Book Review: Dreams of Subversion in Medieval Jewish Art and Literature
Marc Michael Epstein Penn State Press, 1997
Reviewed by Lois Whitmore
Marc Michael Epstein is a man who sees things. Especially medieval things. And he has been perceiving and accumulating pictures in his mind’s eye for a long time. As a child he memorized unicorns in the tapestries in the Cloisters museum, was intrigued by puzzles, seduced by mysteries. As a Director of the Hebrew Books and Manuscripts division of Sotheby’s Judaica department in the eighties, he added to his mental museum as the result of serving as consultant to various libraries, auction houses, museums and private collectors throughout the world. But there is something unusual about his mature vision as a scholar/teacher– he sees, (through the dual lenses of traditional Jewish textual study and art historical methodology,) anomalies, the unexpected, the discrepant, when looking at Jewish art. Epstein communicates that atypical vision through his teaching at Vassar in the Jewish Studies program, and through his publications, one of which, “Dreams of Subversion in Medieval Jewish Art and Literature” (Penn State Press, 1997,) will be discussed here. ” He is in the process of writing a new book for the University of California Press titled “Overthrowing the Idols: A Radical Reappraisal of Jewish Visual Culture,” which deals with topics ranging from rabbinic aesthetics to post-Hassidic kitsch.”<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[1]<!–[endif]–>
The claim of subversive imagery in respect to animal iconography is both bold and novel, especially in light of the paucity of material within that category of Jewish medieval art and literature. But Epstein is a man who has looked carefully at many images over a long period of time. Dissatisfied with the cursory dismissal by art historians and medievalists, and able to translate textual symbolism to the visual, he has revisited every element of the medieval Hebrew page with the scholarly and aesthetic confidence that it contains significant and vital information about Jewish mind-set in the medieval period. His primary postulate is that there is a correlation between Medieval Hebrew visual and textual animal symbolism. His secondary postulate is that those manuscript illuminations can be read in such a way as to account for all the information on the page, including the conceptually unexpected, and the visually peculiar. He initiates his proof/interpretation by stating the obvious: not only are Jews a minority, but they are a persecuted minority. This fact certainly establishes a motive for the creation of intentionally ambiguous imagery which can address a wide audience. Manuscripts, which are in the hostile public eye, must hold up to scrutiny by Christian eyes. Yet those Christian eyes, he suggests, are ignorant and blind in a significant way; they cannot “see” symbolic content which references Jewish texts and tradition. That blindness, he says, was consciously exploited by medieval Jews through the use of subversive imagery which communicated in a coded language only other Jews could read. Their opacity to a contemporary audience, their lack of universality, lends credence to their importance as a medieval mirror. Epstein uses the word “archaeological” to describe his methodology of extracting imagery in terms of Jewish assimilation of Christian pictorial conventions. For him the crucial step in understanding the medieval Jewish mind is decoding “the transformation of mainstream motifs into minority symbols.”
In that respect he is more the subtle cryptologist than archeologist. The world of art history and historiography depends heavily on the concept of provenance. The documentation of the circumstances of production and the chain of ownership are considered essential is establishing authenticity and veracity in history and imagery. Yet such things are not only lacking in his theorizing, but they are irrelevant. That these symbols appear in a unique way only within Jewish medieval documents is overwhelmingly of more significant to him. Epstein asks the expected questions– such as what is intrinsically Jewish about this art— but poses unexpected answers. The artifact itself is evidence that a prior knowledge of Jewish texts was necessary ; otherwise, there would be no correlation of visual code with Hebrew text, imagery, and iconography. What is clear is that this medieval art is Jewish “not because it was produced by Jews because it was produced for [emphasis mine] Jews. “(p. 7) Whether Epstein’s interpretation of them is the true, or the only possible one, is less important than to realize that without his insight, we would not have “seen” these images at all.
