The Divine Image

The urge to depict God and, conversely, the biblical prohibition against it have accompanied Jewish artists throughout the generations, as has the difficulty of portraying an abstract and incomprehensible being. The works in this exhibition reflected the diverse methods of representing God, and the artists' struggle with the challenge of describing the indescribable. Ceremonial objects, manuscripts, printed books and haggadot, most of which were from the Museum's Judaica and Ethnography collections, were presented next to works by El Lissitzky, Marc Chagall, Mark Rothko, Michal Na'aman, and others.