“I have, however, my own fancily “modernist” theory of why the Old Testament excluded carvings and paintings. It is that in a world of miracles, the fabrications of the human hand are a distraction. In the landscape of the Old Testament, anything (a garment, a slingshot, the jawbone of an ass) or anybody (a shepherd body, a concubine) may start to glisten with meaning and become memorable. (One finds a trace of something in Whitman: instead of constructing images, he catalogues objects of the American scene, the idea being that is anything that appears in the aura of the wonderful. Thus, the Old Testament is filled with a peculiar kind of “art,” which we have begun to appreciate in this century: Joseph’s coat, Balaam’s ass, the burning bush, Aaron’s rod. If there were a Jewish museum with those items in it, would anyone miss madonnas? I am not suggesting that the ancient Hebrews were the inventors of Surrealism. But the idea that if you inhabit a sacred world, you find art, rather than make it, is clearly present in the Old Testament. When the mind of the people is loaded with magical objects and events, which unfortunately cannot be assembled physically, what is there for artist to do but make cups for ceremonial drinking and ornaments for the Torah.”

And then he writes in the next paragraph, “In our day, an anti-art tradition has been developing, within which it could be asserted that Jewish art has always existed in not existing.” After all this, why back to why no Jewish art? Alas, Rosenberg lost his nerve, leaving objects and bodies behind to return this “peculiar” Jewish art back to closed annex of a mental ghetto.

(Harold Rosenberg, “Is there A Jewish Art, Commentary, July 1966, p.59)