MODERN JEWISH ART
Across the greater part of the contemporary Jewish world, painting and sculpture, of all kinds from abstract to figurative, are central to cultural life. Hundreds of Israeli museums display their art collections; most private homes have reproductions or original art on their walls; the main school system sets aside several hours a week to a range of artistic activities, including learning the techniques of painting and sculpture, the history of art, or studying works of art in the framework of Bible Studies (e.g. works illustrated in the World of the Bible). Jewish universities have departments of art history, general and Jewish. A handful of the dozens of Jewish museums around the world, Paris and New York, for example, are already displaying works by Jewish artists. The Israeli daily and periodical press and its radio and television give full coverage to new exhibitions. Research studies based on new archeological finds or on a re-reading of ancient sources are steadily uncovering more and more of the role of figurative art and sculpture in the evolution of Israelite-Jewish civilization and culture.
The influence of those who still insist that the Second Commandment’s prohibition on the making of figures and images for cultic use means a total ban on figurative art of any kind (R. Meir, for instance) is dwindling fast.  Their voice is being drowned out by commentators and scholars who emphasize figurative art’s positive role in preserving the memory and likeness of Jews who should not be forgotten. And every age and community of Jewry has thought likewise, with the one exception of Jews living under Moslem regimes, where a strict Islam forbad rendering the image of man or woman.
The closing years of the 19th century at last freed Jewish artists from the many obstacles that had blocked their way to full integration into the European art world, for until then almost all commissions to artists came either from church or aristocracy. As a free art market developed and expanded and the Impressionist revolution got under way, new possibilities opened for Jewish artists who had left Eastern Europe to seek their fortune in the West, primarily in Paris. The Impressionists aimed at rendering nature’s own form, rather than constrain it to some man-made idea or ideal. Most Jewish artists, having just broken free of the shackles of a sacred tradition and of a traditional Jewish way of life, found this subjectivity and individualism very appealing.  Camille Pissarro, a Spanish Jew, made himself one of the key figures in the new movement, showing his concern for social problems by painting not only landscapes and natural scenes but many peasants and other poor people. He was joined by Jews in almost every part of Europe — Max Lieberman in Germany, Lesser Uri in Poland, Izak Levitan in Russia, William Rothenstein in England. As European painting and sculpture continued to explore the new paths struck out by Mattisse and Picasso — Impressionism, Cubism, and so on — young Jews were always at the forefront (Ha'im Soutine, Joel Pasquin, Amadeo Modigliani, Marc Chagall, Jacob Epstein, Hanna Orlof, Osip Zedkin, Jaques Lifschitz, and more).

In the United States, Ben Shahn, Max Baer and other Jewish painters tried to achieve a fusion of stylistic modernism with a concern for Jewish and social issues. When New York replaced Paris as the center of the Western art world, Jews were still in the vanguard of the new movements. Many painted “abstract” pictures lacking recognizably human figures and there were those to proclaim that, given the religion’s ban on reproducing the human image and figure, here at last was the truly Jewish art form

THE IMPORTANCE OF SCULPTURE IN ISRAELITE CULTURE
The Bible, that foundation and repository of Jewry’s collective memory, features numerous detailed descriptions of works of sculpture and figurative art ― made in the wilderness for Yahweh’s first Tabernacle, or beautifying His first Temple in Jerusalem, or holding pride of place in the Yahwist cult at the temples of Dan and Beth El. 

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 for us: “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 (or Holy of Holies) itself two huge figures of kheruvim were erected, with human heads and vast wings spreading from wall to wall. 1 Kings 6:23-28 paints us the picture: “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 [i.e. 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 which, Exodus 25:18-22 tells us, the sculptor Betzalel fashioned for the Tabernacle in the wilderness, in obedience to Yahweh’s commands as transmitted  by His spokesmen: “Make two kheruvim of gold-—make them of 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 Pact.”

