Isaiah Shachar

Isaiah Shachar , also Yeshayahu "Ishay" Shachar , maiden name Yeshayahu stem ( Hebrew ישעיהו שחר; born on August 6, 1935 in Haifa , League of Nations mandate for Palestine ; died September 19, 1977 ), was an Israeli historian , art historian, and university professor . He was known as a connoisseur of Eastern European Judaism , especially early Hasidism , and researched anti-Jewish stereotypes in the visual arts, including the motif of the " Judensau ".

Life

Isaiah Shachar was born as Yeshayahu Stengel on August 6, 1935. His father was a member of the Jewish Socialist Democratic Workers' Party Poale Zion , part of the Zionist movement Poale Zion , and a militant follower of the teachings of Ber Borochov .

Yeshayahu Stengel questioned established positions, be it those of his parents or those of society, from an early age. He changed his family name to "Shachar", the translation of his mother's maiden name ("morning star") into the Hebrew language.

Shachar attended elementary school from 1941 to 1945 and a grammar school in Haifa from 1946 to his university entrance qualification in 1953. From 1953 to 1956 Shachar served in a Nachal unit of the Israeli Defense Forces , followed by two years as a farm worker in Kibbutz Re'im in the western Negev desert, in the immediate vicinity of the Gaza Strip .

Anti-Jewish stereotype: accusation of the sacrifice of the host , excerpt from a painting, 16th century.

In 1958 Isaiah Shachar began studying European history with Jacob Talmon and the history of the Jews in Eastern Europe with Israel Halpern at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem . In 1961 he obtained his bachelor's degree with the grade summa cum laude and became an assistant to Professor Talmon. In 1963 he obtained his master’s degree under the supervision of Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson and Shmuel Ettinger . Shachar's master's thesis was a comparative study of the criticism of the Jewish community and its leadership in the Hasidic and non-Hasidic literature of Eastern Poland in the 18th century, it was also awarded summa cum laude .

In 1963 Shachar went to the renowned Warburg Institute in London to prepare for his doctorate under its director Ernst Gombrich and the art historian Otto Kurz . He received his PhD in history in 1967 from the University of London , which is part of the Warburg Institute. His dissertation dealt with the emergence and spread of anti-Jewish stereotypes in European art.

Shachar's first marriage resulted in a son. In 1969 he remarried in Geneva and traveled extensively with his second wife Bérénice through Europe, particularly through Germany, Austria and Switzerland. During the joint visits to old churches, numerous photographs of anti-Jewish representations were made, which were later used in Shachar's monograph on the image of the “Judensau”. Isaiah Shachar starred in the 1972 film But Where Is Daniel Wax? ( Le'an Ne'elam Daniel Wax? ) By the Israeli director Avraham Heffner played the male lead under a pseudonym.

In 1974 Shachar's daughter was born in Great Britain. A little later he fell ill with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis , he died on September 19, 1977.

Isaiah Shachar was an important collector of historical Hebraica . His extensive library was auctioned on November 17 and 18, 1980 by the London auction house Sotheby’s .

Researches

Wittenberger " Judensau ", early 14th century, an object of Shachar's research

During his studies, in 1957, Shachar worked part-time at the Bezalel National Art Museum. There he cataloged Judaica under the guidance of the collector Heinrich Feuchtwanger . In 1963, he became the assistant curator of the museum's Judaica collection. During his doctoral studies, Shachar was a research assistant at the Warburg Institute from 1964 to 1966 and compiled the index of the bibliography of Jewish art left by Leo Mayer for Otto Kurz . After receiving his doctorate, he became curator of the Judaica collection at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem in 1967 . In the same year he began teaching at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, first as a lecturer in part-time, from 1,970 full-time, and from 1971 as a senior lecturer .

