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2003 ISSUE
THE ARTS IN JUDAISM – The First 3000 Years
Felice Pazner MalkinThe writer's documentary travelling exhibition from Meitar College of Judaism as Culture is the source of this article. Jewish Art, the Arts in Judaism, and Judaica
A “Jewish work of art” is either a work by an artist whose Jewishness clearly influenced his or her art, or a work by a Jewish artist that has had a significant place in Jewish culture. Just as the work of French artists is called “French art,” so the work of Jewish artists is Jewish art. The Frenchness or Jewishness of a work of art is not defined by content or form or by the school or movement to which the artist belonged. Picasso, who lived in both France and Spain, is thought of as both French and Spanish. Likewise, Chagall and Soutine belong to both the French and Jewish art world, and Ben Shahn to American and Jewish art.
“The arts in Judaism” is the totality of works of art that played a role in Jewish cultural life from Biblical times to the present. The Jewish art debate takes in philosophical questions, religious laws, controversy over how figurative art is to be interpreted, as well as the theories of art critics. The Bible provides detailed descriptions of works of art that played an important role in Israelite religio-cultural life. We can still see works that have survived from the Hellenistic, medieval, Renaissance and Enlightenment periods. Jews, influenced by their surroundings, have been involved in all the artistic genres – painting, sculpture, mosaic, fresco, architecture, the design of religious and household implements, manuscript illumination.
Most museums, however, do not display Jewish art. They show collections of Judaica – the vessels, implements and manuscripts used in Jewish ritual, kiddush goblets, candelabra, perfume caskets, etrog containers, Passover and Purim dishes, circumcision instruments, ketubot, arks of the Law, and the accoutrements of the scrolls of the Law etc. Judaica is a term that encompasses all these articles, but in most cases, displaying them as “Jewish art” falsely represents the circumstances and content of Jewish cultural life. It is interesting to note that most bookshops the world over house shelves of art books on French and Italian art, African and American art, but no section devoted to, or books on, Jewish painting and sculpture.
The style and form of Judaica items are frequently borrowed from non-Jewish counterparts. A perfume “tower” resembles a Christian censer, a non-Jewish German candelabrum becomes a standard Sabbath candelabrum for German Jews. A common ornamental casket and wine cup are converted to Jewish ritual use by having “And you shall rejoice in your festival” and “Blessed is the fruit of the vine,” respectively, engraved on them.
From the Biblical period onwards, some Jewish thinkers have opposed figurative painting and sculpture on the authority of the Second Commandment, which forbids the making of art objects that would be worshipped as simulcra of the Divinity. This has been interpreted as a wholesale ban on any Jew making or displaying the image of man or woman, a ban that even the Ultra Orthodox have not adhered to (witness the photos of themselves that rabbis Schneerson and Ovadia Yosef allow their followers to display).
In fact, from the time the twelve tribes first coalesced into a nation during their wandering in the wilderness, and through every subsequent period of Jewish history, Jews have allowed themselves to ignore the Commandment and so enabled Jewish art to develop.
Modern Jewish Art
Throughout the contemporary Jewish world, art retains its central position in cultural life. Israeli museums display art collections and most private homes have artwork on their walls. The school system sets aside several hours a week to artistic activities, including teaching the techniques of painting and sculpture, the history of art and art depicted in the Bible. Jewish universities have art history departments, general and Jewish. Museums in Paris and New York display works by Jewish artists. The Israeli media covers new art exhibitions the world over.
Recent research has uncovered more evidence of the role played by figurative art and sculpture in the evolution of Israelite-Jewish civilization and culture. The influence of those who believe in strict adherence to the Second Commandment is diminishing. All communities of Jews, except those living under Muslim regimes, have had members who emphasized the positive role of figurative art.
The closing years of the 19th century finally freed Jewish artists from the obstacles that had hampered their full integration into the western art world, for up until that point, almost all commissions had come either from the church or the aristocracy. As the free market expanded, and the Impressionist revolution got under way, new possibilities opened up to Jewish artists. The Impressionists aimed at rendering nature’s own form, rather than constrain it to some man-made ideal. Most Jewish artists, having just broken away from a sacred tradition and traditional way of life, found appeal in this individualism. Camille Pissarro, a Spanish Jew, was one of the key figures in the movement. He was joined by Max Lieberman in Germany, Lesser Uri in Poland, Izak Levitan in Russia, and William Rothenstein in England. Jews like Soutine, Pasquin, Modigliani, Epstein, Orlof, Zadkine, and Lifschitz played a significant role in the development of subsequent art genres.
