The Belmonte Jewish Museum ( Portuguese : Museu Judaico de Belmonte ), is a museum in Belmonte , Portugal, which depicts the long history of the Jewish community in the village , which survived many centuries of religious persecution. It is the first museum of its kind in Portugal, located in the last stronghold of the crypto-Jewish community established there around the 15th century.
22-526: The museum displays over a hundred religious , everyday, and professional use items used by Jewish families, especially Beira Interior and Trás-os-Montes. The museum attracts over 30,000 visitors a year and is considered one of the best of its kind throughout the Iberian Peninsula . British newspaper The Telegraph included the museum in its list of the 50 best small museums in Europe. The museum
44-591: A German example c. 1550 thought to originate in Frankfurt am Main . The menorah (or hanukkiah) used on the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah is perhaps the most widely produced article of Jewish ceremonial art. The Lindo lamp is a particularly fine example by an 18th-century silversmith. Contemporary artists often design menorahs, such as the gold-plated brass menorah with 35 moveable branches designed by Yaacov Agam . A silver menorah by Ze'ev Raban from
66-574: A distinctive visual lexicon. Versatile and productive, he lent this unique style to most artistic mediums, including the fine arts, illustration, sculpture, repousee, jewellery design, and ceramics." Good examples of Raban's specific eclectic mix of European and Oriental styles are his illustrated editions of the Book of Ruth , Song of Songs , Book of Job , Book of Esther , and the Passover Hagadah . Known are also his playing cards , where in
88-574: A number of which can still be sees on buildings in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem , including the Bialik House . The 1925 Lederberg house, at the intersection of Rothschild Boulevard and Allenby Street features a series of large ceramic murals designed by Raban. The four murals show a Jewish pioneer sowing and harvesting, a shepherd, and Jerusalem with a verse from Jeremiah 31:4 , "Again I will rebuild thee and thous shalt be rebuilt." Raban designed
110-473: A sizable collection. Another way to see Judaica is through the art marketplace, including auction houses. Sotheby's, Bonhams-New York, Skinner's and Kestenbaums routinely hold regular auctions each year. Ze%27ev Raban Ze’ev Raban (22 September 1890 – 19 January 1970), born Wolf Rawicki (Ravitzki) , was a leading painter, decorative artist , and industrial designer of the Bezalel school style, and
132-606: Is objects used by Jews for ritual purposes. Because enhancing a mitzvah by performing it with an especially beautiful object is considered a praiseworthy way of honoring God's commandments, Judaism has a long tradition of commissioning ritual objects from craftsmen and artists. Jewish ceremonial art forms a large part of Judaica ( / dʒ uː ˈ d eɪ . ɪ k ə / ), a general academic and art trade term for Jewish-related objects, of which other types are manuscripts , books and other printed materials, artworks in various media, and clothing. Multiple early rabbinic commentaries on
154-675: The Hebrew Bible refer to sanctifying rituals with visually pleasing objects in the Midrash . Midrash Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael has this teaching on a biblical verse: "This is my God and I will glorify Him" (Exodus 15:2) Is it possible for a human being to add glory to his Creator? What this really means is: I shall glorify God in the way that I perform commandments. I shall prepare a beautiful lulav , beautiful sukkah , beautiful fringes ( tzitzit ), and beautiful tefillin . Other Midrash teachings (e.g. Shir HaShirim Rabbah 1.15) offer
176-1082: The Israel Museum , the Jewish Museum (London) , the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme in Paris , the Jewish Museum in Prague , the North Carolina Museum of Art , the Jewish Museum (New York) , the Musée Lorrain in Nancy , the Musée alsacien in Strasbourg and the Contemporary Jewish Museum of San Francisco . The Museum of Jewish Heritage in Battery City Park, New York City also holds
198-743: The École des Beaux-Arts in Paris ; the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels , then a center of Art Nouveau , under symbolist and idealist artists Victor Rousseau and Constant Montald ; and in 1912 he left Europe, joining the Bezalel School of Art in Jerusalem (see below). Under the influence of Boris Schatz , the founder of the Bezalel School of Art , Raban moved to the Ottoman Palestine in 1912 during
220-567: The 1930s is in the Judaica Collection of the North Carolina Museum of Art . To protect the esrog during the Sukkot holiday, it is traditionally wrapped in silky flax fibers and stored in a special box, often made from silver. In modern times, the esrog is also commonly wrapped in synthetic netting, and placed in cardboard boxes. Wooden boxes are increasingly popular as well. The tradition of artistically embellished haggadahs ,
