Tag Archives: Shabbat & holidays

(Megilat Esther) Purim Sameach (State of Nature)

Posted on March 6, 2023 by zjb

Read it! The neoclassical scroll of Esther is colorful and motley. Reader, beware. Purim is what happens when social contracts are violated by violent men and put right by the violence of dumb luck and cunning. [18th century scroll of … Continue reading →

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Polish Jew Carrying Cholent (Twitter)

Posted on November 18, 2022 by zjb

A Jew carries a pot of cholent [stew] to be cooked for the Sabbath. Photograph | Photograph Number: 11889 “A Jew carries a pot of cholent [stew] to be cooked for the Sabbath” Date Circa 1930 – 1939 Locale Poland … Continue reading →

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High Holidays (Sefas Emes)

Posted on October 6, 2022 by zjb

[sukka in very bright light, generated at DALL-E] The commentaries in the Sefas Emes to the High Holidays comprise different component parts in a single composition. They are the last major word of the fifth and final volume of the … Continue reading →

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Netanyahu Will Bless (Rosh Hashana)

Posted on September 23, 2022 by zjb

h/t Avraham Bronstein, @AvBronstein

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(Marc Chagall) Les Israélites mangent l’Agneau de la Pâque (1931)

Posted on April 15, 2022 by zjb
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Tough Italian Jews (Scroll of Esther) (1616)

Posted on March 17, 2022 by zjb

I’m posting the link to the Ferrara scroll of Esther (1616) here at the The Bezalel Narkiss Index of Jewish Art at the Center for Jewish Art. It has links to all two other Scrolls of Esther also illuminated by … Continue reading →

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(Esther) Rashi (Aesthetic Judaism)

Posted on March 17, 2022 by zjb

This might be my misimpression, but what seems to have most caught Rashi’s eye in his commentary to the book of Esther was not so much the vindication of Israel and the political violence that close the text, but rather … Continue reading →

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(One Little Goat) Chad Gadya (El Lissitzy)

Posted on March 30, 2021 by zjb

The 1919 Chad Gadya of El Lissitzky is a violent masterpiece that reveals, uniquely and as if once and for all, the brutal visual core at the Jewish world of this dark Passover classic, sung to this day in Aramaic, … Continue reading →

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Bourgeois Passover (Domestic Judaism)

Posted on March 26, 2021 by zjb

Setting aside all that theo-political stuff, all the high-minded talk and ideas that lend themselves to the public performance and moral didacticism, the social form of the actual Passover seder is intimate; a small scale familial rite, familiar and inward-looking … Continue reading →

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The Ultimate “Hasmoneans & Hanukah” 2020 Twitter Thread

Posted on December 18, 2020 by zjb

  Reminding us again that the rabbis, who detested the Hasmoneans, were only one group of players in antique and late antique Judaism: the Hanukah memorialization of the Maccabean revolt is not simply a reactionary reflex of Jewish modernity and … Continue reading →

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