The Importance of Sculpture in Israelite Culture
The Bible, as the foundation and repository of Jewry’s collective memory, features many descriptions of works of sculpture and figurative art.
At the entrance to Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem stood twelve cast oxen, bearing on their backs the great bronze “sea,” a huge open water tank that 1 Kings 7:25 describes: “It stood upon twelve oxen, three facing north, three facing west, three facing south, and three facing east: with the tank resting on them and their haunches all turned inward.” In the shrine itself, two huge figures of kheruvim (cherubim) were erected, with human heads and vast wings spreading from wall to wall. 1 Kings 6:23-28: “In the shrine he made two kheruvim of olive wood, each ten cubits high. [One] had a wing measuring five cubits and another wing measuring five cubits, so that the spread from wingtip to wingtip was ten cubits, and the wingspread of the other kheruv was also ten cubits. The two kheruvim were of the same measurements and proportions. The height of the one kheruv was ten cubits and so was that of the other. He placed the kheruvim inside the inner chamber [ie the Shrine]. Since the wings of the kheruvim were extended, a wing of the one touched the one wall and a wing of the other, the other wall, while the wings [also] touched each other in the center of the chamber. He overlaid the kheruvim with gold.”
These two kheruvim were an enlarged version of the original pair that, Exodus 25: 18-22 tells us, the sculptor Betzalel fashioned for the tabernacle in the wilderness, in obedience to Yahweh: “make two kheruvim of gold – make them hammered work – at the two ends of the cover. Make one kheruv at one end and the other kheruv at the other end… The kheruvim shall have their wings spread out above, shielding the cover with their wings. They shall face each other, the faces of the kheruvim being turned toward the cover…and I will impart to you – from above the cover, from between the two kheruvim which are on top of the Ark of the Law.”
The walls of Solomon’s Temple were also hung with embroidered tapestries of kheruvim. A bronze serpent, held to be the work of Moses himself, is referred to twice: “Moses made a bronze serpent and mounted it on a standard” (Numbers 21:82), and again, when Hezekiah ordered it destroyed: “He also broke into pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until that time the Israelites had been offering sacrifices to it” (Kings 18:4). For two-thirds of the time the Temple stood in Jerusalem, a statue of Asherah, the Canaanite mother-goddess, remained in it. There were also images of various animals: “And on the insets between the frames were lions, oxen and kheruvim. Above the frames was a stand; and both above and below the lions and oxen were spirals of hammered metal” (1 Kings 7:29). “On its surface – on its sides – and on its insets [Hiram] engraved kheruvim, lions and palm trees, as the clear space on each allowed” (1 Kings 7:36).
In the other Israelite temples dedicated to Yahweh, at Dan and Beth El, works of figurative art stood at the very heart of the cult: golden or gilded bullocks represented the God who had “delivered Israel from Egypt,” as King Jeroboam explained when he reiterated the words of Aaron the first High Priest. The Bible credits Aaron with having made the very first statue in the history of Jewish art. This was the Golden Bull fashioned at the foot of Mount Sinai from the jewelry and personal valuables offered by the people who then celebrated its completion with wild rejoicing.
Prophets and Biblical historians inform us that throughout the Biblical period, sculpture and carving were necessary crafts, practiced in every Israelite settlement. Figures of Baal, Ashtoreth and Asherah were erected alongside the altar on rural high places (bamot) and on sacred hills and under sacred trees. Homes had their teraphim, figurines of household gods of healing and welfare, which their owners would take with them on long journeys.
Archaeological excavation in the Middle East confirms Biblical reference. Fertility goddess figurines have been found in Israelite settlements and dwelling houses; bulls and kheruvim, both free-standing and in relief, have been found decorating the palaces of Israelite kings, eg the ivory reliefs in Ahab’s palace in his capital city.
The Bible portrays cultural reality, even if it is not always provable. Given that it is an amalgamation of documents from many sources and geographical regions, its veracity may reasonably be said to be internally corroborated.
Art in Judaism
The figurative and plastic arts fulfilled an important role in Israelite religio-cultural life. The Bible mentions three sculptors: Aaron makes the golden bull; Betzalel the kheruvim, Moses the bronze serpent. Figurative art since then has decorated temples to Yahweh, private homes, bath-houses and theaters. The decoration of synagogues in the Second Temple period was influenced by both Jewish tradition and by that of the artist’s host country. Jewish art has always been receptive to outside influence.
