Jewish Illumination

Today's outing was quick and local, just down the hill in Camden. The Jewish Museum has had a complete overhaul, and reopened earlier this year. The Museum has exhibits explaining Judaism and on the history of Jewish emigration to Britain. Religion in Britain is so patchy, that few know anything beyond their own faith, and the most popular "faith" is no faith at all. At a wedding in a historic Unitarian Meeting House, I heard a guest ask the minister, "What exactly do you do? Are you a vicar?" He was a nice American chap who was inspired to become a Unitarian minister when he married in Hingham's historic meeting house (that would be the oldest wooden church in the United States still being used as a church) by the man who was once our minister in Hingham. Small world of Unitarianism. I have also noticed during our church visiting forays, that many churches have recently begun displaying explanatory cards for items in the church such as the baptismal font.  So any museum trying to explain religious faith is doing everyone a favour.

The Jewish Museum's first big special exhibit is a whopper — Illumination: Hebrew Treasures from the Vatican and Major British Collections.  25 manuscripts and books dating mostly from the 15th century are on display, but there is a 9th-10th century midrash on Leviticus loaned from the Vatican library. In the Renaissance, Christian scholars began collecting and studying Hebrew texts to gain deeper insights on Christ and his forbears of the Old Testament. Hence many of these books are on loan from the Vatican, the  Anglican Church Library in Lambeth Palace, and the Special Collections at Oxford.

Some of the books are  illuminated, perhaps in some cases by Christian artisans. In one interesting example a Christian Book of Hours with a small painting of Mary sitting on a unicorn nursing the babe — clearly Christian iconography — is displayed next to a Hebrew prayerbook beautifully illustrated, and with a tiny painting of a woman holding a baby on a unicorn. The illuminator must have gotten a bit carried away with his work. The most fascinating work were the examples of micrography, the art of using the tiniest of Hebrew letters, so tiny they look like mere dots on the page, with the words written in decorative patterns.

from The Kennicott Bible, Spain, 1476
Bodleian Library, Oxford 

This was my favourite illumination because I thought the pattern outside the circular figure would make a wonderful fabric design. Although it is quite impossible to really see from this photo I stole from the Museum's website, the black dots that run inside the white interlacing are the tiniest of Hebrew letters.

Whilst viewing the exhibit, I couldn't help think of Geraldine Brooks's novel The People of the Book which gives a background story to the illuminations in the Sarajevo Bible. The modern day story of the book restorer's chaotic personal life was hard to take, but the information on restoration was interesting, and the imagined tales of how the pages came to exist and to be saved through Jewish history was fascinating.

This is already our second trip to the Jewish Museum. The first was during their opening celebration when we heard one of our favourite music groups, Joglaresa, sing a programme showing the close relationship between Jewish, Arab, and Christian music in Spain before the Arabs and the Jews were expelled in the 15th century.