The walls of Solomon’s Temple were also hung with embroidered pictures or tapestries of kheruvim. A bronze serpent, held to be the handiwork of Moses himself, was also there, as we know from two episodes, the first when God orders Moses to make it: “Moses made a bronze serpent and mounted it on a standard” (Numbers 21:82) and the second when King 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). It behooves us also to remember that for two-thirds of the  time the Temple stood in Jerusalem a statue of Asherah, the Canaanite mother-goddess, stood in it. Images of various animals were also there to be seen: “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, God of Israel — 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, he whom the Bible credits with having made the very first statue in the history of Jewish art. This was, of course, the Golden Bullock fashioned at the foot of Mt. Sinai from the jewelry and other personal valuables offered by the people, who then celebrated the inauguration of the new sculpture with wild rejoicing.

Both the prophets and biblical historians inform us that throughout the biblical period sculpture and carving were widespread and necessary crafts, practised in every Israelite settlement. Figures of Baal, Ashtoreth and Asherah were erected alongside the altar on rural high places (bamot), and also on sacred hills and under sacred trees. Individual homes had their teraphim, figurines of household gods of healing and welfare (we are told that Michal, King Saul’s daughter, had them in her house) and they would accompany their owners on long journeys (as Rachel’s did on her travels with Jacob).

Archeological excavation in Israel and elsewhere in the Middle East confirms the verbal evidence of the Bible. Fertility goddess figurines have been found in Israelite settlements and dwelling houses; bullocks and kheruvim (the Mesopotamian ‘karibu’), both free-standing and in relief, have been found decorating the palaces of Israelite kings (the ivory reliefs in Ahab’s palace in his capital city are one instance).

It is undoubted that the books of the Bible, like others of the world’s classics, portray cultural reality, even if their evidence is not precise or provable. Moreover, Given that the Bible is an anthology and amalgamation of documents from many sources and geographical regions, its evidence may reasonably be said to be internally corroborated.

No Bible reader can mistake the central function fulfilled by the figurative and plastic arts in Israelite religio-cultural life, and in both kingdoms, Judah and Israel. The Bible itself credits the outset of the plastic arts in Judaism to three celebrated sculptors: Aaron makes the golden bullock, Betzalel the kheruvim, and Moses the bronze serpent. Since that renowned time Judaism and figurative art have traveled together everywhere. It has decorated not only temples to Yahweh but also private homes, theaters and bath-houses. The synagogues that began to arise in the latter part of the Second Temple period proved no exception to the rule. Jewish art has illustrated a wide span of themes, both from Jewish tradition and the traditions of its neighbors and hosts. In no age has it not been receptive to outside influences. In attributing the bronze serpent and its cult to Moses, the biblical authors were only providing one illustration of these cross-frontier interactions and borrowings. 

At the Timna copper mines, in the Israeli Negev desert, the archeologist, Benno Rotenburg, discovered a copper snake, twelve centimeters long, with a gilded head. Now Timna in ancient times was not only a center of Midianite civilization but was also on the route of the Israelites’ wanderings under Moses, as the Bible traces it. To get to Etzion Geber the Israelites must have passed through or close to Timna. Pottery sherds found alongside the snake date it to the end of the second millennium B.C.E., which was the period of the Exodus and the wanderings, according to the biblical account and that account describes relationships that formed between the twelve tribes and the tribes dwelling in the areas they passed through. A priest of Midian even became Moses’ father-in-law and his advisor on strategy and organization.

In Timna the snake was apparently part of the cult of the Egyptian goddess Takhtor???, the goddess of the mines. Takhtor??? assumed a variety of forms —woman, cow, cat, even a viper with the horns of a cow and carrying the globe of the sun on its head. A second snake, this one Canaanite and 20 centimeters long has been found at Tel Mubrak??? on the coast of Israel and a third at Canaanite Hazor.  In other words, snake figures were a common feature of the civilizations the Israelites lived among and the biblical author who described Moses as a maker of snake-figures was telling a very likely tale, as realistic authors usually do. Their creative mode is not to recount exactly what did happen but what could well have happened (as Aristotle put it).

The authors of the Bible found no problem in depicting Moses as a figure-maker, totally ignoring the explicit prohibition —attributed to Moses himself — against 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 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.” (Deuteronomy 4:16). We thus have accounts of Moses as sculptor coexisting with proclamations of a sweeping ban on all figure-making, so making Moses an offender against the very laws he had brought down himself from Sinai. A most vivid example of the Israelites’ ideological and cultural pluralism but far, far from the last, as we shall see. 