242-776: The Bezalel school art style, in which artists portrayed both Biblical and Zionist themes in a style influenced by the European Jugendstil (similar to Art Nouveau ) and by traditional Persian and Syrian styles. Like other European art nouveau artists of the period, such as Alphonse Mucha , Raban combined commercial commissions with uncommissioned paintings. "Raban easily navigated a wealth of artistic sources and mediums, borrowing and combining ideas from East and West, fine arts and crafts from past and present. His works blended European neoclassicism , Symbolist art and Art Nouveau with oriental forms and techniques to form
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#1732783203133264-639: The Jewish community's long history in Belmonte and attract 100,000 visitors annually. In 2023 the Jewish Museum was the most frequented museum in Belmonte, attracting both local and international visitors, notably from Israel, Brazil, the US, and Spain. This article about a museum in Portugal is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Jewish ceremonial art Jewish ceremonial art
286-663: The Jewish text that sets forth the order of the Passover Seder , dates back to the Middle Ages. The Sarajevo Haggadah of 1350 is a celebrated example. Major contemporary artists have produced notable haggadahs, such as the Szyk Hagaddah . See also the facsimile edition of the even earlier Barcelona Haggadah of 1340. Museums with notable collections of Jewish ceremonial art include the British Library ,
308-576: The decorative elements of such important Jerusalem buildings as the King David Hotel and the Jerusalem YMCA. Raban also designed a wide range of Jewish religious objects , including Hanukkah menorahs , temple windows, and Torah arks . Temple Emanuel (Beaumont, Texas) has a notable set of six windows, each 16-feet high]. The windows were commissioned from Raban in 1922 by Rabbi Samuel Rosinger. Each window depicts an event in
330-560: The home. Part of the ceremony requires sniffing a sweet-smelling spice or plant. In Jewish communities around the Mediterranean, a sprig of a sweet-smelling shrub was customarily used, in Northern Europe by the twelfth century there are literary references of the use of a specially designed spice box or container. The oldest surviving spice boxes for Havdalah date to the mid-sixteenth century. The Jewish Museum (New York) has
352-544: The life of one of the principal Hebrew prophets, Jeremiah , Elijah , Elisha , Ezekiel , Moses , and Isaiah . In 2015 one of his works received international attention. The President of Israel , Reuven Rivlin visited at the White House with U.S. President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama for the December 2015 Hannukah celebration. Israel's First Lady Nechama Rivlin joined her husband in lighting
374-521: The majority of the works created in the Bezalel workshop. Raban taught at Bezalel until the school had to close down in 1929 due to financial difficulties. In 1921, he participated in the historic art exhibition at the Tower of David in Jerusalem , the first exhibit of Hebrew artists in Palestine , which became the first of an annual series of such exhibits. Raban is regarded as a leading member of
396-552: The same idea. This idea is expanded upon in the Babylonian Talmud (e.g. Bāḇā Qammā 9b). This teaching was understood by succeeding generations as a duty, when possible, to make beautiful items used in Jewish life and worship, both physical and textual. The following items are used during Shabbat: The end of the Jewish Shabbat is marked by the brief prayer ceremony of Havdalah , which usually takes place in
418-516: The suit of leaves, the King is Ahasuerus and the Queen is Esther . He also designed a wide range of day-to-day objects, including commercial packaging for products such as Hanukkah candles and Jaffa oranges , tourism posters, and insignia for Zionist institutions. Raban collaborated with other artists to produce versions of his work as ceramic tile murals, of the so-called "Bezalel ceramics" type,
440-691: The wave of Zionist immigration known as the Second Aliyah . Here he continued his studies at the Bezalel school. Two years after following Schatz's call, Raban joined the faculty of the Bezalel school. Here he headed the Repoussé Department, taught anatomy and composition, painting and sculpture. Raban also became director of the Graphics Press and the Industrial Art Studio. In 1914 his designs constituted
462-480: Was inaugurated on April 17, 2005, by the then Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, Augusto Santos Silva . In August 2017 the museum reopened after undergoing a renovation project costing 350,000 USD, also introducing interactive exhibitions. António Dias Rocha, the mayor of Belmonte, stated to the Lusa news agency that the renovated museum is expected to become a significant center for Sephardic culture, aiming to explain
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#1732783203133484-719: Was one of the founders of the Israeli art world. Wolf Rawicki (later Ze'ev Raban) was born in Łódź , Congress Poland , and began his studies there. He continued his studies in sculpture and architectural ornamentation at a number of European art academies . These included, in 1905, the School of Applied Art in Munich at the height of the Jugendstil movement; in 1907, the neo-classical studio of Marius-Jean-Antonin Mercié at
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