Jewish Arts from the Beginning to the 20th Century

Jewish art, designation for the buildings, images (painting, graphics, book and script art, sculpture) and handicraft or handicraft devices that were created for the Jewish cult.

In addition, there are those in which artists address Judaism and its traditions, Jewish existence and identity issues, the worlds of Jews and related historical events, social, political, religious trends and problems. Jewish art also includes art that emerged in ghettos, concentration and extermination camps from 1933–45, as well as art that emerged after 1945 from experience of Nazi persecution.

Fine arts: The fine arts served the fulfillment of religious duties until modern times. The commandment to worship God includes the principle of “Hiddur mitzvah”, which means “splendor and honor of duty” and calls for the religious institutions and equipment to be “beautifully designed”. The command is opposed to a prohibition. According to Exodus 20: 4–5 and Deuteronomy 5: 8–9, no pictures or sculptures may be made that are used for worship and ritual activities. This ban on images was essential for the implementation of monotheism and prevented the cult of idols in Judaism, but also created the basis for the iconoclastic phases of Jewish history that were detrimental to art and images. However, to deduce a consequent Jewish hostility towards art from this is a fallacy. In addition to the decoration of the monastery tent and later of the temple, other biblical “artistic commissions” were given to the Jews: The steps of Solomon’s throne were adorned with plastic lions; other biblical persons had signet rings, the design of which was probably modeled on ancient coins. Catacombs, sarcophagi and the late antique synagogues were also artistically designed. Even under the influence of Hellenism, art seems to have taken a further boom, at least in certain Jewish circles: through the historian Josephus Flavius is narrated that Hyrcanus I, from the Tobiad family and with the high priest Onias III. related, in the 3rd century BC BC had adorned his residence “with animal figures of enormous size” and that Alexandra, a daughter of Hyrcanus II, around the middle of the 1st century BC. Hadtheir children Aristobul and Mariamne portrayed.

Architecture: According to cancermatters, the first important work of Jewish architecture is that of King Solomon in the 10th century BC. 1st temple built in Jerusalem (587 BC destroyed). In place of the post-exilic 2nd Temple in Jerusalem, Herod the Great left on a base area doubled by embankment and retaining walls (part of which is the Western Wall) from 23 BC onwards. To build a new building. Architecture and decoration are influenced by Mesopotamian and Roman-Hellenistic models. When it was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD, it entered the religious tradition as the central sanctuary in the religious and national life of the Jews, which mystically and mythologically transfigured it. Understood as an ideal design of a divinely inspired building, the temple found its expression in Jewish, Christian and Islamic art. The temple reconstructions are an independent branch of the history of architecture and art. From the synagogues Israel 3rd – 4th Century have come down to archaeological finds that a rich art in building, z. For example, mosaic floors, portal and column decorations, friezes (Beth-Alpha, Hammat, Bar’am), sculptural reliefs in Sepulchral Art (Bet Shean) and wall paintings in the style of Byzantine picture cycles (e.g. Dura-Europos) document.

Among the most important European synagogues of the Middle Ages are those of Worms (1st building 1034, destroyed in 1096, men’s school 1174/75, women’s school 1213; rebuilt after destruction in 1938), where a Romanesque bath has also been preserved, Prague (Old New School, around 1275) and the Mudejar style Spanish synagogues of the 13th and 14th centuries (Toledo, Córdoba). A special design was created in Poland in the 16th century with the fortress synagogues made of wood, in which the Jewish population could entrench themselves during pogroms and which were often decorated with folkloric paintings and carvings. In the first half of the 18th century, Elieser equipped Sussmann four Franconian synagogues with wall and ceiling paintings, which reflected ideas of the rebuilt temple and the heavenly Jerusalem, but also the zodiac, trumpet-blowing lions, large-scale floral decorations and prayer texts, with which he showed a typical Eastern European-Jewish world of ideas and forms Made southern Germany known. The baroque in the 17th / 18th centuries Century, but above all the historicism of the 19th century, found its expression in synagogues (e.g. New Synagogue in Berlin-Mitte by E. Knoblauch, 1859–66, destroyed in 1943, rebuilt in 1988–95). The 19th century also saw attempts to develop a theory and a style of their own for the synagogue building type. Next to the synagogue are the ritual baths (mikveh) and the cemeteries of the religious buildings of Judaism.