Israel Museum - Wing For Jewish Art and Life

Wing For Jewish Art and Life

The Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Wing for Jewish Art and Life presents the material culture of Jewish communities worldwide, from the Middle Ages to the present day, and is conceived to provide a view of Jewish life that integrates both its sacred and its secular dimensions. Showcasing the aesthetic value of objects as well as their social and historical significance, the comparative display unfolds in five themes that highlight the individual and the communal, the sacred and the mundane, and the heritage of the past, and the creative innovations of the present. The reconfigured wing includes a new Synagogue Route, unique to the Israel Museum, containing four synagogue interiors from the continents of Europe, Asia, and the Americas; a dramatic introductory display focusing on the Jewish life cycle that features singular treasures from the collections relating to the ritual ceremonies of birth, marriage, and death; a new gallery space to showcase the Museum’s holdings of rare illuminated manuscripts; and the integration of works of contemporary art and Judaica.

Highlights on view include: Maimonides’ Mishne Torah (15th century), Zedek-ve-Shalom Synagogue (18th century), the newly restored Fishach sukkah (19th century), Burial society (hevra kadisha) carriage from Hungary (19th century), Ogadéro necklace and bracelets from Izmir, Turkey (late 19th century), a Man’s hooded cape (akhnif) from the Atlas Mountains (late 19th–early 20th centuries).

Read more about this topic:  Israel Museum

Famous quotes containing the words wing, jewish, art and/or life:

    The sin of my ingratitude even now
    Was heavy on me. Thou art so far before
    That swiftest wing of recompense is slow
    To overtake thee. Would thou hadst less deserved,
    That the proportion both of thanks and payment
    Might have been mine! Only I have left to say,
    More is thy due than more than all can pay.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    Don: Why are they closed? They’re all closed, every one of them.
    Pawnbroker: Sure they are. It’s Yom Kippur.
    Don: It’s what?
    Pawnbroker: It’s Yom Kippur, a Jewish holiday.
    Don: It is? So what about Kelly’s and Gallagher’s?
    Pawnbroker: They’re closed, too. We’ve got an agreement. They keep closed on Yom Kippur and we don’t open on St. Patrick’s.
    Billy Wilder (b. 1906)

    What art thou that usurp’st this time of night,
    Together with that fair and warlike form
    In which the majesty of buried Denmark
    Did sometimes march? By heaven I charge thee speak!
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    Professors of literature, who for the most part are genteel but mediocre men, can make but a poor defense of their profession, and the professors of science, who are frequently men of great intelligence but of limited interests and education, feel a politely disguised contempt for it; and thus the study of one of the most pervasive and powerful influences on human life is traduced and neglected.
    Yvor Winters (1900–1968)