As curator of the Judaica collection of the Israel Museum, Shachar suggested that the Geneva family Rapaport and their donation to the museum acquired the collection of Heinrich Feuchtwanger, who died in 1963. In 1971 a comprehensive catalog compiled by Shachar was published in Hebrew for the Feuchtwanger collection. The work also stood out due to the meticulous description of objects that had previously been ignored by researchers. It was considered the best publication on Judaica for decades. Until his death, Shachar worked on an English-language edition that was published posthumously in 1981.

In 1972 Isaiah Shachar published an essay on the engraved glasses and jugs used by the Chewra Kadisha in Bohemia and Moravia . In the same year he took the discovery of a seal of Nachmanides by an amateur archaeologist as an opportunity to publish an essay on the find. These publications were each the first writings devoted to these special Bohemian glasses or a medieval Hebrew seal, and they are of great importance for research to this day.

Woodcut with "Judensau" motif, 15th century

In 1973, after disputes with colleagues from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Israel Museum, Shachar took a leave of absence to conduct research at the Warburg Institute in London. During this time, his main work, published in 1974, on the anti-Jewish image of the " Judensau " was created. The following year he published an extensive book chapter on stereotypical representations of Jews in modern England. From 1975 until his death, Isaiah Shachar was visiting professor at the Oxford Center for Hebrew and Jewish Studies , an independent research institution of the University of Oxford .

Shachar's research included the publication of a multi-volume, richly illustrated history of Jewish customs and ceremonies in the Iconography of Religions series by Dutch publisher EJ Brill . Only the third volume was published. Shachar was also unable to write his long-planned critical edition of Shivḥei ha-Besht, traditional stories about the life of Israel ben Eliezer , the founder of Hasidism .

In October 1977, a few weeks after Shachar's death, the first international conference on Jewish art took place in Oxford. The conference was initiated by Shachar, he had helped prepare for it despite his deteriorating health, and was scheduled to speak. The conference was also intended to promote Shachar's plan to photographically document all evidence of Jewish art around the world and to archive it centrally.

Appreciations

Jewish Art: Bird's Head Haggadah , around 1300

Isaiah Shachar's work on research into anti-Semitism is considered groundbreaking. His monograph on the anti-Jewish image of the “Judensau” in Christian art was received with approval by research. In particular, reference was made to Shachar's meticulous approach to the investigation of every single aspect, which also included the photographic documentation of all known carvings and stone carvings. However, some Israeli scholars criticized the fact that Shachar had resorted to too much of the work of Nazi-influenced researchers and adopted their results without reflection. In contrast, Shachar's work on the development of stereotypical images of Jews in modern England received unreserved recognition.

The British magazine Jewish Quarterly lamented Shachar's early death as a severe blow to Jewish science and described him as one of the most gifted scholars of his generation. Isaiah Shachar was honored in retrospect as an excellent expert on Eastern European Judaism, especially early Hasidism .

In 1993 a collection of essays on Jewish art was published in memory of Isaiah Shachar under the title “The Visual Dimension. Aspects of Jewish Art ”(“ The visual dimension. Aspects of Jewish art ”). The volume was edited by Clare Moore, who had worked with Shachar at the Warburg Institute, and contained revised versions of almost all of the lectures given at the 1977 conference on Jewish art. In a review, the US art historian Richard Brilliant described the volume as a collection of miscells and their publication as an act of piety towards the excellent scientist Shachar. However, the edition does not keep its title's promise to deepen the understanding of the importance of Jews in the visual arts, past and present. Isaiah Shachar would not have wanted this to be his legacy for 1993.