Archaeologist Benno Rotenberg unearthed a twelve centimeter long copper snake with gilded head at the Timna copper mines in the Negev desert. In ancient times Timna was not only a center of Midianite civilization, but was on the route of the Israelites’ wanderings under Moses. To arrive at Etzion Geber, the Israelites must have passed through or close to Timna. Pottery shards found beside the snake date to the end of the second millennium B.C.E., the period of the Exodus. The Bible provides an account of the relationships that formed between the twelve tribes and the tribes dwelling in the areas they passed through. A priest of Midian became Moses’ father-in-law and advisor on strategy.
The snake was apparently part of the cult of the Egyptian goddess Takhtor, a goddess of the mines. Takhtor variously assumed the form of a woman, cow, cat, a viper with the horns of a cow carrying the sun on its head. A second snake, Canaanite, and 20 centimeters long, was later found on Tel Mubrak on the coast of Israel and a third at Canaanite Hazor. Snake figures were a common feature in the civilizations among which the Israelites lived and it is likely that Moses was imitating contemporary custom.
The authors of the Bible do not appear to have had any problem depicting Moses as a figure-maker, even though there was a prohibition on reproducing the image of any living thing in nature: “be most careful…not to act wickedly and make for yourselves a sculptured image in any likeness whatever, the form of a man or a woman, the form of any beast that flies in the sky, the form of any thing that creeps on the ground, the form of any fish that is in the waters below the earth.” (Deuteronomy 4:16). Moses is but one of many examples of the Israelites’ ideological and cultural pluralism.
Two Carved Images Traditionally Used To Represent Yahweh in the Biblical Period
Against the background of decorating the tabernacle and temple with kheruvim, lions and other animals, Jeroboam, son of Nevat, proposes a return to Israel’s glorious origins and one of its most ancient traditions by repeating the choice made by Aaron, the man appointed High Priest of Israel by Moses, to represent Yahweh as a gilded young bull. Jeroboam, elected by a Yahwist prophet to lead the rebellion against King Rehoboam, who had been overseeing a regime of oppression and cruelty, wins the backing of the Israelites to split the kingdom into two. He offers the people of the new majority kingdom new-old figures symbolizing their identification with an ancient religious heritage borne in the cataclysmic events at Sinai. At that time, too, the people had wanted to represent their God-deliverer by a bull, but Moses had sent out forces to prevent them from doing so and three thousand bull-worshippers had been slaughtered in a single day.
Jeroboam does not build temples to Ashtoreth and the Sidonian gods as the prophets tell us Solomon had done. He raises two temples to Yahweh at two sites of ancient sanctity on the edges of his kingdom, Dan and Beth El, and in each he erects a gilded sculpture rendering Yahweh in the earliest and oldest form – as a golden young bull.
The account of these events given by the historians of the Books of Kings ascribes other motives for Jeroboam’s actions: “Jeroboam said to himself: ‘if these people still go up to offer sacrifices at the House of the Lord in Jerusalem, their heart will turn back to their master, King Rehoboam of Judah…’ ” (1 Kings 12:28-32) “So the King… made two young bulls. He said to the people ‘You have been going up to Jerusalem long enough. This is your God, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt’. He set up one in Beth El and placed the other in Dan…and he established a festival on the fifteenth day of the eighth month in imitation of the festival in Judah.” (1 Kings 12:28-32).
Throughout most of the Israelite period, the bull tradition wins out over the kheruv tradition. Both are ways of representing Yahweh, but whereas the kheruv stands in a place where abstract Yahweh is immanent, the bull stands for Yahweh Himself. Both images fly in the face of the curse on “anyone who makes any sculptured or molten image” (Deut. 27:15), but instead obey the tradition, as old as the tabernacle in the wilderness, of rendering Yahweh in man-made images and figures. Seen in this light, Jeroboam has invented nothing. He is following in Aaron’s footsteps and the people of Israel see nothing wrong in the figures he sets up, figures their holy scriptures have told them about all their lives, even crediting Moses as the maker of one of them.
