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Fall 1996 On September 20, four years of preparation culminated in opening night of the exhibition entitled Two Traditions of Sacred Dress and Their Common Origins, a display of nearly fifty liturgical vestments on loan from three local churches, two Eastern Orthodox and one Roman Catholic. While most visitors to the gallery could appreciate the beauty of the garments and the skill of their fabrication, the project’s directors had found conveying the complex history of the vestments’ design a distinct challenge. Nevertheless, Two Traditions brought public attention to church rituals, to Cleveland history, and especially to a local treasury of sacred art.
The austere
formality of the university gallery somehow intensified the brilliant
colors and sumptuous fabrics of the vestments. Among the guests at that
opening was Karen Steckol, newly appointed dean of the College of Arts
and Sciences at Cleveland State University. The nature of the exhibit
prompted her to suggest that a display of Jewish sacred art would be
equally interesting. Of course it would, but who could mount it? My
field of expertise was Italian renaissance art, which was exclusively
Christian. In fact, it was from my investigations of renaissance clerics
and their liturgical costumes as represented in renaissance art that my
interest in sacred vestments developed. The exhibition that the dean was
viewing had evolved from my desire to work on art objects in Cleveland
and to collaborate with segments of the community. As worthwhile as an
exhibit of Jewish sacred art might be, it was not one I felt qualified
to develop. Karen was speaking from her own Jewish religious and cultural background. I, on the other hand, was unsure of what Jewish art was. Were there any interesting objects in Cleveland? Who were experts in the field? I turned to a colleague at Cleveland State University, Walter Leedy, a medievalist and an architectural historian, who was preparing a book on the Park Synagogue building in Cleveland Heights. Walter knew Cleveland’s Jewish history intimately. He recommended that I read several books, particularly Lloyd P. Gartner’s History of the Jews of Cleveland and Sidney Z. Vincent and Judah Rubinstein’s Merging Traditions: Jewish Life in Cleveland, and suggested that I talk to a number of experts in Cleveland, including Judah, who worked at the Cleveland Jewish Community Federation, and Allan Peskin, a member of the history department at Cleveland State University. Gartner’s book provided me with a valuable perspective on Cleveland’s Jewish community. I learned that in the summer of 1839, a band of Jewish settlers from Unsleben, Germany landed in Cleveland and from that small group sprang the large, vibrant, and diverse Jewish community that has contributed to virtually every aspect of Cleveland’s life. The Unsleben settlers founded the Israelite Congregation. By 1841 most of its members had left that congregation to form the Israelite Anshe Chesed Society (Pious Men or Men of Good Faith). This group built the Eagle Street Temple in 1856. Soon thereafter, some members left to form a new congregation, Tifereth Israel (Glory of Israel), now at The Temple-Tifereth Israel in Cleveland and Beachwood.
As Gartner’s
History unfolded, substantial monuments in the Cleveland
landscape became significant to me. Congregation Anshe Chesed had moved
eastward, from its original site on Eagle Street to a synagogue on
Scovill Avenue, from Scovill to the Euclid Avenue Temple, and from there
to its present location in Beachwood. Tifereth Israel followed a similar
path, moving from a building on Huron Road and East 6th Street to one on
East 55th Street. From there, it moved to University Circle; a branch is
located on Shaker Boulevard in Beachwood. Waves of new Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe also created new congregations that migrated across Cleveland to the eastern suburbs. Polish Jews formed Anshe Emeth and built a synagogue on East 37th Street at Longwood; that congregation moved to the Jewish Center on East 105th Street and then to Park Synagogue on Mayfield Road in Cleveland Heights. Hungarian Jews established B’nai Jeshurun and moved to the Eagle Street synagogue vacated by Anshe Chesed, later building a classical structure on East 55th Street. B’nai Jeshurun moved to the Temple on the Heights (now the Civic on Mayfield Road) and then to its present building on Fairmount Boulevard in Pepper Pike. Yet another congregation, Oheb Zedek, which formed from B’nai Jeshurun, built a synagogue at East 38th Street and Scovill Avenue and later became part of Taylor Road Synagogue in Cleveland Heights. Informative though it was, Gartner’s book did not include a discussion of Jewish sacred art. Zita Rahn-Farrell, my graduate assistant, compiled a helpful bibliography for me consisting of hundreds of references. Prominent among these were the works of Joseph Gutmann, whom I had known at Wayne State University in Detroit. Several of his books proved particularly useful: Beauty in Holiness: Studies in Jewish Customs and Ceremonial Art; Hebrew Manuscript Painting; Jewish Ceremonial Art; The Jewish Life Cycle; and Sacred Images: Studies in Jewish Art from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. At this time, the Cleveland State University art department was completing its course schedule for the fall of 1997. As the chair, I was planning to offer the art history undergraduate/graduate seminar. It occurred to me to dedicate the seminar to sacred Jewish art, just as I had geared an earlier seminar to sacred Christian dress in preparation for the vestment exhibition. I could invite experts from academe and the community who would speak on various topics, thereby exposing the students not only to sacred Jewish art but also to the religious, historical, and cultural contexts in which it was created. For their seminar papers, I decided, the students would select for study sacred Jewish art objects in Cleveland collections. Now, I had to find out about those collections. |