TWO CARVED IMAGES TRADITIONALLY USED TO REPRESENT YAHWEH IN THE BIBLICAL PERIOD
Against this background and tradition of decorating tabernacle and temple with kheruvim, lions and other animals, carved, cast or embroidered, 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 Moses appointed first High Priest of Israel — to represent Yahweh-Elohim as a gilded young bull. Jeroboam, the man designated by a Yahwist prophet to lead the rebellion against a king (Rehoboam) of the house of David, who had been prosecuting a regime of great oppression and cruelty, wins the  backing of the great majority of the Israelites for secession, for splitting the kingdom in two. To the people of the new majority kingdom he offers new-old figures symbolizing their identification with an ancient religious heritage born in the cataclysmic events at Sinai. Then, too, the people had wanted to represent their God-deliverer by a bullock but had been put down by armed force. Armed men sent out by Moses had slaughtered three thousand bull-worshipers 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 temple erects a gilded sculpture, rendering Yahweh in the earliest and oldest form in which the Israelites had envisioned Him — a golden young bull.

The realistic 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 12:26-27) “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 bullock 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 bullock 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 obey instead the tradition, at least 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 himself as the maker of one of them.

While the bullock 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 we know them as gryphons). From the early second millennium B.C.E. they appear, free-standing and in relief, 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 hoard of ivories dated to the 13th century B.C.E. we have 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 —crowned to symbolize the United Kingdom, and the Syro-Aramean style — with the characteristic head ornamentation. (See: S. Givon, The World of the Bible, Van Leer Institute, in reference to ???Exodus 25, 18-22)  

Taking a historical perspective, it seems likely that the Bible’s authors and editors knew very well the failure of Moses’ attempt at Sinai to suppress the worship of pagan gods once and for all and expunge the use of idols and carved figures from Israelite cult. Destroying the golden bullock and slaughtering its worshipers had not prevented the bullock’s return to a central role in Israelite religion and culture. Moses had tried the bloodbath tactic again, when the wandering Israelites, approaching the Promised Land, had come into contact with its Canaanite inhabitants and had at once began 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).  But it did not work the second time either. It was not long before most of the people had again set up their made figures at the ancient cultic centers (Dan and Beth El), at the new one (Jerusalem), and elsewhere. Be it for grand temple or rural bama the crafters of sacred figures were in great demand.

EXTERNAL INFLUENCES ON ISRAELITE RELIGIOUS ART
In every religious cult the figurative arts play complex roles in the lives of both artist and audience. Sometimes believers see the god himself in the made images and figures. The philosopher, 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 lovingkindness. The prophets of Israel thundered against Israelites who worshiped pagan idols as gods of great power, when they were nothing but dumb stone, “with eyes that cannot see and ears that cannot hear”.

In these encounters of worshiper and made image the artistic-esthetic experience stimulated by the image fuses with the worshiper’s emotions and state of mind to create the religious experience of a personal encounter with a god, come down from his heaven to be with his believer on earth. We can see this fusion of artistic and religious experience to this very day in certain Christians, in the fervor of their prayer before statues and icons of Jesus of Nazareth and his mother Mary, as though statue and icon were themselves divinities and not merely the rendering of a painter’s or sculptor’s artistic imagination.

There is no major religion in the world that does not have its texts to conjure up a divine reality and mold a personal image for its god. There is no major religion which does not also depend, less or more, on the plastic and figurative arts. The Jewish religion is no exception. 

In the biblical period Israelite art was, as is the way of human nature, influenced by the arts of its neighbors. The biblical historian makes a strong point of this in his account of Solomon’s reign. Solomon, having taken the decision to construct his great temple to Yahweh in Jerusalem, as well as lesser temples to other gods, brings in the famous Phoenician artist, Hiram of Tyre, to help with certain internal design elements. Hiram, son of a celebrated Tyrian artist and an Israelite mother from the tribe of Dan, embodies in himself the influences exerted by the Middle Eastern art of the time on the art of this relatively new kingdom. The dominant presence of Hiram’s skills and ideas could not but have exerted its effect on the work of the Jewish artists working on the site. However, although the motifs — bullocks, kheruvim, lions —  may have been borrowed their meaning in their new context could not remain the same.

