Jewish Art and Culture

by Van Voolen, Edward

• ISBN13: 9783791333625
• ISBN10: 3791333623
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-09-30
• Publisher: Prestel Pub

Summary

"This lavishly illustrated book explores the Jewish involvement in the visual arts over the last two thousand years. Each image tells a story about one of the world's oldest cultures still in existence and presents a unique insight into the multifaceted and vital world of Judaism." "Through this often surprising collection of illustrations and texts the reader finds out what Judaism, art and culture had to do with each other in ancient times and still continue to do so today, and discovers that this world belongs more to us than we had ever imagined before delving into this book."--BOOK JACKET.

Table of Contents

Jewish art and Jewish people between Israel and diaspora	p. 6
Timeline	p. 26
The image of Judaism	p. 32
A living text	p. 34
A Jewish Pompeii	p. 36
Creation, redemption, revelation	p. 38
The precious legacy of a glorious past	p. 40
Spain's golden age	p. 44
God's favorite fish	p. 46
Wandering with a promise	p. 48
The Dutch golden age	p. 50
Hanukkah : a political story	p. 52
Jewish emancipation and Jewish art	p. 54
Loyalty to faith and fatherland	p. 56
An oriental wedding feast	p. 58
Rejoicing in splendor	p. 60
The self and the exotic	p. 62
A day of penitence and repentance	p. 64
Of pots and pans : keeping Kosher	p. 66
A rembrandt reborn	p. 68
A secular Jewish painter	p. 70
Contemporary Jewish portraits	p. 72
Musical visions	p. 74
Escape to a better future?	p. 76
The lost world of the Shtetl	p. 78
Singing Jewish history	p. 80
Jewish life in the theatre	p. 82
What is in a name?	p. 86
Jewish pioneers in Palestine	p. 88
Blood and tears : non-Jewish Jewish art?	p. 90
Dreams of emancipation	p. 92
Tracing genealogy	p. 94
Human dignity	p. 96
Holocaust and its remembrance	p. 98
"This monster, which we try to kill ..."	p. 100
Defamed art	p. 102
A holocaust of books	p. 104
Departure into exile	p. 106
A passage into death	p. 108
Facing disaster	p. 110
War and destruction	p. 112
Remembering the Holocaust in Germany	p. 114
National memory and identity	p. 116
Jewish art in the modern world	p. 120
Questions of justice	p. 122
Abstract monotheism	p. 124
Secrete signs	p. 126
Flying letters	p. 128
Modernizing the synagogue	p. 130
Forging Israeli art	p. 132
The realism of shadows	p. 134
The presence of the divine	p. 136
An unbuilt synagogue, an unfulfilled dream	p. 138
Fragility	p. 140
Sacred space in the desert	p. 142
The Golem's dream of power	p. 144
The shield of David	p. 146
Little Isaac, where are you going?	p. 148
Ghosts of the past	p. 150
A breakable image of history	p. 152
Minimal form and maximal meaning	p. 154
A Jewish lexicon	p. 156
"Let there be light"	p. 158
Lessons of darkness	p. 160
A whisper of angels	p. 162
What words may mean	p. 164
The thin line of survival	p. 166
Divine creativity	p. 168
"The drumming's now at its height"	p. 170
A shrine of absence filled with life	p. 172
Rebellion against conventions	p. 176
The fictitious Jewish artist	p. 178
Conflicts	p. 182
Telling history	p. 184
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