World Jewish News

The art and the book.

The exhibition opened in Hesed "Polina" is devoted to art of decoration of Jewish manuscripts having in the Jewish art culture old traditions. It is accepted to name the Jews as the people of Book, meaning that completely special role, which played in Jewish and not only in the Jewish history Bible.
The materials of the given exhibition can be related to a circle of the most significant monuments of the Jewish national art, for to a great extent in it are presented ornamental fragments of the most ancient hand-written codes of Bible. They belong to unique assembly of the Jewish manuscripts of the Russian National Library in St.-Petersburg, and also edition "Album of the Jewish art of olden time" issued due to Semen Ansky - one of the most representative and picturesque figures of Russian Jewry of a beginning of XX century.
"Album" was prepared for printing already in 1918, but in peripeteia of revolutionary time the edition was not carried out.
If the collections of the Jewish art in the majority of museums and libraries practically were unknown, and they should be rediscovered, the collection of the Jewish manuscripts of former Imperial Public library in St.-Petersburg has found the European popularity more than hundred years ago. On the basis of this collection one of the first researches about the Jewish art in Russia - album "Ancient Jewish ornament" of V.Stasov and D.Gintzburg was published.
Due to the people keeping our history, in modern culture the most outstanding hand-written monuments of a national art heritage, in the majority never exposed and not published come back. And only now we get an opportunity to see remarkable creations of the Jewish foremen of the last centuries.

Источник: jewish.ru