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Itshak Holtz Drawings Examining a choice selection of drawings done by Itshak Holtz over 30 years ago is a rare pleasure that allows for the appreciation of his unique sensitivity and insights.  I was afforded that pleasure at the inaugural exhibition of the Betzalel Gallery…
At Home in Florence? The auction at Christie’s in Paris this May 11 of a Tuscan Mahzor, created and illuminated in the 1490s, will be an extraordinary event.  This rare example of illuminated Jewish art has never before been seen publicly in over 500 years…
The Medieval Haggadah: Art, Narrative & Religious Imagination Golden Haggadah, fol. 4v, ca. 1320-1330, illuminated manuscript London, British Library, courtesy The Medieval Haggadah by Marc Michael Epstein, Yale University Press, 2011 The Golden Haggadah was created in Catalonia, Spain sometime around 1320.  So named because all…
Robert Feinland’s Paintings One thing is certain about Robert Feinland.  He has shuls on his mind.  His career has spanned over 40 years, exploring landscape, cityscape, sculpture and abstraction.  For many of those years he has focused on the relentlessly changing urban landscape of New…
The Medieval Haggadah: Art, Narrative & Religious Imagination By Marc Michael Epstein, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2011 The Dura Europos synagogue murals (245 CE) evidenced the first great flowering of Jewish visual creativity, quickly followed by the creation of at least 17…
At the Bialystoker Home A quiet monument to the courage and determination of hundreds of thousands of Jews sits vulnerable on the Lower East Side at 228 East Broadway.  This location was the former of home of the Bialystoker Center, built in 1931.  For many…
The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936-1951 Boy Jumping into the Hudson River (1948) by Ruth Orkin reflects a tragic moment in the history of the New York photographic group, the Photo League.  On the surface simply a carefree moment of urban youth, and…
Making Torah Manifest: Nathan Hilu “Man must make the Torah manifest” in every action, speech and creative act.  That is clearly the credo of Nathan Hilu; master-artist of the Lower East Side, Torah, Tanach, midrash, Gemara and beyond.  There is seemingly nothing that doesn’t fall…
Zaslavsky’s Jews Jewish artists do the darndest things. The Chassidic Art Institute, expertly directed by Zev Markowitz, is currently showing Venyamin Zaslavsky, a Ukrainian Jewish artist who has devoted the last 20 years to depictions of pious Jewish life in Jerusalem and the Holy Land.
Ludwig Blum’s Israel Ludwig Blum (1891-1974) was a deeply complex artist who walked the fine line between pure aesthetics and a radical artistic view of the Zionist enterprise. He clearly loved to paint, make beautiful images and provide aesthetic pleasure.  As a committed Zionist and…
Paintings from Midrash by Brian Shapiro The midrashic world is a dangerous place to inhabit.  It plays fast and loose with our sacred texts to fathom their deeper meanings, solve vexing textual and conceptual problems and, finally, make sense of the holy words in contemporary…

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