Spotlight Looking Back A fascinating 500 years of Jewish life revealed in antique art prints. David Sachs Senior Copy Editor A t 83, author and art his- torian Constance Harris continues to find enlighten- ing perspectives on Jewish history to share. Connie, who splits her time between Birmingham and Los Angeles, has blended her affinity for art and her love of Judaism into a new 469-page tome Connie Harris complete with 377 prints displaying everyday Jewish life from the year 1456 to the present: The Way Jews Lived — Five Hundred Years of Printed Words and Images (McFarland & Co., $95). "Before I started on this project over decade ago, I knew very little about Jewish his- THE WAY tory from this EVVS 1.1VT.D era; I knew there was an Inquisition and a Holocaust," said Connie, who authored Portraiture in Prints in 1987. She dis- covered that the only visual medium that contemporaneously captured the full 500-year span was prints on paper or as illustrations in books. Before the invention of photography in the mid-19th century, art images printed from woodcuts, engravings, etchings and lithographs were the only way visuals could be widely and cheaply distributed to the masses. This process preceded even Johannes Gutenberg's development of movable type around 1439. Remarkably, the first 300 years of prints about Jews were created almost exclusively by gentile artists; Jews, for the most part, were not allowed to enter artist guilds. As a result, much of the art reflected the bigotry and inhu- manity of medieval societies. The earliest example in Connie's A Shabbat Kiddush from Song Book, Grace After Meals, Prague, 1512 The Wicked Son defiantly smokes at the seder in this version of the Four Sons from New Haggadah, U.S., 1851 book is Massacre of Jews by Jean Mielot, 1456. It shows Frenchmen worshiping piously before a crucifix in one house while Jewish men and women were being hacked to death by Christians next door. Although a good deal of the artwork by gentiles depicts and even celebrates the persecution of Jews, Connie cautions that there were stretches of time where Jews pros- pered in peace. Torture and violence were not exclusively aimed at Jews; it also was prevalent between competing Christian societies. Burning Jews is a woodcut by Hartmann Schedel from his book Nuremberg Chornicles, 1493, the best- selling non-biblical book of the 15th century. The print depicts Germany about 100 years earlier during the Bubonic Plague when Jews were scape- goated and slaughtered. Half a millenni- um later, these medieval massacres were repeated on a better-organized, much more massive scale in the so-called modern and enlightened Germany. Prague was a place in Europe where books where printed for Jewish use. Kiddush Ceremony, a woodcut from Zimirot u-Birkat Ha-mazon (Song Book, Grace After Meals), 1512, shows a family gathered at the Friday night Shabbat dinner table. Athletic Hero Surprisingly, some of the first realistic and positive depictions of Jews for gen- eral audiences were of Jewish athletes. The Jewish Boxer Daniel Mendoza, by gentile artist J. Grozer, 1789, celebrates the renowned and innovative British pugilist — at 160 pounds the only middleweight to win the heavyweight championship. Meanwhile, rabid anti- Semitism was still prevalent in England, as demonstrated in Houmors of Houndsditch or Mrs. Shevi in a Longing Condition by Thomas Rowlandson, 1813, depicting Jewish women exhibit- ing amorous attraction to swine. The 1851 New Haggadah reflected a bit of the disorder that had entered some Jewish homes in America — illustrating the Passover story of the Four Sons by showing the Wicked Son defiantly pointing his finger at the family while smoking a cigarette at the seder table. Connie is a practicing Jew who transmitted the duty to give charity to her children; her daughter Marcia died in an automobile accident while serv- ing as a nurse in Ecuador, and her son and daughter-in-law Stephen and Ruth Harris of Bloomfield Township are active volunteers in the community. Connie's goal in writing this book is to enable young Jews to learn more about their heritage — so it's not forgotten. Already, 200 university libraries have purchased Connie's lat- est book. In 2005, Connie donated her massive collection of Jewish cultural artifacts gleaned from her worldwide travels to the University of Michigan Special Collections Library. Connie's rabbi in California, Steven Weil, formerly of Young Israel of Oak Park, praises her new book as both inspiring and bittersweet, showing "the heroic struggle of our people." .— 71 Burning Jews, Nuremberg, Germany, 1493, and the slaughter of Jews during the Bubonic Plague. The Jewish Boxer Daniel Mendoza, celebrating the popular British athlete, England, 1789 Connie Harris will speak 4-5:30 p.m. Thursday, June 25, in the Library Gallery on the first floor of the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library on the U-M campus in Ann Arbor. Her book can be purchased at the U-M lecture, or direct from the publisher at (800) 253-2187 or www.mcfarlandpub.com , or at amazon.com . June 2009 B27