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Dateline: Israel at the Jewish Museum Photography is a tantalizingly young medium that burst upon the visual scene with the spectacular daguerreotype invented in France in 1839.  Its use and popularity quickly spread from Europe to the Middle East so much so that an early…
The Jewish Gallery Something is blooming in Brooklyn that promises a dramatic revitalization of Jewish visual culture.  While it has been a long time a coming, nonetheless it is cause for heartfelt celebration, and, most importantly, your support.  On May 9th Aryeh L. Wuensch and…
Prints at the Philadelphia Museum of Art What is it about big?  Why are we impressed by size when we all know that the quality of any given thing is easily just as, if not more, important?  The simplest answer is that while man can…
Prints at the Philadelphia Museum of Art The L.A Story, a selection of work from ten contemporary Los Angeles Jewish artists currently at the Hebrew Union College – Institute of Religion Museum, poses the question of what exactly does constitute Jewish Art and what is…
Megillah Esther by David Wander Ahashverous and Memuchan, illumination and calligraphy by David Wander, Megillah Esther (2007) Such a nice story the Megillah Esther is, don’t you think?  The poor Jews are in exile far from home and get into a bit of trouble with God…
Harbinger of the Future Had Gadya, the playful, threatening and ultimately reassuring song that ends many Seder evenings among Ashkenazi Jews, has a long history in the Haggada. It emerged from German folk songs to be first printed in the Prague Haggada of 1595. The…
Sotheby's Judaica Jewish Art has always been burdened by Jewish history. Unlike most other cultural traditions, the vicissitudes of fate have been particularly harsh and have frustrated any attempt to establish a long-standing cultural tradition for the Jewish people in their far-flung habitations. Frequently just…
At The Brooklyn Museum The Holocaust was the largest mass murder in human history. It casts an indelible shadow over everything that follows, twisting morality and normative values in unfathomable ways. The vast complicity of Western Civilization in the pre-meditated murder of six million Jews…
Israeli Picture Book Marc Chagall, Autour du Coq Rouge, 1982, oil on canvas, 36 x 26 inches, courtesy of Sotheby's Tel Aviv Autour du Coq Rouge (Around the Red Rooster), painted in 1982 by a ninety-five year old Marc Chagall (1887-1985), the most famous Jewish artist…
Times Of Hope, Seasons Of Despair The auction of fine Judaica at Kestenbaum & Company unfolds a quilt of diverse Jewish history. As they are auctioned off to the highest bidder, the saga of the Jewish people is traced in these objects and in their…
At The Library Of The Jewish Theological Seminary: The Word Became an Image The visual image is not a problem in Judaism. We have countless examples of images and representations of Jewish subjects and ideas done by pious Jews throughout the centuries, whether as ancient…
At The Israel Museum Ha’norah On Shabbos evening I walked home on my normal route down Fifth Avenue towards Washington Square Park. Looking past the Washington Square Arch, slightly to the west and further downtown, I noticed a glow of lights and smoke illuminating the…

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