While the bull is commonly used to represent divinity in Egyptian culture, the kheruv seems to have been borrowed from Mesopotamia. Kheruvim are hybrid creatures, with the torso of a beast, the wings of an eagle, and the head of a man or lion or stag – or even of an eagle when they were known as gryphons. They appear, either free-standing or in relief, from the second millennium B.C.E., in many locations around the Near and Middle East. First found on walls in Minoan Knossos and in Mycenean sites, they are carried from the Aegean into Egypt and Canaan and further east and north. At Megiddo, in the collection of ivory dating back to the 13th century B.C.E., there is a crouched gryphon with outspread wings. In Phoenician culture they have been found at Arsalan-Tash (Makhadata) and Nimrud (Makhlekh). In Samaria, in the ruins of the Ten Tribes’ capital city, we have both Egyptian-style kheruvim and the Syro-Aramean style, with the characteristic head ornamentation.
Historically, it seems likely that the Bible’s authors and editors knew well the failure of Moses’ attempt at Sinai to suppress the worship of pagan gods and to expunge the use of idols and carved figures from Israelite cult. Destroying the golden bull and slaughtering its worshippers had not prevented the bull’s return to a central role in Israelite religion and culture. Moses again unleashed force on the Israelites when, approaching the Promised Land, they had come into contact with its Canaanite inhabitants and had at once started bowing down to their gods: “So Moses said to Israel’s officials, ‘Each of you slay those of his men who attached themselves to Baal-Peor’ ” (Numbers 25:5). It failed the second time too. The people soon set up their figures at the ancient cultic centers of Beth El and Jerusalem, and crafters of sacred figures were held in high esteem.
External Influences on Israelite Religious Art
In every religious cult the figurative arts play complex roles in the lives of artist and audience. Philo of Alexandria perceived the kheruvim in the Holy of Holies as representing the dual nature of the abstract divinity – male and female, wrath and loving kindness. The prophets of Israel thundered against Israelites who worshipped pagan idols as gods of great power “with eyes that cannot see and ears that cannot hear.”
In these encounters of worshipper and image, the artistic-aesthetic experience stimulated by the image fuses with the worshipper’s emotions to create the religious experience of a personal encounter with God, come down from heaven to be with His believer on earth. This is witnessed today in the fervor of worshippers before statues and icons of Jesus and Mary, as though statue and icon were themselves divinities and not merely the rendering of artistic imagination.
All world religions have texts that conjure up a divine reality and create a personal image for their god. In the Biblical period, Israelite art was influenced by the art of its neighbors. The Biblical historian makes a strong point of this in his account of Solomon’s reign. Solomon commissions Phoenician artist, Hiram of Tyre, to help with internal design elements of his great temple in Jerusalem to Yahweh. Hiram, son of a celebrated Tyrian artist and an Israelite mother from the tribe of Dan, embodies the influences exerted by Middle Eastern art on the art of this relatively new kingdom. His skills and ideas could not have failed to influence the work of Jewish artists working on the site.
Although Hiram worked on the site of the Jerusalem Temple, the actual casting of vessels and figures was carried out in specially constructed furnaces in the desert: “So Hiram finished all the work that he had been doing for King Solomon on the House of the Lord” (1 Kings 7:40). “The King had them cast in earthen molds in the plain of the Jordan between Succot and Zaretan” (1 Kings 7:46).
Many items of sculpture from this period found in archaeological digs in Israel and the Middle East closely match the descriptions in the Books of Kings and elsewhere in the Bible. Art scholars such as Cecil Roth thus study both the biblical descriptions and archaeological findings to get a picture of what Jewish art was producing in the Biblical period.
Judaism and Figurative Art – a never-ending controversy
The role of figurative art was already complex in Biblical times. For all the ubiquity of sculptors and their products, there were nonetheless those who read the second commandment as an all-inclusive ban on figurative art. Deuteronomy, composed after the second commandment, probably in the time of Isaiah, extends its scope to all imagery of living things, explaining it as a consequence of God appearing to the people of Israel devoid of any form or likeness. Deuteronomy 4:12: “The Lord spoke to you out of the fire: you heard the sound of words but perceived no shape… nothing but a voice.” Deut 4:15 “…since you saw no shape when the Lord your God spoke to you at Horev out of the fire.” Deut 4:16 “…be most careful not to act wickedly and make for yourselves a sculptured image in any likeness whatever, the form of a man or a woman, the form of any beast on earth, the form of any winged bird that flies in the sky, the form of any thing that creeps on the ground, the form of any fish that is in the waters below the earth.”
The dispute continued into the following period of Judaism’s artistic development, the Hellenistic-Byzantine period, which saw the composition of the Oral Law (Mishna and Gemara) and Midrash, and the foundations of Jewish mysticism, philosophy and historiography. It is famous for its drama and poetry and for its translations of, and commentaries on, the Bible for Jews living in a Hellenistic culture and speaking no Hebrew. The figurative arts were flourishing, as was its inevitable corollary, the controversy over their presence in Judaism.
