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…
Do you know what was being discussed today on the radio talk show where everyone can call in and take part in the conversation? We, all of us, are crazy, a certain professor, a psychiatrist, said. So…
Ḥay ibn Yaqẓān, composed by the Muslim philosopher Abū Bakr ibn Tufayl al-Qaysi (1110–1185), relates the story of Ḥay ibn Yaqẓān, literally “Alive, son of Awake,” as he grows up alone on a deserted…