Author: Jarek Lodzinski

This short, illustrated course will open by asking what we might mean by the phrase ‘Jewish art’. Is it a body of work defined and governed by the biblical Second Commandment’s proscription of idolatrous images?

For the great rationalist Maimonides, evil does not really exist – in fact, it is by definition non-existence, the absence of good and the absence of being. The theosophical kabbalah, which arose in the generations after Maimonides, took a radically different path in understanding the nature of evil. Since all being flows from the divine, [...]

The Book of Samuel is one of the masterpieces of world literature. While the overall story can be read and appreciated in translation, the full richness and subtleties of the narrative deserve spending time with the Hebrew text.

Marriages between humans and demons are not unheard of in Jewish tradition. From Queen Sheba in Midrash to the Ashkenazi medieval Mayse vom Worms, to the modern-day British Neil Gaiman’s Lucifer. Jews have always asked themselves if indeed they married the devil’s spawn, or is it all just in their heads?

Ahead of the opening of the British Library’s new exhibition, Hebrew Manuscripts: Journeys of the Written Word, Jewish Renaissance’s Arts Editor Judi Herman explored it via a virtual private view. There she met Cassy Sachar, librarian at Leo Baeck College