Some Talmudic sages were willing to permit the figurative arts, others were less tolerant. Rabban Gamliel, making a distinction between an image made to represent God and one made for other purposes, bathed in the bath-house at Akko even though a nude statue of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, stood in it. The Mishna (Avoda Zara 3:4) quotes Gamliel: “She [Aphrodite] came into my place, not I into hers. No one had said: let us make a bath-house as decoration for Aphrodite but let us make an Aphrodite as adornment for a bath-house… It is written: ‘their gods’ (Deut. 12:2): only what they treat as a god is forbidden; what they do not treat as a god is permitted.”
In Judaism and Art (ed D. Cassuto), Yaacov Yitzhak Leshem cites from the manuscript of the Jerusalem Talmud from the Cairo Genizah: Avoda Zara 42, 3:4: “In the time of R. Abin, people began painting on mosaic and were not prevented from doing so. In the time of R. Yokhanan Sharon, people painted murals and no-one stopped them.” Babylonian Talmud Avoda Zara 43b reports that a famous synagogue in Nehardea contains a staue of the emperor without it causing any of the sages to cease praying there. Rosh Hashana 24b states that Rav and R Samuel also visited the Nehardea synagogue.
The majority of sages felt it important to distinguish between categories of figures and images and disagree with R. Meir who wanted all images banned. “R. Meir says that all likenesses are forbidden because they are worshipped at least once a year. But the rabbis say that a likeness is not forbidden unless it holds a staff (scepter) or bird or orb in its hand. Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel adds: One that holds anything at all in its hand.” (Mishna Avoda Zara 4d)
The Shulkhan Arukh also draws a distinction between forbidden and permitted figures: “All likenesses the pagans set up in villages are forbidden because they were probably set up as idols; those in city squares are permitted – they are certainly for decorative purposes, unless they stand at the entrance to the city or hold in their hand any form of staff or bird or orb or sword or crown or ring.” (Shulkhan Arukh, Yoreh De’ah, 141:1). Also: “It is forbidden to draw the likeness of a person standing by itself… even if for decoration only. What cases are referred to here? Those that stand out (ie free-standing figures or figures in high relief), but if they are in bas-relief, such as those in tapestries or painted on walls, then it is permitted to make them… and if they are made for the purposes of teaching or instruction, all are permitted, even those that stand out.” (op cit. 141:4). “The likenesses of animals, birds, and fish, and of trees and plants and such like may be painted, even when in high relief… Some say that there is no prohibition on painting the likeness of a person or dragon unless the whole body is painted, including all organs: if only the bust or torso is painted there is no prohibition on it, neither if it is found or [you have] made [it yourself].” (Shulkhan Arukh).
Figurative art held complex meaning for many. Philo of Alexandria frequently discusses the two kheruvim in the Holy of Holies as expressive of God’s dual nature, whereas on other occasions he argues that the ornamentation of precious objects fuels the desire for riches and that restraint would promote humility (De Specialibus 23-26). The nature of art, he goes on, is to deceive and falsify, replacing reality as it is with an imagined reality, so that the observer is seduced by aesthetic beauty to prefer the false to the true (De Gigantibus 59; Quis Rerum Divinarum Heres).
From all this it is evident that Judaism encompasses conflicting beliefs and opinions on the issue of figurative art. Some of our knowledge derives from actions, such as the act of placing representational figures in the Temple, others from written sources. Aaron Kirschenbaum (Judaism and Art, Bar Ilan University Press) is therefore wrong to claim that “Judaism states that Jews must not engage in the figurative arts, nor in most of the performance and musical arts too.” While admitting that in certain periods reported by the Bible, Jews acted differently, these times he argues are now over.
The arguments of the puritans that Judaism lays down a sweeping ban on all figurative creation is refuted by the facts they themselves adduce. Not only is their authority as interpreters of halakha no greater than that of the Bible, the great Talmudic sages and the Shulkhan Arukh, but more fundamentally because no statement introduced by “Judaism says…” can stand up under the weight of evidence that Judaism has said many and very different things at different times, in different places, and in the words of different scholars. This is most definitely the case with figurative art.
The chief error of these “image breakers” lies in their basic premise that Judaism has a past that is over. Judaism is a culture, constantly changing and developing, and as such preserves past traditions in order to build on them. Each era in the arts is able to point to earlier movements as a source of its legitimacy. There are a plethora of opinions on just about every issue, and not any one agreed upon, definitive version. Pluralism was the nature of Judaism from its very outset. And the pluralism of the Biblical, Hellenistic, medieval, Renaissance and Haskalah periods is as vigorous today as it ever was.