Within the general question of Jewish imagery, he looks at the subset of animal imagery and symbolism. He sets this against the larger context of animal imagery characteristic of the medieval period, employing both a small scale statistical analysis of visual images and text references, including sacred text. Verbal animal imagery is preexistent in the Jewish fabulist tradition; the fables of the Talmud support this use of this genre as a central medium of political commentary. Eli Yassef, in his analysis of the Hebrew folk tale, makes the similar point. (Yassef 205)
In the body of his work, Epstein “present(s) the results of these labors, describing the origins, development, and contextual significance of four specific animal symbols, each of which addresses a major area of medieval Jewish mentalités: national self-image, the image of the Torah, God and the problem of evil, and Messianism and eschatology.” (xv)
The appearance of animals in most Christian medieval manuscripts, especially marginalia, is inextricably linked to Christian theology; natural science is, in a sense, the “landscape” of dogma. <!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[2]<!–[endif]–> The theme of hunting in Jewish manuscript illustration is an anomaly, the incongruity, that first attracted his attention to the hare, with which he begins his discussion. The elephant, the second animal Epstein considers, is a more elusive beast, whose visual appearance in a Jewish context is rare. In contrast, its Christian use is more widespread. For example, it appears in “everlasting fighting” with dragons, according to Bartholomew<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[3]<!–[endif]–> and is sometimes illustrated in creation scenarios such as the Aberdeen Bestiary. However, textual references to elephants by Jewish authors is not uncommon. A concluding discussion makes a historical case for the Jewish origins of both dragon and unicorn, which the study’s author feels were appropriated by Christians and are far more common in their art.
Epstein comments that the nature of these Jewish animal symbols is “time-bound,” (13) rightly pointing out that it is their ephemeral nature which makes them so significant in understanding Jews of the Middle Ages. “Medieval Jews inherited from the rabbis of the Talmudic Age a finely tuned sense of irony.” (14) Their subversive images use the dominant culture’s mode of expression: but their allegories affirm Torah, their pursuit and vilification by nations of the world, the consciousness of exile, and dreams of vindication and redemption. Were they an outlet for anger, a safety valve, a guarded act of bravery and defiance such as the Jewish resistance during the Holocaust? Epstein would say so.
There are many illustrations in his book, but Epstein reconstructs the images with words to focus the discussion on different conceptual levels. Almost a dozen Hebrew images are from thirteenth to fifteenth century Germany (with a majority from the fourteenth century); a half dozen Spanish examples, a couple from thirteenth century France, and a scattering from the Middle Europe in the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries. He has also included a few sixth century examples as well. Nor does he neglect the text which accompanies these images, as it is the juxtaposition of images and text that offer clues to interpretation. Though it would be interesting to know if his examples are characteristic of work of this period or these places, possibly constituting a “statistical” sample, or whether they are curiosities in a body of surviving works, that issue is not really addressed by Epstein, perhaps because the symbolic meaning he considers its essence is unaffected by such categorization.<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[4]<!–[endif]–>
In the first quarter of the fourteenth century, Castillian artists produced a beautiful haggadah, now in the British Library. (Like many of Epstein’s tantalizing descriptions, this one combines a lyrical narrative style of writing and a scientifically precise analysis.) Besides an illustration of a dressed- to- deceive Esau visiting Isaac, there is a shortened version of the text. Esau the hunter bears a hare over his shoulder. Thus we are introduced to “The Elusive Hare.” The hare “mentioned only twice in the Pentateuch, both times as part of a list of animals whose consumption is forbidden” (17) — this is to be an animal offered to a Patriarch? This blasphemous image certainly captures attention in the way that merely decorative marginalia does not. Perhaps this is an unusual image? No, this manuscript is not a unique example in that respect; on the contrary, a hare-hunt is recurrent haggadah motif in Franco-Germany also, from the medieval period onward. The subtitle of this chapter is “Constructing Identity;” if there was a single animal symbol contributed by Jews in the medieval period, says Epstein, the hare is it. The hare seems to have had “profound and pervasive allegorical significance in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.” (19) In Gabirol in the eleventh and HaLevi in the twelfth centuries, the hunt is an allegory for Israel’s pursuit by strong nations. Therefore, the juxtaposition of hare-hunt imagery with the traditional text celebrating the end of exile, freedom, and redemption must be a key to the text’s contemporary, meaning medieval, interpretation. While the hare’s literary appearance in a Jewish text is confined to a Karaite work of the twelfth century, <!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[5]<!–[endif]–> its appearance for Christians was also a symbol, the epitome of the negative. It stood for homosexuals, and as Jews similarly were deviants, came to stand for Jews as well. The hare outrunning its hunters– its excellent survival skills: its perceptiveness and swift adaptability , i.e., living by its wits, (archetypal trickster) –the obverse of that image of degradation, was what was seized upon by medieval Jews. They brandished it as a symbol of ultimate triumph and redemption. In these hare/hound illustrations, we see anthropomorphic hares served by, and commanding, dogs. “The complete polemic allegory ….might read something like this: Christianity, in pursuing. …and attempting to destroy the physical essence of the Jewish people, …the most hare-like of nations …has forfeited …the blessing obtained by Jacob. …Israel is not entirely blameless, …yet Israel is destined to be redeemed by God” (35) Every hare, says Epstein of the haggadah imagery, will have his day.