Hiram of course worked on the site of the Temple in Jerusalem but the actual casting of his vessels and figures was carried out in specially constructed furnaces out 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 moulds in the plain of the Jordan between Succot and Zaretan” (1 Kings 7:46).       ????????RELEVANCE??????N.S.

Many items of sculpture from this period found in archeological digs in Israel and the Middle East closely match the descriptions in the Books of Kings and elsewhere in the Bible. As a general rule, writers are not capable of inventing the form of a work of art and do not try to do so: they model their descriptions on objects they have seen with their own eyes. And for this reason art scholars, such as Cecil Roth and others who have followed his lead, study both the biblical descriptions and archeological finds to get a picture of what Jewish art was producing in the biblical period.

JUDAISM AND FIGURATIVE ART — A NEVER-ENDING CONTROVERSY
It is clear that the place of the figurative arts in Judaism was already a bone of contention in biblical times. For all the ubiquity of sculptors and their products, there were nonetheless those who read the Second Commandment (“You shall not make for yourselves any sculptured image or any likeness of any thing…” (Exodus 20:4) as an all-inclusive ban on all figurative art. Deuteronomy, composed later than Exodus, probably in the time of Isaiah, spells out this extension of the Second Commandment to all imagery of living things, explaining it as a consequence of God appearing to the people of Israel abstract 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.
4:15:  “…since you saw no shape when the Lord your God spoke to you at Horev out of the fire.”
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 roiled on into the next period of Judaism’s artistic development, the Hellenistic-Byzantine period. This was the period that 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 also in full spate and―the inevitable corollary―so was the controversy over their presence in Judaism.

Some of the talmudic sages were willing to permit the work of artists and the  pleasure they gave, others, following Deuteronomy, were not. The story of Rabban Gamliel, who liked to bathe in the bath-house at Akko even though a nude statue of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, stood in it, contains the gist of the disputed distinction between an image forbidden because its purpose is to represent or display God and an image made for other purposes, in which Rabban Gamliel sees no wrong. The Mishna (Avoda Zara 3:4) quotes Gamliel as follows: “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) Yaakov Yitzhak Leshem quotes a manuscript of the Jerusalem Talmud from the Cairo Genizah (that is, not the version usually quoted): Avoda Zara 42, 3:4 says “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.”
BT Avoda Zara 43b reports even a famous synagogue (in Nehardea), in which a statue of the emperor was erected without this causing any of the sages to cease praying there. Rosh Hashana 24b states that Rav and R. Samuel also visited the Nehardea synagogue.*

In the opinion of the majority of sages, it is necessary to distinguish between categories of figures and images and they disagree with R. Meir, who would have banned all images because of people’s tendency to start worshiping them, even if only once a year. “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 Gamaliel adds: One that holds anything at all in its hand.” (Mishna Avoda Zara 4d) (In other words: any statue or image not holding regalia is permitted).**

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 (i.e. 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 suchlike 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 the torso is painted there is no prohibition on it, neither if it is found or [you have] made [it yourself]” (Shulkhan Arukh  ???).

Some have regarded figurative art as a source of very complex meanings. Philo of Alexandria, for example, 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 esthetic beauty to prefer the false to the true (De Gigantibus 59; Quis Rerum Divinarum Heres 169???).

From all this it is evident that Judaism has found room for conflicting beliefs and opinions on the issue of figurative art. Some we know from actions taken, for instance, the act of placing representational figures in the Temple, others from our written sources, as in the passages quoted here. Thus, Aaron Kirschenbaum is wrong to claim (in Judaism and Art, Bar Ilan University Press) 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 he argues are past and done with: “contemporary Judaism states” that what the past permitted is now prohibited.

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 not greater than that of the Bible, the great talmudic sages and the Shulkhan Arukh, but more fundamentally because no statement beginning “Judaism says that…” 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 certainly true with respect to figurative art.

