DANCE! SING! STUDY? - SHAVUOT IS ALMOST HERE!

So what are you going to do to celebrate the anniversary of when the Jews received the Torah at Mount Sinai? Study Torah until dawn? Eat bagels, blintzes, and cheesecake? Maybe dance with a tambourine? All of those are just fine for Shavuot, the holiday that marks the day (THE DAY!?!?!) when the Jews received the Torah — the 5 Books of Moses.

As for this image, it’s perhaps a bit earlier in the story. Miriam’s Song occurs just after the Jews escaping Egypt crossed the divinely-split Red Sea. Miriam, seen here holding a tambourine, is leading the women of the group in singing and dancing to celebrate their the Hebrews’ first moments of freedom.

You may ask, when did they receive the Torah? A few pages later.

Miriam’s Song by Samuel Hirszenberg
Poland?/Jerusalem? YU Museum (1975.021)

5 days ago 12 notes View high resolution

BIG MOMMA CHARITY - JUST IN TIME FOR MOTHER’S DAY!

Israeli history was shaped largely by charitable giving that sustained (and still sustains) communal institutions that seek to raise up impoverished communities. And this kind of giving was itself a means for creating a cohesive society. Before and in the first decades following Israel’s inception, the Jews moving to their ancient homeland from around the world often arrived with little by way of modern education, let alone the skills that they would need to survive in Israel’s economy.

One organization, AMIT (Americans for Israel and Torah) which took on that name only in 1980, came into being in the 1920s to provide special vocational and religious training to orphaned and immigrant children through schools, workshops, and children’s villages. It was the mother for children without mothers.

In Hebrew the acronym AMIT includes the word mother, and can be interpreted as the beginning of the word for “my mother” or “our mother.” These pendents were gifts to AMIT donors, which they were encouraged to wear to show that they supported this organization.

* “Mother in Israel” pendants, 1984 and 1985, YU MUSEUM colleciton

1 week ago 9 notes

MANAGE YOUR TIME WITH THESE 5 CLOCKS

A catalogue featuring works from the Michael Steinhardt Judaica Collection, featuring this unique clock, recently came across my desk. Created at the end of the 19th century, the clock — which is as much a painting with clocks in it — tells the times for various prayers on weekdays as well as the Sabbat, and does it with an incredible flair!

Check out the Michael Steinhardt Judaica Collection website to see more.

From the collection’s notes:

Painting with Five Clocks, 1878

Artist: Avraham Pavyan

Hermannstaadt (Sibiu, Romania)

Painted on paper with metal dials with opening wood and glass frame

Height: 15 3/4 in., width: 22 1/4 in.

Hebrew Inscription around the border:

Psalms 88:13-17.

These manual clocks designate five different times of prayer. Two for the weekdays and three for the Sabbath. This provincial shamas created a proto-modernistic art work out of the need to post the times of services. In the interplay of color and shape one can foresee the work of Franz Kupka, the Orphist painter, and his 20th century painting Discs of Newton (1912, Philadelphia Museum of Art).

Photographer: Malcolm Varon

3 weeks ago 22 notes View high resolution

FIRST WARM DAY IN NY - WATCH OUT FOR CROCS!

Not the well known shoes, though perhaps you should keep clear if you’re so inclined.

Today is the first actually warm day in New York in 2013. If you’re out and about by Union Square, stop on in to YUM. We’re free from 5-8 pm. In the meantime, enjoy this wonderful image depicting the ancient Nile in a 1933 Haggadah.

Haggadah Le-Yeladim / Die Haggadah Des Kindes, by Bernhard-Cohn Silberman, 1933, Berlin, Germany

1 month ago 8 notes

ZCURATOR TALKING ABOUT YUM’S EXHIBITION

zcurator:

OF CLOISTERS AND ERUVS

I just got off the phone with an education person from the Cloisters museum about putting together a discussion on the architecture of cloisters and eruvs (Jewish ritual enclosures around neighborhoods and cities). I just love this idea since its juxtaposes two different concept of ritual enclosure, one set apart and beautified (Cloister), and the other permeable and unadorned (Eruv). Yet, in both cases the intent is the same: delineate space and time for the purpose of ritual observance, though this is slightly debatable.