If the hare is an unusual animal to find in a Jewish image, what about an elephant on a manuscript page? How does such an uncommon beast as an elephant become associated with the Law? The rarely represented elephant, unlike the hare, does not appear to be a symbol of subversion. Because there are so few visual representations of elephants in the medieval period, Epstein relies heavily on the written word in his symbol analysis. “In the thirteenth century, the hunt of the elephant appears in a rather odd ‘fable’ among those presented by Berechiah HaNakdan in his Mishlei Shuálim, Fox Fables. ” (43 ) Epstein contrasts that text with Yehudah Hadassi’s Eshkol HaKofer of 1184, in which he claims the capture of the elephant is an allegory for the Karaite-Rabbanite issue, without the moral after word which typically accompanies it. In Epstein’s decoding of the Hadassi text, the elephant, the Rabbanite Torah, cannot support itself burdened by the Oral Law, so it is outmaneuvered by the Karaites who use it to defeat them. The Hadassi is straightforward; the Berechiah, he claims, is not. The simple form of Berechiah’s fable itself raises a question– the narrative and its moral afterward, the epimythium, seem not to belong to each other. Simplicity of story is not characteristic of this thirteenth century writer. But if it is irony? The clue is found in Berechiah’s other writings, his self-described “hidden agenda.” (49) Epstein takes the Fox Fables hunt story and begins substituting elements such as “the Church”, “persecuted Jews,” riches kept by the Christians, the Written Law, etc., into the bestiary tale. In this matching of folklore and fable with lived reality, when all the corresponding elements are paired, the only remaining unaligned concept and symbol are “Torah” and “elephant,” giving Epstein his reading of equivalency.
Yassif thinks it likely that Berechiah would have been familiar with the Indian moral animal fables, “…the Kalila we-Dimnah, the fifth book of …. the Panchatantra, which had been translated into Hebrew in the tenth century as well as other international tales, fragments of which turned up in the Cairo genizah. (Yassif 265-266) Although Epstein comments on the rarity of elephants in European experience, it should be noted that the western reach of the Asian elephant’s range was Mesopotamia, and the beast is commonly depicted in an Islamic context in both image and texts of earlier periods.<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[6]<!–[endif]–>
An early example of an elephant in a Jewish context is a mosaic floor in the synagogue of Ma’on at Nirin, Israel…” about 530 CE…” (Epstein 54) where the creature is “…featured among …familiar symbols from the natural world …Jewish ceremonial: a menorah, a shower, a lull and etrog ….lions, palm trees, birds free and in cages..[and elephants] .appear [enclosed in shapes] like medallions.”(54)”…domesticated, wearing saddles…”(55) In an eighteenth century, formerly Poland, now Lithuania, synagogue, and in a seventeenth century synagogue at Hordova, (Ukraine) elephants are paired relative to depictions of the Ark. The paired animal motif is common but usually features birds or lions. When elephant representations are so diverse and so few is it possible to come up with a single explanation? Epstein doesn’t even try. Rather, he engages the reader to join him in thoughtful speculation. If the conceptual context of an elephant is not natural, and not traditional, what about mystical considerations?
The hexagram motif, now associated with Judaism as the Star of David was not a common Jewish symbol till the sixteenth century; however, it encloses a saddled elephant in the Duke of Sussex Pentateuch ( South Germany, fourteenth century.) The star was a magic symbol associated, according to Epstein’s reference to Gershon Scholem, with one of the names of the primary intermediaries between heaven and earth, the symbol of Taftafiyah, one of the names of Metatron<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[7]<!–[endif]–> and this symbol was also written on the back of a mezuzah, which was symbolic of the whole Torah. (63) Interestingly, the elephant appears on the opening page of Deuteronomy “which had, since ancient times, been the symbol of the totality of the Torah itself …called the Mishneh HaTorah, the ‘repetition ( or encapsulation) of the Law’” (60). As the two elements, Torah and elephant each relate to the same third element, the star of David, it would not be farfetched to assume that they relate to each other; that is how Epstein approaches other manuscripts in which an elephant appears with an Ark.
The elephant again holds up the Law in the illuminated liturgical poem, “Adon Imani,” in which the Torah “tells” how she used to be God’s companion and so came to be entrusted to the people of the world. The elephant is in opposition to the dragon which is “..in the ’sinister’ position; in the subsequent development of kabbalistic symbolism, this becomes the side of the forces of Din (Judgment or Fate), and the elephant, representing the Torah of mercy, appears on the right, the side ultimately associated with Hessed, or Lovingkindness ….(64) ..Elephants are “…used as a symbol of Torah, which is traditionally understood to be the font of divine wisdom.” (65) As religious symbols, elephants are extinct long before the twentieth century, though they appear in a decorative context.