But the chief error of these ‘image-breakers’ lies in their basic premise that Judaism has a past or pasts which are “over and done with”. Judaism is a culture, constantly developing, ramifying and changing, and as such preserves past traditions in order to build on them. That is how there come to be in every age and era a variety of tendencies and movements in the arts, each one able to point to earlier tendencies and movements as the source of its legitimacy. The never-ending change and the incessant multiplication of opinions and positions on every issue in Judaism cut the ground from under any statement beginning “Judaism says that..” We can only begin our statements “In Judaism there are those who say that …” And in Judaism there are those who say, and who have always been saying, many different and even contradictory things on every issue imaginable. Pluralism was the nature of Judaism and Jewry in the beginning and has been in every period since. And the pluralism of the biblical, Hellenistic, medieval, Renaissance and Haskalah periods continues today, as vigorous as ever. 

There are even claims that the Creator Himself has taken up the art of portraiture: “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). There are even some to read the verse “There is no rock (tzur) like our God” as “There is no painter (tzayar) like our God” (BT Berachot 10a). God’s act in creating man and woman in his image and likeness has also been likened to a flesh and blood king who has had a portrait made of himself. Anyone attacking the king’s portrait attacks his image and standing. So, someone who sheds the blood of a creature made in the image of God [...] Hellenistic armies and Hellenistic culture had conquered the Middle East, the Canaanite cults vanished and, with them, the carved and cast figures of their gods that had been a feature of Jewish population centers. Even before the Temple was destroyed synagogues were already being built all over the Land of Israel and the Diaspora as communal centers for both worship and study. For a long time it was thought that their use of the figurative arts was almost entirely confined to floor mosaics (found in synagogues as early as the 4th century B.C.E.). Then, in the 1930s, came news of the discovery of the Dura Europos synagogue, dating to the 3rd century C.E., every inch of its walls painted with magnificent frescoes on biblical themes and crowded with representations of biblical characters. 

Dura Europos sits today on the Syria-Iraq border but when the synagogue was built the border was the border divided the Roman and Parthian empires. The synagogue was built up against its town wall and, with war threatening, the Romans filled it with dry desert sand to reinforce the wall and create a strong firing point. For fifteen hundred years the sand preserved the synagogue’s frescoes, while most of the synagogues of the period were being demolished.  Thanks to the Romans we can now view early Jewish art in what must have been one of its most splendid manifestations.

In style the frescoes are Hellenistic, in theme — biblical. They offer the artist’s gloss on biblical episodes, such as the Binding of Isaac, the Exodus from Egypt the Crossing of the Reed Sea, and Baby Moses in the Bulrushes (the woman finding the baby is nude and the argument remains unsettled whether she is the Egyptian princess, a servant girl, or Aphrodite in the role of biblical heroine―Goodenough’s suggestion).

The painterly and technical skill of the frescoes is of a very high order, which, considering that the town was out on the desert frontier of two empires and far from any great center of art, says a lot for the rich artistic tradition in which the painters of the day were trained and the high quality of art a small synagogue could be expected to achieve.

As we have said, the predominant artistic culture of the time was the Greek-Hellenistic (as the Mesopotamian and Canaanite had been a millennium before). At Dura Europos we have not only a Hellenizing style but also a borrowing of motifs from Greek mythology and from Eastern myths in Hellenistic dress (the sun god in his chariot in the zodiac circle is one 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 Caesarea, etc.) On the Temple Mount, not far from the Temple itself, Herod also erected the public buildings required for a Greek polis — a gumnasion, a theater, a hippodrome for horse races, and a synagogue. All these institutions for the use of the Hellenizing 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 (from the 4th century B.C.E.) displays a zodiac circle with at its center Helios the sun god and his chariot. 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 the Tzippori synagogue floor mosaic the sun itself is the driver, one of its rays penetrating into the chariot as though to drive the horses.

That these and other myths made their way into Jewish folklore is obvious in many passages of Talmud and Midrash (see the work of Saul Lieberman). One of these passages, in Shemot Rabba, even explicitly 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 article in Free Judaism 11-12). 

