The image of the Jew in Byzantine art

Translated from the French, based on a lecture delivered in 1983 and 1988. Following a chapter outlining the relations between Jews and the rulers of the Byzantine Empire and of the Church over the centuries, analyzes the depiction of Jews in Byzantine art. Although the Jews of Byzantium were subject to forced conversions and persecutions, particularly during the earlier centuries, they were depicted realistically in the art works in contrast to the distorted, grotesque, and frightening images of Western Christendom. The depiction of Jews in Byzantine art was not of a people ridiculed and demonized (as they were in the West) but as a people connected with the biblical tradition of which Byzantine Christianity was a part. Concludes that the image of the Jew in the Byzantine world is fundamentally different from that of the Jew in the West; it is a testimony to rich contacts with the Jewish world which are expressed in the authenticity of the images. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)