There are claims that the Creator Himself was a portraitist: “The Holy One Blessed be He made a portrait of Jacob the Patriarch sitting in the seat of holiness” (Bamidbar Rabba 4). He also made: “a portrait of Eve, passed down from generation to generation by the leaders of each generation,” and the beauty of the world’s women is ever measured against this likeness (Bereshit Rabba 40). Some interpret the verse “There is no rock (tzur) like our God” as “There is no painter (tzayar) like our God” (Babylonian Talmud Berachot 10a). God’s act in creating man and woman in His image has also been likened to a king having a portrait made of himself. Anyone attacking the king’s portrait attacks him and his standing. Thus, shedding the blood of a creature made in the image of God attacks God’s image and standing (Mekhilta, Jethro 8).
A Flowering of the Arts in Hellenistic Period Synagogues
The frescoes in the Dura Europos synagogue and the floor mosaics of other synagogues in Israel and the Diaspora testify to the fact that the rich figurative art tradition of the Biblical period continued into the Hellenistic period and played a central role in Jewish religious life.
After the destruction of the Second Temple and especially after Hellenistic armies and culture had conquered the Middle East, the Canaanite cults disappeared and with them the figures of their gods that had been a feature of Jewish population centers. Even prior to the Temple being destroyed, synagogues were already being built throughout Israel and the Diaspora as communal centers for worship and study. It was long thought that figurative art was confined to floor mosaics, found in synagogues as early as the fourth century B.C.E. The discovery in the 1930s of the Dura Europos, dating to the third century C.E, its walls painted with frescoes on Biblical themes, crowded with representations of Biblical characters, profoundly altered that perception.
Dura Europos is situated on the Syria-Iraq border, but when the synagogue was built, the border was that which divided the Roman and Parthian empires. The synagogue was built against the town wall and, with war imminent, the Romans filled it with dry desert sand as a reinforcement. The sand preserved the frescoes inside for 1500 years. The Romans are thus to be thanked for one of the most splendid manifestations of early Jewish art extant.
The style of the fresco is Hellenistic; the theme, Biblical. They represent scenes such as the Binding of Isaac, the Exodus, Crossing the Red Sea, Moses in the Bulrushes. In the latter, the woman who finds Moses is depicted naked. There is argument as to whether she is the Egyptian princess, a servant, or Aphrodite in the role of the Biblical heroine.
The technical skill of the frescoes is of a very high order. Given that the town was on the desert frontier of two empires and far from any center of art, there must have been a rich artistic tradition in which the painters of the day were trained.
The predominant artistic culture of the time was Greek-Hellenistic. At Duras Europos there is not only a Hellenizing style, but also motifs from Greek mythology and from Eastern myths in Hellenistic dress (the sun god in his chariot in the zodiac circle is one such example).
Hellenistic influence on Jewish art was also prominent in Herod’s restoration of the Jerusalem Temple and in other Jewish public architecture (the synagogue at the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron, Herodion, amphitheaters at Bet She’an and Caeserea etc). Herod erected on the Temple Mount public buildings required for a Greek polis – a gymnasion, a theater, a hippodrome and a synagogue. These institutions, used by the Hellenistic Jewish community of the city, were decorated in typical Greek style with statuary on Greek mythological subjects.
There are numerous other examples of the penetration of Greek mythological elements into synagogue art. The synagogue at Hamat Tiberias (fourth century B.C.E.) displays a zodiac circle with Helios the sun god and his chariot at the center. The most complete representation of Helios at the center of a zodiac circle is in the floor mosaic of the Bet Alpha synagogue, where Helios is shown driving the four horses of the sun chariot. In the zodiac circle of Tzippori synagogue floor mosaic, the sun itself is the driver, one of its rays penetrating into the chariot as though to drive the horses.
The fact that these myths made their way into Jewish folklore is evident in many passages of Talmud and Midrash. One of these passages, in Shemot Rabba, even mentions one of these numerous pictures of a purple-clad god driving a sun chariot: “From the purple coloring it is the sun god on high, driving the chariot and bringing sunlight to the world…” (see Ziona Grossmark’s piece in Free Judaism 11-12).