CONTINUITY IN JEWISH ART, ITS INFLUENCE ON CHURCH ART AND JEWISH ART’S OPENNESS TO RETURN INFLUENCES 
In The History of Jewish Art, Cecil Roth summarizes the research pointing to the influence of synagogue art on Christian church art and thence on general European art. Synagogue frescoes like those of Dura Europos exerted a clear 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.  The influence of church art of the period after Christianity had completed its divorce from Judaism on medieval and Renaissance Jewish art is beyond question, as we can well see from the fragments of makhzorim and haggadot that have survived.

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, that is five to seven hundred and more years later.
According to Narkiss the connecting links between the art of the two periods — manuscripts written and illuminated in the earlier period which 12th-century Jewish artists in Spain, Italy and southern France could have known and borrowed from — have simply not yet been found. We know that we possess only 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 and manner of its host society’s art, either Moslem or Christian. Throughout the Islamic world, from Iraq and Yemen to Spain, Jews worked in the fields of letters, literature and philosophy and, like their Moslem overlords (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 all too clearly the influence of their surroundings.

Some examples: in a scene from the 1328 Golden Haggadah, produced in Northern Spain, the Egyptians pursuing the Israelites are accoutered as medieval knights; a depiction of Moses and the Burning Bush from the Rylands Haggadah composed in 14th-century Catalonia [WHERE IS THE CONTEMPORARY INFLUENCE???? N.S.]; a scene of the Beasts Listening to David Playing the Harp from a 13th-century manuscript from north-east France (Rothschild collection); a scene of Moses Receiving the Tablets of the Law surrounded by Israelite men and women (the women have animal heads) in the 14th-century Triple Makhzor from southern Germany; David Holding a Harp in the 1308 Ha’im (the illuminator’s name?) manuscript of Ecclesiastes from Germany (from the Duchess of Sussex Pentateuch); 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 haggadah from southern Germany; Moses and the Tablets of the Law from the Sarajevo haggadah from 12th-century northern Spain.*

As noted above, Jews in the Islamic world almost totally shunned the figurative arts, drawing their authority from a super-strict reading of the Second Commandment. Maimonides (1135-1204) born in Spain and living most of his illustrious 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 sliver 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) were it seems not led to create 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. In every country 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 to the rule is the Ashkenazi Jews who fled the Rhineland and Western Europe as the Crusaders passed murderously through on their way to the Holy Land. Some made their way south in to Italy but others moved east into the lands of the Slav and Turkmen tribes (the Khazars, for example) and these Jews found the new host culture inferior to what they had known in France and Germany. Shutting themselves off behind the language they had brought with them (Rhineland German dialects which developed into Yiddish), for hundreds of years they absorbed nothing of the local civilization. It is not till the late 18th century and the rise of Hassidism that we see Slav influences in Eastern European Jewish culture.

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 its seems that at this time numerous communities across Western and Northern Europe abandon their resistance to painting men and women. 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, in a long beard.

In the 16th century Jewish artists are already painting portraits and by the 17th century rabbis are agreeing to sit. From the 17th and 18th centuries we have 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 on the guillotine.

Jewish artists begin making their art their living (Moses Ben Wolf of Trebischt, Wilhelm Unger from Poland, Mauriczi Gottlieb from Galicia). In the late 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. Apart from 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: their Jewishness shows in the subjects they choose to paint, even if they do not develop a particularly Jewish style or school of painting.

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 which time and again transform modern art. While all this is going on, the Ultra-Orthodox in Eastern Europe, Hassidim and mitnagdim alike, 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 the cities of 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 emerges in Palestine-Israel with the founding of the Betzalel School of Arts and Crafts in the early years of the 20th century in Jerusalem. Sited among the new neighborhoods rising up 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 and by the end of the century had become Hebrew University’s Faculty of Art. At first the School’s founders and teaching staff encouraged their students (new 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 instance, Abel Pan’s works on biblical subjects) in the hope of developing a unique Jewish ‘Land of Israel’ school and style of art. By providing their students a profitable and creative means of living, they saw themselves contributing to the secular Zionist drive to ‘productivize’ the Jews (that is to make them productive and self-supporting, especially in the core ‘modern’ 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.