Arts

Bird’s Head Haggadah Revealed The Medieval Haggadah: Art, Narrative & Religious Imagination By Marc Michael Epstein, Yale University Press, New Haven and London 2011

The first time I saw Matisyahu perform he was mesmerising. It was 2006, at the height of his chassidic phase...

Rav Shlomo Friedlander, z"l, the fourth Lisker Rav, had a vision.

Cockroaches are not usually associated with Judaism. They might show up unwanted during Pesach cleaning.

An exquisite collection, across generations.

When Andrew Jacobs heard about a bungalow colony of Holocaust survivors on Geiger Road in the Catskills, his mind unleashed a series of pardonable stereotypes.

The Sistine Chapel in Rome is at the very heart of the Roman Catholic universe, the pope's private chapel in the Vatican and, notably, is one of the most famous tourist sites in history.

Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) and Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) were two of the most important modernist artists in the early twentieth century.

The other photographers snapped their pictures of the pomp and circumstance surrounding the outgoing president as he boarded his helicopter, Marine One, officially marked "United States of America." But Annie Leibovitz took a different approach to her photo of the 37th president - the only one to resign in office.

Perhaps upholding Leviticus 19:31, which insists, "Do not turn to those who worship Ob or to wizards; do not desire to become defiled by them,"

Nearly six and a half centuries before McDonald's first introduced its iconic logo designed by Jim Schindler, artists had already invented the double-humped shape. The Flemish painter Michiel van der Borch's 1332 manuscript illustration "Moses receives the Tables of the Law" shows a haloed prophet, his hair twisted into horns, carrying his staff and wearing a red robe as he reaches out to receive the Ten Commandments from God. Hundreds of medieval manuscript illuminations, as well as dozens of paintings by Chagall, feature the same rounded layout.

His magnificent gold and silver plated sculptures – exquisitely crafted with painstaking detail – have been given as gifts to world leaders and dignitaries.

As I sit to write this article less than a week before my wedding, my mind keeps returning to a particular work, which one must grapple with if one intends to take the history of Jewish art seriously.

Pascal Croci's graphic novel, Auschwitz, begins with a question to a witness from Auschwitz-Birkenau, "How long have you been keeping all this to yourself?"

An Affinity with the Character of Kive Motivated One Fan’s Latest Artistic Series

Not far from Amsterdam, in the village of Ouderkerk on the River Amstel, lies the Portuguese-Jewish cemetery called Beth Haim. Here in this pastoral necropolis repose the remains of Jews who fled the Iberian Peninsula in the wake of the Inquisition, exiles who chose banishment over baptism, who had fortuitously managed to survive the torture chambers or dodge the stake in the relentless drive by the Roman Catholic Church to cleanse the land of heretics.

Many of the artworks here naturally reference the Holocaust as the summation of antisemitism.

I walked slowly away from the Coliseum in Rome. Completed in 80 C.E. by the Emperor Titus it was used for almost 500 years for countless gladiatorial games and bloody spectacles.

Although Kempler's art is “dark,” the spirit of her humanity is ever- present.

Upon walking into the synagogue at Hadassah Hospital, one is forced to look up.

Money from club-promoting life allowed him to stop dealing marijuana, but when he felt spiritually lost, he searched for spirituality.

Never in the course of history had a nation escaped from within another nation, especially in a country as tyrannical as Egypt. That is…Never until 1.5 million Jews escaped the Soviet Union. 

Are we really trying to understand what made his brain feel it was acceptable to attempt to wipe out a people, or are we trying to figure out why in 2021 are there people who may want to do what he failed to do?

Crypto-Jews, who saw in their own circumstances a reflection of the events of Tisha B’Av.

Ironically the same quote by art critic Robert Hughes cited in my May 20th review "Chagall and the Cross" namely that Marc Chagall was the "quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century," is applicable in our consideration of Chagall's images for his graphic masterpiece, The Bible. Except here it illuminates the truth: his greatness as a Jewish artist is founded on his lifelong obsession with the Torah. No matter how far he strayed from his Jewish roots, even his late-in-life dalliance with Judeo-Christian universalism as surveyed in that review, nothing could compromise his amazing insights and comprehension of the Torah narratives.

George Grosz's 1944 painting, "Cain, or Hitler in Hell" shows the Nazi leader with his iconic moustache and uniform sitting sadly, mopping his brow.

With an uplifting tune, he admits that he is growing every day and getting wiser and seeing the world through new prisms.

After giving a talk at a melaveh malka about his work experience a few years ago, people told him he had enough material to do a standup routine. They were right.

Did Abie have a problem letting go and allowing others to give input into the songs on the album? Without them, this album might not have happened, he says.

"We are living in a Golden Age of Jewish Art, but don't know it."