Continuity in Jewish Art, its Influence on Church Art and Jewish Art’s Openness to Outside Influences
In the History of Jewish Art, Cecil Roth summarizes the research into the influence of synagogue art on Christian Church art and thence on European art in general. Frescoes such as those found in Dura Europos are seen to have exerted an influence on early church art, whose effect in turn is evident in most medieval art and thence in Renaissance art. Roth sees a parallel between the development of church music from synagogue music and the development of the figurative arts in the two religions.
Betzalel Narkiss, who wrote and edited an expanded edition of the Roth History, perceived a clear continuity in Jewish art from the Hellenistic-Byzantine period through to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, a continuity in style, thematic motif (the Hand of God for instance) and in the treatment of the motifs. The same thematic and formal motifs from synagogues built around the middle of the first millennium C.E. reoccur in makhzorim, haggadot and ketubot of the first centuries of the second millennium – ie 500 to 700 and more years later.
According to Narkiss, the links between the art of the two periods – the manuscripts written and illuminated in the earlier period that might have been known to, and have an influence on, 12th century Jewish artists in Spain, Italy and southern France – have simply not yet been found. We know that we possess but a handful of the manuscripts composed in the first millennium C.E. and the early centuries of the second. Of the thousands of illuminated haggadot, for instance which we know were in use in that long stretch of time before the invention of printing, no more than twelve have come down to us.
From the beginning of the second millennium C.E., Jewish art in its diasporas takes on ever more strongly the color of its host society’s art, both Muslim and Christian. Throughout the Islamic world, from Iraq and Yemen to Spain, Jews worked in the fields of letters, literature and philosophy and, like their Muslim rulers (Iran excepted), almost totally shunned the figurative arts. In Christian lands, Jews spoke and wrote in the local vernacular and their art, in illuminating makhzorim, haggadot and ketubot, and other types of manuscript, shows clearly the influence of their surroundings.
Examples of this influence can be witnessed in many scenes: in the 1328 Golden Haggadah, produced in northern Spain, the Egyptians pursuing the Israelites are depicted as medieval knights; in the depiction of Moses and the Burning Bush from the Rylands Haggadah composed in 14th century Catalonia; in a scene of the Beasts Listening to David Playing the Harp from a 13th century manuscript from north-east France (Rothschild collection); in a scene of Moses receiving the Tablets of the Law surrounded by Israelites (where the women have animal heads) in the 14th century Triple Makhzor from Southern Germany; Moses Leading the Children of Israel, from the Kaufman Haggadah of 14th century Spain; the Children of Israel leaving Egypt from the Brothers’ Haggadah of 14th century Catalonia; Jews going up to Jerusalem from the 1328 Bird’s Head Hagaddah from Southern Germany; Moses and the Tablets of the Law from the Sarajevo Hagaddah from 12th century Northern Spain.
Jews in the Islamic world almost totally shunned the figurative arts, drawing their authority from a strict reading of the second commandment. Maimonides (1135-1204), born in Spain and living for most of his career in Egypt, laid down that: “It is forbidden to make any image for ornament – even though it is not for idol-worship, for it is said: ‘You shall not make with me gods of silver and gold’ (Exodus 20:23): That is to say, [it is forbidden to make] figures of silver and gold even if intended only for decoration so that those easily led astray shall not think they are for idol worship. But it is only the human form that we are forbidden to make for decoration. Thus, the figure of a human being must not be rendered neither in wood, nor plaster, nor stone” (Laws and Statutes of the Heathen 3: 10-11).
Those sections of Jewry that came under the sway of Kabbalah, as it spread eastwards from Western Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries, did not make forms and images in the spirit of Kabbalah, apart from the magical amulets of Practical Kabbalah. These sometimes bore an eye or hand composed of letters, Biblical verses or magical formulae.
Both in prohibiting and permitting the figurative arts, Diaspora Jews displayed their receptiveness to the host culture. From Iran to the United States, and in every genre and medium from poetry to silversmithing, Jewish artistic production bears the imprint of the surrounding culture. An exception is the Ashkenazi Jews who fled the Rhineland and Western Europe as the Crusades passed through on their way to the Holy Land. Some made their way south into Italy, but others moved east into the lands of the Slav and Turkmen tribes (the Khazars for example). These Jews found the new host culture inferior to what they had known in France and Germany. Shutting themselves off in the Rhineland German dialects which developed into Yiddish, for hundreds of years they absorbed nothing of the local civilization. It was not till the late 18th century and the rise of Hassidism that Slav influences in Eastern Europe are seen.