A Hebrew dragon of the middle ages, unlike an elephant of the same period, does not have a consistent image-symbol to represent it. It is linguistically represented by the terms “nahash” ( primordial serpent) , “tanin” (dragons or great sea monsters, Moses’ staff), “t’li”, ( the celestial /astrological dragon) “HaLeviatan,”(giant curled fish) and by illustrations that range from a giant fish to a serpent- like, fire breathing creature, sometimes winged, sometimes having qualities of both birds and lizards. (like the copper dragon of Genesis) “The dragon is particularly interesting,” says Epstein, “because it often seems to serve as a metaphor for metaphysical things whose meaning is veiled. “(71) He quotes Judah HaLevi, in Sefer HaKuzari, “….The dragon is a symbol of the world of the intellect, because by this name are known those hidden things which are impossible to perceive with the senses.”(71) As symbols go, the concept of dragon is not unique to medieval Judaism, having both ancient and contemporary precursors and religious avatars. The mythic ancestors of of this Hebrew incarnation appeared in the stories of Perseus and Andromeda, Apollo and Python, Sigurd and Fafni , Beowulf and Grendel, Indra and Ahi
( Mithra and Ahriman). “Among the ancient Iranians the same myth prevailed, but was sublimated into a conflict between good and evil….”(Baring- Gould 53) The medieval St. George’s dragon is “that old serpent, the devil, who withholds or poisons the streams of grace,” (ibid 316) who contests with the power of God manifest in any baptized Christian. As “indigenous archetypes of evil and power,” (Epstein 72) dragons appear in the Talmud and in rabbinic literature, and are frequently depicted as they are being superseded and weakened. For example, the dragon of Eden is reduced to snake. (nahash)
The Leviathan, the celestial serpent, the “only inherently and explicitly Jewish dragon that appears in Jewish art,” (82) is depicted as doing eschatological battle with the Behemoth or as the ourabouros, head touching tail. (ibid.) Epstein examines the comments on the symbols of Leviathan and the taninim by Eleazar of Worms, one of the German Jewish pietists, the Hasidei Ashkenaz, of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries , ( 77 ) to rationalize the contradictions of free will and determinism. The motif of the Leviathan enclosing other elements, such as Jerusalem architecture, on challah covers or the synagogue ceilings, alludes to the coming of the Messiah, as peace spread over the world. (82)
In contrast, winged and sometimes intertwining dragons dominate Franco-German Mahzorim, where they encroach threateningly on images of the Torah, but cannot ultimately prevail against God. A second reading of the symbol is in attestation to the primacy of God’s order in the universe, where the intertwined dragons threaten faith. Epstein suggests a third association, recalling Rashi on Lamentations 4:3, “Even the tanin offers the breast” (93) which corresponds to the figure Melekh, (Fig 39, opp. 93) with hidden dragons, an image in a Mahzor of thirteenth century France, where the dragon symbolizes a figure of justice, and simultaneously, of parental mercy. He concludes his chapter on the theological harnessing of the mythos of the dragon by recapping the likeness of the demonic to the divine –Eve deceived, the copper serpent idolized, biblical dragons of such power that God’s dominance had to be asserted. That dominance was asserted, through text and illumination, through a multiplicity of dragon symbols.
It is hard to believe the unicorn is an indigenous Jewish symbol. It seems entirely alien. No other beast is more closely identified with the tale of Christian Salvation than the metaphor of the unicorn hunt. The Hebrew biblical beast associated with the unicorn is the empowered and redemptive re’em, or wild ox, (103) the tribal totem of Joseph, ( whose number of horns is unspecified. ) The other unicorn, the self-sacrificing tahash, existed only to provide its skin as a glorious covering for the Desert ark after which it disappeared. (JT Shabbat 2:3 in Epstein, notes 149) Unlike most biblical symbols, the unicorn is unpaired; its uniqueness parallels that of Israel– its horn, the symbol of “the pride or strength of the Messiah or of Israel herself.” (105) Frequently, the unicorn, like the hare, appears as the object of a hunt. A unicorn in a medieval Christian context, such as the Unicorn tapestries, represented the Passion of Jesus, and suffering at the hands of the Jews; it made a different kind of statement. In Hebrew images, the unicorn is never captured, its neck never encircled by a virgin’s arms. It is always shown eluding its captors. In the Brabant Pentateuch ( 1310 Hamburg Epstein opp. 107) illustrators of the manuscript drew on the iconographic tradition of Jewish oppressors, casting Israel as the unconquerable, “protected by a singular God.” (107)
However, there are few images of medieval animals, even fewer unicorns. The juxtaposition of animal symbols frequently compounds the difficulty of decoding their meaning. For example, what does it mean when a unicorn and a lion battle, as they do on the ceiling of the Hodorov synagogue? Lions have a long Jewish history, as a second messianic symbol of the world to come, as Judah, the leader of the tribes, as “a visual homonymic pun ” (109) equating with Torah? Of course for Christianity, the Lion represents Christ. Epstein looks to historical functions of lion as a negative symbol, as in God in his anger, enemies of the Jewish people. Bust historical textual interpretation is not enough; he also stresses the importance of context, the history and culture of place, of setting , in furnishing interpretive clues. Local history for the seventeenth century Jews who worshipped in the synagogue, saw this lion and unicorn on their ceiling , are pogroms and false Messiahs. Epstein imagines that they saw in these symbols a sacred promise–the end of their travails with a simultaneous redemption.