Fonts (selection)

• Criticism of the Jewish Community and its Leadership in the Hasidic and Non-Hasidic Literature of Eighteenth Century Poland - A Comparative Study. Master's thesis, Hebrew University of Jerusalem 1963 (Hebrew).
• Studies in the Emergence and Dissemination of the Modern Jewish Stereotype in Western Europe. Dissertation, University of London 1967, OCLC 633612912 .
• "Feast and rejoice in brotherly love". Burial Society glasses and jugs from Bohemia and Moravia. In: The Israel Museum News 1972, No. 9, pp. 22-51, ZDB -ID 985455-1 .
• The Seal of Nahmanides. Israel Museum, Jerusalem 1972, OCLC 888826349 .
• The Judensau. A Medieval Anti-Jewish Motif and its History. Warburg Institute, London 1974, ISBN 0-85481-049-8 . (pdf [1] )
• The Emergence of the Modern Pictorial Stereotype of the Jew in England. In: Dov Noy , Issachar Ben-Ami (ed.): Studies in the cultural life of the Jews in England. Abraham Harman Jubilee Volume ( Hebrew מחקרים בחיי התרבות של יהודי אנגליה). Magnes Press, Jerusalem 1975, pp. 42-68, OCLC 3211364 (this article in English, others mostly in Hebrew).
• The Jewish Year (= Iconography of religions. Section 23: Judaism. Fascicle 3). EJ Brill, Leiden 1975, ISBN 90-04-04279-2 .
• Jewish tradition in art. The Feuchtwanger collection of Judaica. Israel Museum, Jerusalem 1981, OCLC 637517378 (exhibition catalog, translated and edited by Rafi Grafman).

literature

• Clare Moore (Ed.): The Visual Dimension. Aspects of Jewish Art. Published in Memory of Isaiah Shachar (1935–1977). Westview Press, Boulder, CO 1993, ISBN 0-8133-1259-0 (lectures at a conference in Oxford, October 23-25, 1977).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Chimen Abramsky : Yeshayahu Shachar: An Appreciation. In: Clare Moore (Ed.): The Visual Dimension, S. XI-XV, here S. XI.
2. ↑ ^{a b c} without author: Isaiah Shachar: Curriculum Vitae. In: Clare Moore (Ed.): The Visual Dimension, pp. 169–170.
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Chimen Abramsky: Yeshayahu Shachar: An Appreciation. In: Clare Moore (Ed.): The Visual Dimension, S. XI-XV, here S. XII.
4. ↑ ^{a b c d} Chimen Abramsky: Yeshayahu Shachar: An Appreciation. In: Clare Moore (Ed.): The Visual Dimension, S. XI-XV, here S. XIII.
5. ↑ without author: Catalog of the well-known collection of Hebrew books: the property of the late Dr. Yeshayahu Shachar. London: Sotheby Parke Bernet & Co. 1980, OCLC 464704568 .
6. ↑ Joseph Gutmann: Isaiah Shachar (1935-1977). In: Jewish folklore and ethnology newsletter 1979, Volume 2, No. 4, p. 11, ZDB -ID 1402574-7 .
7. ↑ ^{a b} Chimen Abramsky: Yeshayahu Shachar: An Appreciation. In: Clare Moore (Ed.): The Visual Dimension, pp. XI-XV, here pp. XII-XIII.
8. ↑ Yerachmiel (Richard) Cohen: Dr. Isaiah Shachar. In: Journal of Jewish Art 1978, Volume 5, pp. 108-109, ZDB -ID 752472-9 .
9. ^ ^{A b} Clare Moore: Preface. In: Clare Moore (Ed.): The Visual Dimension, pp. VII-VIII.
10. ↑ Eric M. Zafran: Isaiah Shachar, The Judensau, A Medieval Anti-Jewish Motif And Its History (...) (Book Review). In: The Art Bulletin 1976, Volume 58, No. 1, pp. 123-124, doi : 10.1080 / 00043079.1976.10787252 .
11. ↑ without author: Isaiah Shachar (1935–1977). In: The Jewish Quarterly 1977, Volume 25, No. 4, p. 36, doi : 10.1080 / 0449010X.1977.10703459 .
12. ^ Richard Brilliant: The Visual Dimension: Aspects of Jewish Art, Published in Memory of Isaiah Shacher (1935-1977) (review). In: Shofar. An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 1994, Volume 13, No. 1 (Special Issue: Perspectives on Zionism), pp. 181-183, JSTOR 42942087 .