Italian Jewish looks, at Beit Hatfutsot

“The items were mostly selected based on their beauty. We tried various options, but even with the sacred artifacts of Italian Jewry, you see the aesthetics."

By BARRY DAVIS
Updated: MAY 22, 2016 22:00
Curator Micol Schreiber Benarroch with a photograph of her grandmother’s house in Venice (photo credit: Courtesy)
Curator Micol Schreiber Benarroch with a photograph of her grandmother’s house in Venice
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Western civilization owes a lot to the Italians. In addition to the obvious palate pleasers, the likes of coffee, ice cream and pizza, there is the small matter of the Renaissance.
Between the 14th and 17th centuries, leading proponents in various fields of art – Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci and Botticelli, to name but a few – produced landmark creations that set the tone for much of later modern creative endeavor.
However, there are darker areas in that feted era, and there was plenty of anti-Semitism around in what we today call Italy – it did not become a unified national identity until the late 19th century – and the first Jewish ghetto was instituted in Venice on March 29, 1516.
Beit Hatfutsot – The Museum of the Jewish People – is currently marking the 500th anniversary of that inauspicious event with a delightful exhibition called “Italian Jewish Renaissance – The Beauty of Italian Judaica.”
The eye-catching show is a co-production, with the vast majority of the exhibits sourced from the Nahon Museum of Italian Jewish Art in Jerusalem.
“They have a fantastic collection there, but don’t have the room to show it, and we have the space to show these things to the general public, but don’t have the collection,” notes Italian-born curator Micol Schreiber Benarroch.
Sounds like a tidy arrangement which has duly produced an enticing end product. “Italian Jewish Renaissance” showcases the elegance, refinement and harmony that characterize Italian Jewish culture over a period of four centuries.
The items that are on display in the Lady Sarah Cohen gallery until February 2017 take in sacred ceremonial artifacts and secular, more contemporary works which offer an expansive sense of life in the Venetian Jewish community down the years. The exhibition is also testament to the integration of Jews with the Italian zeitgeist. By combining their own traditions with Italian aesthetics, Jewish artists created works of rare quality.
Sacred Jewish objects are decorated with the finest techniques and motifs of Italian art, everyday items are imbued with rare aesthetic value, and beauty is pursued through technical skill. Besides paying tribute to the skill of the artisans of the community, this captivating showing is quite simply a tribute to the synergy that is endemic to Italian Jewish art.
Most of the 40 artifacts on display date from the golden age of Jewish art in Italy, between the Renaissance of the 15th century and the Risorgimento, or Italian national revival, of the 19th century.
Inspired by their cultural surroundings and supported by wealthy patrons, Jewish artists merged the spiritual with the material to produce sacred objects of artistic importance. Precise decorations integrated style with theme. The Jewish tradition of using and creating fine objects to beautify religious observance and ritual had reached its artistic zenith.
The synergy between Jewish content and Italian artistic influence continues to this day. Italians have long decorated their synagogues with exquisite embroidery.
The parochet – the curtain covering the ark of the Torah – designed by Emanuele Luzzati is a modern example of this tradition. It is a polychromic patchwork wonder to behold that was created 20 years ago. And the Shabbat candlesticks created by Luigi Del Monte are another contemporary gem.
Schreiber Benarroch admits to a personal, vested as well as a professional interest in getting the exhibition together.
“I worked as assistant curator at the Nahon Museum of Italian Jewish Art in Jerusalem, and now, many years later, I find myself on the other side,” she notes with a smile. “It is very moving for me.” There’s more personal input from the curator.
“My family comes from Italy, and I included a photograph of my grandmother’s house in Venice.”
There is more familial input, which, in fact, Schreiber Benarroch came across by accident.
“I went down to the Beit Hatfutsot storeroom to find pictures of a home in Venice – interior and exterior – and found these pictures there,” she says.
The exhibition also features a delightful and evocative Seder night print from 1933, with the happy family group shot including two sisters of the curator’s grandma, Nella Fano and Wanda Fano.
The curator didn’t stray too far from home for a more contemporary section of the exhibition which features several fine photographs of latter-day Italian Jewish weddings taken by her brother, an industrial designer by the name of Daniel Schreiber. It bookends the lineup nicely, both in chronological and visual terms.
Schreiber Benarroch says she took a methodical approach to the project.
“The exhibition is divided into four focal points. You come into the home area, continue to the handwritten and printed document part, and then to the synagogue section, and end with weddings.”
There may be distinct topics to the layout, but the curator says there is a natural continuum to it, too. That is enhanced by the choice of demarcation accessories.
“All the sections are, of course, strongly interconnected and there is interaction between them,” the curator explains. “You can go around the exhibition from the opposite direction, too, and you will still get the links, but we decided to partition off the space with transparent curtains, which both separate and connect the different areas.”
The thematic spread played an important role in the exhibition’s compilation process, but, states Schreiber Benarroch, aesthetics were generally the order of the day.
“The items were mostly selected based on their beauty. We tried various options, but even with the sacred artifacts of Italian Jewry, you see the aesthetics – which is characteristic of Italian art as a whole – that come into play in the things the Jews used for the observance of religious commandments.”
That is amply demonstrated by, for example, the pair of splendid silver Torah scroll finials. The sumptuous decorative composite incorporates palmettes, bell shapes and all manner of flora and foliage clearly fashioned by a loving and learned hand. The finials hail from the great synagogue of Vercelli in northern Italy, and, we are told, were a gift to the community there. And followers of haute couture of yesteryear should enjoy the white, silk bridal shoes from Florence, made by a certain S.M. Umberto, which date from 1894.
Other fetching objets d’art to be found in the gallery include a 19th century Haggada whose illustrations reference the fabled Venice Haggada from 1609, several delicately crafted parochot- curtains of yore and an 18th-century mahzor (holiday prayer book) with a deep blue velvet cover complete with hammered silver ornamentation, carved plaques and cast clasp.
And the early 18th-century Scroll of Esther, from Ancona in central Italy, should also draw the eye. The upper and lower fringes of the parchment have been embellished with paper-cut shapes of birds and flowers, sculpted into the parchment. A ketuba – marriage contract – from 1846 also makes for handsome viewing. Aesthetics rule the roost wherever you turn, and the aforementioned nuptial shots make for an emotive and highly expressive denouement.
‘Italian Jewish Renaissance – The Beauty of Italian Judaica’ closes in February 2017.
For more information: (03) 745-7808 and www.bh.org.il