Greetings to your wife.
Yours,
Neuhaus
EXCERPT FROM THE SUMMARY
Anybody who has decided to study the history of Jewish graphic art, whether in a professional capacity or simply out of curiosity, very soon discovers that a huge number of questions arise in relation to this topic which ultimately lead to one principal question: how can Jewish graphic art exist at all if there has been a prohibition of many forms of representation since ancient times, and what kind of prohibition is it?
Even some 100 years ago it was considered beyond dispute that there never had been and never could have been Jewish graphic art, precisely because of the clear prohibition in the Torah of representations of the reaclass="underline" “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” (Exodus, 20:4). The same thing, but in more detail, is repeated in Deuteronomy, 4:16-17: “Lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged fowl that flieth in the air, the likeness of any thing that creepeth on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the waters beneath the earth.”
In reality this is all less clearcut than it seems at first sight. In both cases, immediately after these words there follows, “Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them” (Exodus, 20:5); and in the second case, “And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship them and serve them, which the Lord thy God hath divided unto all nations under the whole heaven.” (Deuteronomy, 4:19).
Here we need to make a short digression. The immense vitality of Judaism, the great faith of a small people, lost among hundreds of other tribes of the Middle East, of Judaism which has given birth to two of the greatest world religions, is founded on two principles. One of these is restrictive. The behavior of a Jew is strictly regulated, and it often seems to modern man that the minute and, at first sight, inexplicable prohibitions governing social and personal behavior are comical and absurd. There are an intimidating number of laws and prohibitions, restrictions and prescriptions for every eventuality in life, from birth to death: how to eat, how to drink, how to pray, how to bring up children, how to give daughters in marriage, how sons are to marry … but at least everything is decided in advance, everything is written down, codified, every conceivable unforeseeable eventuality is accounted for. A husband must not dare to touch his wife while she is menstruating, may not sit on a chair on which she has sat, or touch objects which she has held in her hands. But what if, oh, horror, a woman’s period should come unexpectedly and the husband discovers this when he has already embarked upon fulfilling his conjugal obligations? No cause for concern. Even for this eventuality there is a precise instruction on how to behave. Such is the Talmud, a comprehensive set of laws for good, correct behavior.
So then, what is the second principle I mentioned? It is the principle of complete and totally unfettered freedom of thought. The Jews were given a sacred text on which they have been working for centuries. This work is an obligatory part of the upbringing of a Jewish male. Admittedly, now women too have begun studying the Torah, but it is as yet unclear whether that is good for them or not altogether a good thing. In this area, Jews were afforded a fantastic freedom unheard of in any other religion. There is effectively a total absence of prohibitions on intellectual investigation. Everything is open to discussion and there is no dogma.
The concept of heresy, if not wholly absent, is nevertheless very diluted and blurred. The Jewish Encyclopaedia says of this, “the definition of heresy in Judaism is complicated by the absence of officially formulated dogmas or a central body with recognized authority in religious matters.”
So, while there is no restriction of thought, there are restrictions on behavior. There are a lot of these, exemplified above, but they are compressed into the golden rule of ethics ascribed to Hillel, a Jewish philosopher of the first century: “Do not do unto your neighbor that which you would not wish him to do unto you.”
Now let us return to the topic of our discussion—the prohibition of artistic representation. After the destruction of the Second Temple communities acquired very great independence, effectively now having autonomy to decide many important questions, with the result that the prohibition of representation was treated differently in different communities. Some considered it a categorical injunction and, in accordance with that belief, followed it literally. For them only inorganic ornamentation could be used for decorating objects of Judaica, synagogal or domestic. Others, however interpreted, it less literally, as a prohibition of worshipping what was depicted. This interpretation saw no prohibition of artistic appreciation. This is why we find images of animals and human figures on the frescoes of the synagogue in Dura-Europos in present-day Syria, on the mosaic floors of the synagogue of Beit Alpha in the Jezreel Valley, and a marvelous image of King David playing the harp in a sixth-century synagogue in Gaza.
Halacha unambiguously forbids the creation of an object depicting anything if the intention is to worship it, but unambiguously permits and even encourages artistic activity for ornamentation. The prohibition on worshipping anything material applies, however, not only to art. One contemporary Rav said, “That is called an idol which a person considers to be such, and if somebody sets up a brick and worships it, the brick becomes an idol and may not be used for any purpose. If a beautiful statue adorns a city, it will be a welcome guest.” That is sound common sense.
The problem of resemblance did not trouble Jewish artists. Resemblance was not an end in itself. Moreover, it was customary to slightly alter something in the human figure, to depict it with some deformation or distortion so that it became, as it were, not exactly human. The distortion might be barely detectable, for example, an incorrectly formed ear, or it could be obvious, as in the famous Bird’s Head Haggadah created in the fourteenth century in Germany, so called because the people in it have birds’ heads.
A further characteristic of Jewish art is a system of symbols which has remained virtually unchanged over 2,000 years, despite the absence of iconographic and semantic canons. The ancient symbolism develops, as can be observed by researching art objects. Both in Jewish frescoes and in mosaics, in book miniatures, and in the ornamentation of objects of Judaica, any representation, be it a bird, person, or plant, is not a direct representation but a symbol, which is accordingly by no means obliged to correspond to reality.
28. March 1990, Berkeley
L
ETTER FROM
E
WA
M
ANUKYAN TO
E
STHER
G
ANTMAN
My dear Esther,
Everything is just awful. I knew this was going to happen! I knew everything would turn out just like this. You shouldn’t marry a man 10 years younger than yourself. It was bound to happen sooner or later. Grisha is having an affair with some assistant in the department. I have an animal intuition. I noticed her the first time I saw her at some banquet. Even then the bitch was circling Grisha very brazenly. I found her behavior so disagreeable that I was immediately on the alert, and some time later Grisha told me he had two more hours of lectures at Stanford University and would be going there on Fridays. As you weren’t there beside me, there was nobody to tell me not to do something foolish. I rang that damned university and asked whether I could register for his course. They confirmed that they had no such professor on their permanent or visiting staff. Then I was guilty of a second act of folly: I demanded an explanation and he made no great attempt to deny it. He admitted it straight away, but added that I am his wife, he has no intention of divorcing me because he loves me, and whether I choose to accept the situation or not is up to me. Now I am sitting and wondering what to do. I have found out that Alex knew about Grisha’s girlfriend because he met them in the town in some dive, and altogether it strikes me that Alex’s sympathies are far more on Grisha’s side than mine. I regard it as treachery on his part. It is male solidarity. I am terribly hurt. Now when I so need Grisha’s support after all I have been through after Alex’s confession … do you know what he said when I showed him Alex’s letter? “Leave the boy alone. I’ve known that for ages.”