The “Jewish Sistine Chapel,” Restored

Jerusalem’s Ades synagogue was constructed at the beginning of the 20th century for a community of Jews from Aleppo. Its woodwork reflects its congregants’ Syrian origins, but its elaborate murals were painted by a brilliant young artist from Austrian Poland, who imbued them with complex Zionist symbolism. The synagogue is only recently being restored to its original splendor. Matti Friedman writes:

The young painter, Yaakov Stark, covered the interior with a combination of traditional motifs, like the symbols of the twelve tribes of Israel, and with the new icons of the Zionist movement, stars of David and menorahs, woven together like a mosaic in shades of blue and green. He included a biblical passage expressing the Jews’ longing to return to Zion, using a Hebrew font that mixed Arabic calligraphy with Art Nouveau. Stark’s masterpiece of early Zionist art turned the building from a mere bastion of traditional craftsmanship into something else—a strange, even unsettling amalgam of styles, the physical expression of the conviction of the Syrian worshipers and the Eastern European artist that though they had never met before, and had recently arrived from vastly different places in a city where they had never been, they were all home. There is no other synagogue like it.

Read more at Tablet

More about: Jerusalem, Jewish architecture, Jewish art, Synagogues, Syrian Jewry, Zionism

 

Western Europe’s Failures Led to the Pogrom in Amsterdam

Nov. 11 2024

In 2013, Mosaic—then a brand-new publication—published an essay by the French intellectual Michel Gurfinkiel outlining the dark future that awaited European Jewry. It began with a quote from the leader of the Jewish community of Versailles: “My feeling is that our congregation will be gone within twenty or thirty years.” The reasons he, and Gurfinkiel, felt this way were on display in Amsterdam Thursday night. Michael Murphy writes:

For years, Holland and other European countries have invited vast numbers of people whose values and culture are often at odds with their own. This was a bold experiment made to appear less hazardous through rose-tinted spectacles. Europeans thought vainly that because we had largely set aside ethno-sectarian politics after the atrocities of the 20th century that others would do the same once they arrived. But they have not.

Perhaps the most unsettling part of this self-described “Jew hunt,” which left five people hospitalized, was the paltry response of the Dutch police. Reports suggest officers failed to act swiftly and, in some cases, to act at all. “I and two others ran to the nearest police station, but they didn’t open the door,” one of the victims claimed.

One hopes there is a reasonable explanation for this. Yet Amsterdam’s police force—with its increasingly diverse make-up—may have had other reasons for their reluctance to intervene. Last month, the Dutch Jewish Police Network warned that some officers “no longer want to protect Jewish targets or events,” vaguely citing “moral dilemmas.”

Read more at National Post

More about: Amsterdam, Anti-Semitism, European Islam, European Jewry