Activity: Talk or presentation › Oral presentation
Description
This lecture focuses on the decorations of two early modern Torah arks in the Bavaria region. The Torah ark painter, Eliezer-Zusman, emigrated from Brody (today in Ukraine) to the Bavaria region (today in Germany) in the first half of the eighteenth century. The decoration of the Torah Arks was based mainly on representational painted motifs rather than wood or stone carving – an innovation not yet documented in other parts of early modern Central and Eastern Europe except for Ruthenia, where it had been previously practiced to a smaller extent in the Chodorów (today Khodoriv) synagogue. The Torah ark paintings may indicate, on the one hand, the social and economic situation of the small Jewish communities in the Bavarian countryside and, on the other, their aspiration to resemble the Jewish communities in Eastern Europe, from which the emigration of painters may indicate both their strength and the beginning of their decline.
Period
3 Jul 2024
Event title
Expanding Boundaries: Jewish Artistic Heritage of Ukraine