Figureless Art: Anti-Figural Trends in Jewish Art During the Late Byzantine and Early Islamic Periods by Noa Yuval-Hacham

Abstract

Reviewed by: Figureless Art: Anti-Figural Trends in Jewish Art During the Late Byzantine and Early Islamic Periods by Noa Yuval-Hacham Oz Avraham Tamir Figureless Art: Anti-Figural Trends in Jewish Art During the Late Byzantine and Early Islamic Periods Noa Yuval-Hacham Magnes Press: Jerusalem, 2021. Pp. 381. ISBN: 978-965-7776-58-2 Noa Yuval-Hacham's book explores a subject that has, up to this point, not been systematically analyzed, namely aniconism and iconoclasm in the Jewish art of Late Antiquity. Apart from the critical importance of this topic to any examination of Late Antiquity, the book also stands out for its judicious methodological decision to cross-reference the literary sources with material culture. This book, which is based on Yuval-Hacham's doctoral dissertation, deals with changes in the attitude of Jewish society towards figurative art during the late Byzantine and early Muslim periods. Tolerance of figurative decorations declined sharply during this period, and the once-widespread use of figurative symbols ceased to be commonplace in synagogue art. In each of the book's two parts, the author discusses one of two parallel phenomena: aniconism, the avoidance of figurative images, and iconoclasm, the destruction of existing figures. In each part, the author covers the topic from several different angles, including material culture, rabbinic literature, and the context provided by nearby cultures, namely Samaritans, Christians, and Muslims. The book's first chapter analyzes the artistic findings from several synagogues, thus showing the decline in the use of figurative images. Yuval-Hacham discusses the different ways in which the trend toward aniconism was implemented—from less frequent use of figurative images to the elimination of these images—to suggest that these approaches are indicative of the diversity of Jewish society. Since there is no surviving textual-historical documentation of most of the Jewish communities of the period, material evidence is our only source of information about their way of life. In the second chapter, the author examines Jewish written sources to determine whether echoes of the aniconic trend can be found. Her conclusion is that although certain tannaitic, [End Page 555] amoraic, and post-Talmudic sources oppose the use of figurative images, they are few and far between, and no significant evolution appears to have emerged over different eras. Yuval-Hacham wisely notes that Jewish society was comprised of various streams, and it is quite possible that the synagogue communities were not rabbinic. The third chapter takes an intercultural approach by comparing trends in aniconism between Jews and Samaritans, based on the supposition that the Samaritans' avoidance of figurative art can be linked to the emergence of aniconism in Jewish art in the late Byzantine period. Material evidence reveals not only that the Samaritans did not combine human and animal figures, but that there are artistic and theological similarities between the Samaritans and the Jews. On the basis of this evidence, Yuval-Hacham suggests that the Samaritans played an important role in the aniconization of Jewish society. This conclusion may be somewhat overblown. The connection is certainly possible, but her claim of a transition of aniconic ideology from Second Temple Jewry to the Samaritans, and at the end of the Byzantine period from the Samaritans to the Jews, is insufficiently substantiated. The fourth chapter, which begins the second part of the book, focuses on the vandalism of figurative images in synagogues. Yuval-Hacham describes the material findings and presents the people responsible for the destruction and their roles, as well as the eras, causes, and circumstances of the destruction. She proposes that the vandals were members of Jewish groups who deliberately intended to modify the visual space of the synagogue, rather than external vandals. Most acts of vandalism occurred in rural synagogues in eastern Palestine, since many synagogues in other regions had already been abandoned before the iconoclastic trend. This chronological analysis may account for the difference between the extensive damage to stone reliefs and the merely sporadic damage to mosaics; many mosaics were damaged or left untended well before the emergence of iconoclasm. At the same time, the author stresses the halakhic difference between sculpture, which is three-dimensional, and painting or mosaics...