The son of immigrants from Lithuania, the painter Jack Levine was born in Boston’s South End and grew up in Roxbury. He attended Harvard, where his painting first attracted attention. He was a figurative painter, but his bold use of color and distortion of forms stamped him as a modernist. Much of his painting was overtly political, skewering politicians, capitalists, military men, and racists. After World War II and the Holocaust, he began to paint works with specifically Jewish content. Notable among them was a series of miniature portraits of biblical kings and postbiblical scholars.
The Binding of Isaac was painted at a time when Aharon Kahana was developing a new style that favored abstract forms divided by thick lines. His paintings were both an embrace of modern European art…
This map showing the Naḥmanides Synagogue in Jerusalem, named after the medieval rabbi, was made in Italy by a Jewish scribe and is an example of a “pilgrimage scroll.” Pilgrimage scrolls were known…
The illustrations Tracht der Juden zu Worms (Jewish Men’s and Women’s Clothing in Worms) show a man and woman in typical Jewish fashion of the sixteenth century. The woman wears a white veil and…