These differences are visible here, in an image of the Cloister of Saint Trophime and a city and street eruv from the Ecclesiastical Constitution of Contemporary Jews, Particularly Those in Germany by Johann Christoph Georg Bodenschatz.

If you’re interested in eruvs at all, you should check out the exhibition It’s a Thin Line at YU Museum.

Thanks archimaps:

Inside the cloister of Saint Trophime, Arles

1 month ago 15 notes

THIS WEDNESDAY NIGHT! Register here: https://tix.smarttix.com

2 months ago View high resolution

Jewish Ideas Daily - Article on YUM’s Holocaust Lit Program

Speaking What Must Be Spoken

By Diane Cole • Thursday, February 14, 2013

We read about the Holocaust in order to remember, but the sheer number of books on the subject can intimidate. What has long been needed was a guide that would be as accessible as it was comprehensive and scholarly. Now we have one, in Holocaust Literature: A History and Guide by David G. Roskies, professor of Yiddish literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and Naomi Diamant, deputy dean of New York University’s Stern School of Business.

Read on at JewishIdeasDaily.com

3 months ago 4 notes

WHOA WHOA POST OFFICE WOES

Apropos I suppose, this New Years card might remind use of happier days for the post office, back when receiving a message might have been tantamount to, oh, inventing the means for flying, such as the glider appearing in this Jewish New Year’s card.

New Years Greeting Card, in Yiddish. Williamsburg Art Company, New York, 1910/1915. Yeshiva University Museum Collection.

3 months ago 19 notes View high resolution

Eruv: The (Nearly) Invisible Borders That Define Religious Jewish Life (PHOTOS, VIDEO)

By YUM Curator Zachary Paul Levine, in the Huffington Post Religion Section

Along with notices about power outages, flooded subway tunnels, and gas shortages in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy came this dispatch from Long Island:

IMPORTANT POST-HURRICAINE INFORMATION
Carrying or causing any item to be moved (ex: pushing, pulling, kicking, throwing, etc…) a distance of approx. 6 feet in an unenclosed area (such as a street or non-fenced- in lawn/backyard) is prohibited.

Read the rest of the article at the Huffington Post Religion Section.

* Image: Extruded: New York artist R. Justin Stewart created these plans for a monumental sculpture comprised of thousands of strings, installed in this exhibition.Extruded (an eruv project) presents a visual timeline of the evolution in the location of Manhattan’s eruvs since 1907. A map of Manhattan projects down from the ceiling, with the thread graduated into increments each representing a year, spanning 105 years.

Plans for extruded (an eruv project)
Timeline and Map of Manhattan Eruvs from 1907-1912
Nylon upholstery thread thread, jewelry hardware, brass hooks in
R. Justin Stewart
New York, 2012

3 months ago 1 note View high resolution

IT’S JUST A MATTER OF SOME PVC ON A LIGHT POLE IN THE HAMPTIONS

JEWISH RITUAL BOUNDARY IN NYTIMES: READ THE ARTICLE AND SEE THE EXHIBITION

Today’s New York Times has an article about the incredibly divisive situation swirling around a proposed eruv (ritual boundary) in eastern Long Island. There’s plenty to learn in the article, but even more to learn in YUM’s exhibition, It’s a Thin Line: The Eruv and Jewish Community in New York and Beyond. The exhibition offers exclusive interviews with people involved in this case, as well as other eruv controversies throughout the tri-state area. Come on by!

3 months ago 4 notes

Painting with Five Clocks, 1878

Hebrew Inscription around the border:

Photographer: Malcolm Varon

Jewish Ideas Daily - Article on YUM’s Holocaust Lit Program

Speaking What Must Be Spoken

Eruv: The (Nearly) Invisible Borders That Define Religious Jewish Life (PHOTOS, VIDEO)

Painting with Five Clocks, 1878

Hebrew Inscription around the border:

Photographer: Malcolm Varon

Jewish Ideas Daily - Article on YUM’s Holocaust Lit Program

Speaking What Must Be Spoken

Eruv: The (Nearly) Invisible Borders That Define Religious Jewish Life (PHOTOS, VIDEO)

Yeshiva University Museum (NYC)

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