From the 16th to the 19th Century Jewish Painting Gradually Merges into Western Art
From the 16th century on we find both Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews in Western Europe rendering the human form in paintings intended for the walls of private homes. In the 17th century we have murals on Biblical episodes in Italian ghettoes and at this time numerous communities across Western and Northern Europe abandon their resistance to painting the human form. On tombs and tombstones in the Sephardi Jewish cemetery in Amsterdam are carved scenes from the Bible. In Ashkenazi synagogues the curtain over the Ark of the Law (the parokhet) is often ornamented in relief with the figures of Moses and Aaron. In a 1742 Bible from Mantua we even have the figure of God Himself with long beard.
In the 16th century Jewish artists were painting portraits; by the 17th century rabbis were assenting to sit for these artists. From the 17th and 18th centuries there are Italian ketubot revealing the strong influence of Italian painting: they display scenes from the Song of Songs, the Book of Esther, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the signs of the Zodiac, nude female figures, and occasionally the portraits of bride and groom. In the 18th century we find illustrated versions of the Book of Esther being printed all over Europe, including one where Queen Vashti is portrayed as Marie Antoinette at the guillotine.
Jewish artists started making art their living (Moses Ben Wolf of Trebischt, Wilhelm Unger from Poland, Mauriczi Gottlieb from Galicia). In the 18th century and early 19th we have Jewish painters of solid reputation in England (the Solomon brothers for instance), while in the United States Lawrence Cohen and Solomon Caravalho turn Charleston, South Carolina, into a center of Jewish art. Besides portraiture, Jews are painting Biblical scenes and patriotic subjects glorifying their adopted country: the German Moritz Oppenheim’s 1833 work, “Jewish Volunteer returning From the War of Liberation” is a fine example. The assimilation of Jewish artists shows in their adoption of Western artistic styles and conventions whilst their Jewishness shows in the subjects they choose to paint.
Ashkenazi painters from Eastern Europe embraced European art enthusiastically and it is from that region that the greatest Jewish artists of the modern period emerge to take up leading roles in the avant-garde movements that transform modern art. The Ultra-Orthodox, meanwhile, remain fortified behind their rigidly defended walls. Any painter or sculptor emerging in this society has no choice but to leave for the centers of art in Western Europe and the Americas.
From the beginning of the 20th century a new center of Jewish art emerges in Palestine-Israel
A new center of Jewish art emerged in Palestine-Israel with the founding of the Betzalel School of Arts and Crafts in the early years of the 20th century in Jerusalem. Situated among the new neighborhoods being built outside the walls of the Old City, the school, founded by Boris Schatz, court painter to the Bulgarian monarch, and Ze’ev Raban, is the first ever Jewish school of art. By the end of the century it had become the Hebrew University’s Faculty of Art. At first the school’s founders and staff encouraged students (immigrants from Europe and the Middle East) to extend traditional Jewish art and crafts into original new works and to work on Jewish themes and subjects (for example, Abel Pan’s works on Biblical subjects) in the hope of developing a unique Jewish “Land of Israel” style of art. By providing their students with a profitable and creative means of living, they saw themselves contributing to the secular Zionist drive to “productivize” the Jews – to make them productive and self-supporting in occupations such as agriculture and manufacturing. At the same time, they intended their work to help build up a new Jewish culture for the Land of Israel, based on the Zionist revival of Hebrew as the Jews’ language of speech and writing.
Felice Pazner Malkin is co-editor of Massada Press' Lexicon of the Arts. Her drawings have been published in the albums: Song of Songs, Art of Love and the Red, Blue and Brown albums. She has done book design and stage decor, and introduced the illustrated theater poster to Israel with Cry, the Beloved Country (Habima). She established the art studios of the Rothschild Center in Haifa, 1958-1970, the Arab-Jewish art Center at the Hebrew University’s Buber Institute, 1971-1973, and has taught as the Usdan Art Center, New York and at the State University of New York. A book of reproductions of her work appeared in 2000.
Ms. Malkin has had numerous exhibitions throughout Israel, as well as in England and the United States. Her work is represented in the collection of 20th Century American Art at the Austin University Museum, Texas, and in many private collections. She was born in Philadelphia with her home and studio now in Jerusalem.
This article was published in Contemplate Issue Two/2003 by the Center for Cultural Judaism and issues 23-24 (Autumn 2001 pp. 39-46) of Free Judaism, the quarterly journal of the Israeli Secular movement for Humanistic Judaism. It is reprinted with permission of the publisher and the author.
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