Hanukkah is a Jewish festival commemorating the recovery of Jerusalem and subsequent rededication of the Second Temple at the beginning of the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire in the 2nd century BCE.
Marc Chagall was a Jewish artist. An early modernist, he was associated with the École de Paris as well as several major artistic styles and created works in a wide range of artistic formats, including painting, drawings, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramics, tapestries and fine art prints.
The Jewish Museum is an art museum and repository of cultural artifacts, housed at 1109 Fifth Avenue, in the former Felix M. Warburg House, along Museum Mile on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City. The first Jewish museum in the United States, as well as the oldest existing Jewish museum in the world, it contains the largest collection of art and Jewish culture excluding Israeli museums, more than 30,000 objects. While its collection was established in 1904 at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, the museum did not open to the public until 1947 when Felix Warburg's widow sold the property to the Seminary. It focuses both on artifacts of Jewish history and on modern and contemporary art. The museum's collection exhibition, Scenes from the Collection, is supplemented by multiple temporary exhibitions each year.
Synagogue architecture often follows styles in vogue at the place and time of construction. There is no set blueprint for synagogues and the architectural shapes and interior designs of synagogues vary greatly. According to tradition, the Shekhinah or divine presence can be found wherever there is a minyan, a quorum, of ten. A synagogue always contains an Torah ark where the Torah scrolls are kept, called the aron qodesh by Ashkenazi Jews and the hekhal by Sephardic Jews.
The Old New Synagogue, also called the Altneuschul, situated in Josefov, Prague, is Europe's oldest active synagogue. It is also the oldest surviving medieval synagogue of twin-nave design.
A chuppah, also huppah, chipe, chupah, or chuppa, is a canopy under which a Jewish couple stand during their wedding ceremony. It consists of a cloth or sheet, sometimes a tallit, stretched or supported over four poles, or sometimes manually held up by attendants to the ceremony. A chuppah symbolizes the home that the couple will build together.
Hildreth Meière (1892–1961) was an American muralist active in the first half of the twentieth century who is especially known for her Art Deco designs. During her 40-year career she completed approximately 100 commissions. She designed murals for office buildings, churches, government centers, theaters, restaurants, cocktail lounges, ocean liners, and world’s fair pavilions, and she worked in a wide variety of mediums, including paint, ceramic tile, glass and marble mosaic, terracotta, wood, metal, and stained glass. Among her extensive body of work are the iconographic interiors at the Nebraska State Capitol in Lincoln, the dynamic roundels of Dance, Drama, and Song at Radio City Music Hall, the apse and narthex mosaics and stained-glass windows at St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church (Manhattan), and the decoration of the Great Hall at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.
Helène Aylon, was an American multimedia, eco-feminist artist, and educator. Her work can be divided into three phases: process art (1970s), anti-nuclear art (1980s), and The G-d Project, a feminist commentary on the Hebrew Bible and other established traditions. In 2012, Aylon published, Whatever Is Contained Must Be Released: My Jewish Orthodox Girlhood, My Life as a Feminist Artist. She died during the COVID-19 pandemic, due to complications brought on by COVID-19.
Holiday stamps are a type of postage stamp issued to commemorate a particular religious festival or holiday.
Papercutting or paper cutting is the art of paper designs. Art has evolved all over the world to adapt to different cultural styles. One traditional distinction most styles share is that the designs are cut from a single sheet of paper as opposed to multiple adjoining sheets as in collage.
The Marble Collegiate Church, founded in 1628, is one of the oldest continuous Protestant congregations in North America. The congregation, which is part of two denominations in the Reformed tradition—the United Church of Christ and the Reformed Church in America—is located at 272 Fifth Avenue at the corner of West 29th Street in the NoMad neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It was built in 1851–54 and was designed by Samuel A. Warner in Romanesque Revival style with Gothic trim. The façade is covered in Tuckahoe marble, for which the church, originally called the Fifth Avenue Church, was renamed in 1906.
A Hanukkah stamp is a holiday stamp issued to commemorate Hanukkah. Since 1996, several Hanukkah-themed postage stamps have been issued, often jointly.
Sir Brian Clarke is a British painter, architectural artist and printmaker, known for his large-scale stained glass and mosaic projects, symbolist paintings, set designs, and collaborations with major figures in Modern and contemporary architecture.
Jewish ceremonial art, also known as Judaica, refers to an array of 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.
The Maon Synagogue is a 6th-century synagogue and archaeological site located in the Negev Desert near Kibbutz Nirim and Kibbutz Nir Oz. It is noted for its "magnificent" mosaic floor.
The Maccabeats are an American Orthodox Jewish all-male a cappella group. Founded in 2007 at Yeshiva University, Manhattan, New York, the 14-member group specializes in covers and parodies of contemporary hits using Jewish-themed lyrics. Their breakout 2010 Hanukkah music video for "Candlelight", a parody of Mike Tompkins' a cappella music video for Taio Cruz's "Dynamite", logged more than two million hits in its first ten days; the video has been viewed more than 16 million times as of 2022. They have recorded three albums and one EP, and frequently release music videos in conjunction with Jewish holidays. They tour worldwide and have performed at the White House and the Knesset.
Jewish paper cutting is a traditional form of Jewish folk art made by cutting figures and sentences in paper or parchment. It is connected with various customs and ceremonies, and associated with holidays and family life. Paper cuts often decorated ketubbot, Mizrahs, and ornaments for festive occasions. Paper cutting was practiced by Jewish communities in both Eastern Europe and North Africa and the Middle East for centuries and has seen a revival in modern times in Israel and elsewhere.
Walter Cole Brigham was an American artist, now best known for his innovative stained glass techniques incorporating transparent shells, pebbles, and beach glass, and for his illustrations of pulp magazines.
Davi Cheng is an artist and graphic designer from Hong Kong who combines traditional methods of drawing and painting with advanced digital design techniques.
Throughout the history of Christianity, Jewish peoples have been historically religious minorities in countries that were majority or even officially Christian. Over time, a unique relationship evolved between the Jews and the major Christian holiday of Christmas, including the creation of separate traditions and the intersection of Hanukkah and Christmas, among other convergences. Some practices perpetuate out of a feeling of otherness, while others are merely lighthearted activities that are accessible when shops are closed around Christmastime.
