The Hungarian painter Isidor Kaufmann was born in Arad (now in Romania), where his father commanded an army regiment in the Austro-Hungarian imperial army. Kaufmann studied at the Budapest Drawing School and later in Vienna, where he spent the remainder of his life. Winning an award for his painting The Skeptic at the Vienna World’s Fair in 1873, he would go on to become particularly known for his paintings of Hasidic folk-life and for his genre scenes of Jewish life in East Central Europe, including The Rabbi’s Visit (1898/9), Friday Evening (1897/8), and Young Rabbi from N. (ca. 1910).
A Difficult Passage in the Talmud is one of the many scenes of Jewish life in Hungary, Moravia, Slovakia, Galicia, Ukraine, and Russian Poland that Isidor Kaufmann was best known for. His idyllic…
Come, faithful community, let us sing
To Him who dwells on high, your creator, O Jacob.
Come, let us sing.
O garden dweller, raise song and hymns:
Young and old, all together…
The upper register of this seal from Megiddo, made of black serpentine with white spots, has an image of a striding griffin wearing a kilt and an Egyptian double crown, with an Egyptian ankh symbol…