Epstein is at his best when he himself is the authority and he has plenty of visual material with which to work; his acute, insightful imagination focuses the reader’s attention and his textual references usually provide pertinent support. But faced with a paucity of manuscripts, he sometimes inundates his audience with scholarly literary data, which, though interesting of itself, nevertheless strands some of the images of medieval animals in a terra incognita.
For a finale, Epstein demonstrates for the first time the correlation between different animal symbols, their accompanying texts, and the liturgical calendar. He describes the relationship as a pattern of interlocking themes which characterize, reiterate and echo medieval Jews’ unassailable belief in God’s protection and ultimate redemptive power. Marc Michael Epstein enables us to perceive these larger patterns –to “read” between the familiar lines of Jewish texts and, in the speculative decoding of these animal symbols, glimpse, sense, and speculate on the identity and values of the Jews for whom these were “written.”
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<!–[if !supportLists]–>1 <!–[endif]–><!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[1]<!–[endif]–>faculty biography, Vassar College Department of Religion
<!–[if !supportLists]–>2 <!–[endif]–><!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[2]<!–[endif]–>e.g., Franciscian Bartholomeus Anglicus, in “The Properties of things”, St. Isadore of Seville, Giraldus Cambrensis: from Warefare of Science with Theology. Chapter 1: From Creation to Evolution.
<!–[if !supportLists]–>3 <!–[endif]–><!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[3]<!–[endif]–>referring to “The Properties of Things” in From Creation to Evolution Andrew Dickson White
<!–[if !supportLists]–>4 <!–[endif]–><!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[4]<!–[endif]–>nevertheless, it would be interesting to know if new analytic tools would shed further light on interpretation. In an email to me dated October 15, 2001, Dr. Epstein says,
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<!–[if !supportLists]–>6<!–[endif]–>” With regard to whether these images are statistically common or exceptional, I can only say that there is SO little surviving Jewish art from the Middle Ages that anything we do have is significant, but that one cannot answer the larger question, except to say that there are a LOT of marginalia in the manuscripts that survive. Many of them may be merely decorative. I chose to discuss the ones
which resonated for me in terms of my study of and knowledge of contemporary texts. “
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<!–[if !supportLists]–>7 <!–[endif]–><!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[5]<!–[endif]–>He is referring to Hadassi, (26)
<!–[if !supportLists]–>8 <!–[endif]–><!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[6]<!–[endif]–>In a version of the “Book of Mechanics” of thirteenth century al-Jazarri, there is a drawing of a mechanical clock which features an elephant at its base; this was a blueprint for a model, typical of those automatons which were fashionable in the Abbassid courts.(Kurdistan arts- see works cited.) Also, the elephant is prominant in the Koran. ” Abraha, the Christian Abyssinian governor of Yemen, invaded Hijaz in 570 but retreated in disarray from a place a few miles from Makkah, abandoning the original aim of the expedition, which was to destroy the Ka’aba. It is the incident which is referred to in Sura 105 (The Elephant) in the Quran, so-called because of an elephant being present in the Axumite army. The Arabs of Hijaz were greatly impressed, because they had never seen an elephant before. So much importance is given to this event that the year 570 is described as the “Year of the Elephant” in some Arab chronicles” (Islamic History: 570 – 595 see works cited) Elephants are associated with Christian European rulers: Charlemagne, Henry III, and Louis IX.
<!–[if !supportLists]–>9 <!–[endif]–><!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[7]<!–[endif]–>In his notes(139) referencing Scholem, he says Taftifiyah is the name that shields the person who calls on Metatron, an entity appearing in certain ancient texts with elusive qualities relative to the Divine, and especial tasks and properties.
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