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Does Judaism Really
Ban Artistic Endeavor?

JOSEPH GUTMANN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

aacov Agam, a leading Is-
raeli artist, wrote: "As the
son of a rabbi, I was very
concerned from an early
age with the relationship of the
Jewish people to art. I wondered
why there was so little art done
by a people whose contribution
to literature, music and other
fields of human endeavor was
substantial. I searched for an an-
swer to the seeming paradox,
that an imaginative people
should have achieved so little in
the visual arts."
One of the answers
Agam gives for the paradox
is the restraining influence
that the so-called biblical
"Second Commandment"
exerted on Jewish artistic
production. Exodus 20:4-5
clearly states, "You shall not
make for yourself a sculp-
tured image, or any likeness
of what is in the heavens
above or on the earth below,
or in the waters below the
earth..."
To Agam, "the idea be-
hind this prohibition was
that the meaning of reali-
ty was too vast and inex-
plicable to be expressed in
a fixed image, and that the
attempt to do so led to fal-
sification."
Agam's premise that the
artist may be a falsifier of
reality is a growth with long
and ancient roots. In the
second- and third-century,
the Church's Father
Clement of Alexandria ac-
cused the artist of trans-
gressing the Eighth
Commandment, "You shall
not steal," by usurping the
Divine prerogative of cre-
ation and claiming to be a
fashioner of animals and
plants.
Similarly, the hadish
(traditional literature of Is-
lam, dating from the eighth cen-
tury on) condemns the artist as
a blasphemous rival of the One
and Only Creator, who will be
asked on Judgment Day to ani-
mate the figures he has created
and for failure to do so will be se-
verely punished.
The artist as a dangerous rival
to God, as one whose false works
deceive and distract the wor-
shipper from true devotion, was
an idea found in most Western
religions.

Rabbi Gutmann is professor
emeritus of art and art history
at Wayne State University.

Another explanation for the
Jewish lack of artistic creativity
was offered during the 19th cen-
tury, when racial and national
characteristics were considered
the determinant factors of peo-
ples and nations. A Jewish re-
fusal to participate in the arts
was posited a refusal due not only
to the Second Commandment but
to a (as we would say) "geneti-
cally" defective sense of color.
Thus even the noted Jewish
philosopher Martin Buber could
write: "the Jew of antiquity was

the Jew felt unable to express
himself visually because of a con-
genital, biological incapacity to
see — which struck the sculptor
Jacob Epstein as "a pernicious
racialism in art that should be
forever banished" — or because
of an all-embracing Second Com-
mandment.
These conjectures recently
have been subjected to serious
scrutiny on account of the amaz-
ing discoveries of cycles of figur-
al decorations on the walls and
floors of late Roman and Byzan-

A bronze
tine synagogues, and the
more of an audial (Ohren-
sculpture
emergence in the 20th cen-
mensch) than a visual be-
depicting biblical
ing (Augentnensch) and scenes, by artist tury of such major Jewish
felt more in terms of time Philip Ratner, in artists as Modigliani, Lip-
chitz, Soutine and Chagall.
than space."
Boys Town,
It is now realized that
Bernard Berenson, the Jerusalem: In the
art connoisseur, echoed shadow of God. we know very little about
the "Second Command-
this sentiment: "To the
ment." We are not even too
Jews belonged the splen-
dors and raptures of the world," clear on either the circumstances
and Matthew Arnold, the Eng- or the period in Israelite history
lish writer, summed it up with which generated these strictures
his famous dictum that the Jew against images, nor do we know
precisely what kind of images the
revealed the beauty of holiness,
while the Greek revealed the ho- Hebrew words employed refer to.
Furthermore, most writers have (
liness of beauty.
Many respected encyclopedias assumed the "Second Com-
and textbooks still maintain that mandment" to be a monolithic,

