Authors:Batsheva Goldman-Ida First page: 109 Abstract: Source: Volume 10, Issue 1, pp 109 - 119“Museum Musings” relates to the exhibition Alchemy of Words: Abraham Abulafia, Dada Lettrism (Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 16 June–19 November 2016), discussing the connections made, discoveries, and considerations on what lay behind the unique constellation of the show. PubDate: 2017-12-14T00:00:00Z
Authors:Gil P. Klein Abstract: Source: Page Count 14This article investigates the notion of memorization in rabbinic and Roman spatial practices. The Greco-Roman mnemonic technique, in which space was a structuring device for the memorized ideas, words or images, has been extensively studied. Scholars have also demonstrated how such a technique was applied in rabbinic systems of memorization and the arrangement of oral traditions. Nevertheless, very little has been written about the role of mnemonics in the organization of space itself. In the first part of the article I use the comparison between the Corpus Agrimensorum Romanorum (first to fifth centuries CE collection of illuminated manuals of land survey and urban planning) and tractate Eruvin to explore references to cities in the shape of Greek letters, which are almost identical in the two texts. The fact that a list of cities in the shape of letters was used in the Roman corpus as a mnemonic device for the memorization of urban layouts suggests that the rabbis corresponded with such methods in their spatial formulations of the Sabbath Boundary. In the second part of the article I investigate the rabbinic system of forgotten produce (shikheḥah) that maps fields in order to determine which crops were unintentionally left behind by the farmer and consequently belonged to the poor. As I demonstrate, many of the spatial and visual principles applied by the rabbis in this system echo the mnemonic principles described in the Roman work on memorization Rhetorica Ad Herennium. The primary purpose of the article, however, is not merely to illuminate an instance of cultural exchange, but rather to point to the profound link established by mnemonics between space, image and language. The mechanism of organizing words and ideas spatially and visually affected the ways in which space was perceived and was, itself, organized. PubDate: 2017-10-24T00:00:00Z
Authors:Jessica Carr Abstract: Source: Page Count 28This article analyzes how Anya Ulinich’s verbal and visual writing in her graphic novel Lena Finkle’s Magic Barrel (2014) engage in and expand Jewish writing practices. I argue that through her use of the graphic novel as a medium, Ulinich both draws on and subverts masculine writing practices and images of women that have dominated Jewish literature and culture. Through her cross-discursive, intertextual, multi-directional writing, Ulinich depicts her protagonist Lena as gaining a sense of self, but one that is fragmentary and constantly experienced and re-pictured through memory and in relationship to others. Ulinich also raises the question, without providing a stable answer, as to the place of Soviet Jewish memory in Jewish-American life, experience, and literature. She places Russian, Jewish, and American writing and gender norms in conversation with each other, suggesting the difficulty of reconciling these different visions for women and modernity. PubDate: 2017-10-12T00:00:00Z
Authors:Monika Czekanowska-Gutman Abstract: Source: Page Count 13This essay explores the Pietàs by Jacob Steinhardt, an Eastern-European Jewish artist, in connection with his involvement in the Pathetiker movement. The paper proceeds to examine them against the backdrop of German and Austrian Expressionist movements, as well as other treatments of the theme by Jewish artists. Through stylistic and iconographic analysis of Steinhardt’s Pietàs, Czekanowska-Gutman demonstrates that both of the works in question are in fact revisions of one of the most important Christian iconographic “framing themes,” which Steinhardt situates within the Jewish context and perspective. The central argument of the paper is that Steinhardt’s Pietàs address Christian audiences in their own representational conventions in order to denounce anti-Jewish violence, such as the pogroms of the time. The artist achieves this through the portrayal of Jesus and Mary as elderly Eastern European Jews (Ostjuden), using—remarkably—the visual language of anti-Jewish caricature. Finally, the paper investigates Steinhardt’s masterful use of drypoint and woodcutting techniques to visualise the suffering of Mary and her dying son. PubDate: 2017-09-27T00:00:00Z
Authors:Ruth Rubenstein Abstract: Source: Page Count 19This essay looks at Michael Sgan-Cohen’s reception by the Israeli art field over a period of 25 years. It suggests that whereas Sgan-Cohen’s signature style of referencing and reworking Jewish sources did not change much over that time, the Israeli art field did shift in its reception of his work, from an unfavorable stance in 1978, to a somewhat more accepting one in 1994, to recognizing Sgan-Cohen as an artist of merit in 2004. Critical commentaries on his exhibitions and interviews with key personalities within the field shed light on Sgan-Cohen’s reception and elucidate the changes within the field itself. Moreover, by focusing on the emergence of postmodern discourse and its influence on the Israeli art field, while framing these findings within the realm of field theory, this study creates a context for understanding these structural shifts in the Israeli art field, as it came face-to-face with postmodern discourse. PubDate: 2017-09-27T00:00:00Z
Authors:Sean P. Burrus Abstract: Source: Page Count 20This article examines the evidence for the use of portrait sculpture on sarcophagi belonging to members of the Jewish community of Rome. The use of the “learned figure” motif, commonly employed in Roman sarcophagus portraiture and by Jewish patrons, is highlighted, and possible creative appropriations of the trope in Jewish contexts are raised. It is further argued that, among Jewish sarcophagus patrons, the decision to include funerary portraiture went hand in hand with the decision to adopt popular and conventional Roman styles and motifs, and to engage Roman cultural and visual resources. In other words, Jewish patrons who chose sarcophagi with portraits also seem to have been the readiest to make use of the visual resources of Roman funerary culture to orchestrate self-narratives on their sarcophagi. Finally, it is cautioned that while the limited examples (five) suggest a mastery of Roman culture and a correspondingly high degree of acculturation among certain Jewish patrons, we should be wary of reading such sarcophagi as evidence of certain Jews abandoning a Jewish identity in favor of a Roman one—or the Jewish community in favor of the Roman polis and its civic structures—as narratives of funerary art never capture the totality of the deceased’s identity. PubDate: 2017-09-19T00:00:00Z
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