The Visual Culture of Chabad - Hardcover

Maya Balakirsky Katz

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521191637 ISBN 13: 9780521191630

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2010

Synopsis

This book presents the first full-length study of a vast and complex visual tradition produced, revered, preserved, banned, and destroyed by the Hasidic movement of Chabad. This rich repository of visual artifacts provides the archaeological data for an analysis of how the movement consolidated its influence during a period of political and economic transformation and survived its immigration to America in the wake of the Holocaust. As one of the most self-documented and media-preserved modern Jewish movements, Chabad's rich material culture, including the hand-held portrait, the "rebbishe" space, the printer's mark, and the public menorah, afford scholars a wider range of interpretive strategies for understanding the movement and the role of the visual experience in religion.

About this title

Book Description:

The Visual Culture of Chabad unfolds the history of the rabbinical Schneerson family and the modern Hasidic movement they built. Through the prism of Chabad portraits, architecture, and ceremonial objects, one sees the powerful sway the Schneerson family held over their Eastern European flock, the reemergence of the Chabad movement in America after the Holocaust, and the provocative engagement of public space. The last scion of the Chabad dynasty encouraged an unprecedented public campaign to force God's hand into ushering in the messianic age. The products of this campaign largely define Judaism in the public sphere.

About the Author:

Maya Balakirsky Katz is Associate Professor of Art History at Touro College and on faculty at Touro's Graduate School of Jewish Studies. She specializes in the intersection of religious identity and media, particularly surrounding public protest, such as the Dreyfus Affair and the Soviet Jewry movement.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0521191637
• ISBN 13: 9780521191630
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 260