composition and subject matter between the two synagogues links the two villages and brings to light many questions regarding the ways in which Jewish cultural identity found expression in these mosaic pavements.
The first section of this thesis establishes the shortcomings in previous scholarship on Jewish mosaics in Palestine, specifically in the use of problematic labels such as “Hellenistic” and “Romanized” that scholars have relied upon. This section argues for the necessity of a postcolonial approach to the study of synagogue mosaics in Late Antiquity, and to understand the mosaics produced in Jewish contexts in Palestine as hybridized evidence of a shared cultural milieu. The second and third section offers an in-depth discussion of the synagogues and villages of Huqoq and Wadi Hamam to better understand the connection between the two sites and the place they occupy in the wider empire. Finally, the fourth section addresses the Samson mosaics of both synagogues, analyzing their compositional and stylistic precedents to establish their hybridized use of Greco-Roman artistic traditions. By combining the elite identity of their colonizers with their own religious and cultural past, the mosaics of Huqoq and Wadi Hamam embodied the strength and power of their past Jewish identity, while at the same time asserting themselves as powerful participants in the Roman empire.

Exodus in the Jewish Experience: Echoes and Reverberations investigates how the Exodus has been, and continues to be, a crucial source of identity for both Jews and Judaism. It explores how the Exodus has functioned as the primary model from which Jews have created theological meaning and historical self-understanding. It probes how and why the Exodus has continued to be vital to Jews throughout the unfolding of the Jewish experience. As an interdisciplinary work, it incorporates contributions from a range of Jewish Studies scholars in order to explore the Exodus from a variety of vantage points. It addresses such topics as: the Jewish reception of the biblical text of Exodus; the progressive unfolding of the Exodus in the Jewish interpretive tradition; the religious expression of the Exodus as ritual in Judaism; and the Exodus as an ongoing lens of self-understanding for both the State of Israel and contemporary Judaism. The essays are guided by a common goal: to render comprehensible how the re-envisioning of Exodus throughout the unfolding of the Jewish experience has enabled it to function for thousands of years as the central motif for the Jewish people.

In my monograph In Illuminating in Micrography, I analyze the Catalan Micrography Maḥzor, a fourteenth-century Barcelonan manuscript in Israel’s National Library.
Decorated with micrography, the Jewish scribal art typical of Bible manuscripts, this maḥzor, which includes a rich cycle of twenty three full-page panel micrography decorations, is unique.

This essay has benefited from the thoughtful comments of Alan Wallach and the responses of audiences to earlier versions presented at the World Congress of Jewish Studies, the University of Miami, and the Association for Jewish Studies annual conference. Thanks also go to the two anonymous referees for Ars Judaica for their important notes. I am indebted to the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture for funding my research. I extend warm appreciation to Jack Levine, with whom I shared a delightful afternoon soon after his ninetieth birthday.

The article investigates the semantics of the leonine reliefs on the Torah ark of 1522/23 of the synagogue built by Jewish exiles from Catalonia in Rome by permission of Pope Leo X. The proposed interpretation of the lion is derived from the messianic symbolism of the lions in the Bible, Jewish iconography, and Christian Renaissance culture in Rome during Leo’s pontificate.

Resumen: El presente artículo parte de las primeras definiciones dadas en la historiografía artística sobre el concepto de arte judío y sigue el rastro a su evolución a lo largo del tiempo, desde su formulación a nuestros días, desde el período de la Ilustración a la creación del Estado de Israel. Pretende hacernos comprobar la extraordinaria dificultad de cerrar una definición simple, pero intenta darnos los resortes necesarios para poder avanzarla. Se analizan por ello, los tres elementos básicos que intervienen en su esencia: la conciencia nacional, el artista y su obra. Interrogando a cada uno de ellos por la posesión de una clave única que permita esa definición, se obtendrá como resultado la idea de que ésta no es posible sin el concurso de todos al unísono. La definición del arte judío, para la edad moderna y contemporánea, es en realidad la búsqueda de la consistencia de un arte judío a través de su probable carácter nacional y de la naturaleza otorgada a esta práctica por la adscripción cultural al judaísmo de sus artistas, o bien de la posible peculiaridad de las obras consideradas como tal. No se avanza una definición cerrada, pero se indica con claridad que en la época moderna y contemporánea es el concepto de nacionalidad el que sirve de aglutinante a todos los demás factores posibles. El artículo realiza una concienzuda revisión de los textos más significativos y definitorios dentro de la historiografía actual sobre el arte judío. Abstract: This paper begins with the first definitions found in art historiography related to the concept of Jewish art and traces their evolution over time, from their conception to the present day, from the period of the Enlightenment to the creation of the State of Israel. This work verifies the extraordinary difficulty in settling on a simple definition, but also tries to provide the necessary means to advance that definition. To that end, the three basic elements influencing its essence are analysed: national consciousness, the artist and the artwork. An investigation of each element to determine which possesses the unique key that would make it possible to establish a definition results in the conclusion that this is not possible without including all three. A definition of Jewish art for contemporary times entails a search for consistency in that art in its likely national character and the attributes conferred upon the practice by the artists' cultural affiliation with Judaism or by the * Programa Salvador de Madariaga, PR2011-0320.

Examining a selection of modern urban spaces, this article describes how
the history of medieval Ashkenazi Jewry is displayed in Germany today, as well as
who displays it and for whom. The preoccupation of Germany with its Jewish past
is not trivial; it is an institutionalized trend designed not only to teach the public
about local medieval history, but also to educate it to re-include medieval Jews into
its history.