6. THE JEW IN ART, SCIENCE AND LITERATURE. It is a task of much diffi culty to describe the influence which the Jews in all ages have exercised on art, science and literature; for a period of more than 3,000 years will have to be considered, while the Jews have not only shared all the great devel opments of humanity's intellectual life, but have blended therewith the views which are at the basis of their own individuality. The culture of theJews is bound up with that of antiquity, with Christianity's origin and development, all important movements of the Middle Ages, all grades of development and tendencies of the modern era. While it takes part in the intel lectual life of the past and present, whose struggles and sorrows it shares, it becomes a complement of universal culture, but with an organism which aids in its turn the recognition of the universal.
Art— It is conceivable how a people of such positive monotheistic belief should have only slightly cuhivated art. Such cultivation be longed rather to a race which had received the surname of Japhet, or beauty, in the genealogical record of Noah, thus symbolizing its mission. It was, however, the mission of the Hebrews to know God and spread this knowledge throughout the world. The older Talmudists assigned to Hellas the cultivation of beauty, to Judaea that of religious truth. In fact certain lines of art were condemned by the Hebrews, because they led to idolatry, to imitating and deifying nature, which in the Jewish religion was secondary to God, as the world's creator. Poetry, however, chiefly the lyric, and music were zealously cultivated — in these fields they equalled the most important achievements of other races in antiquity or surpassed them in many respects. Unquestionably the Jew's capacity for music is an old inheritance of his race. Architecture, too, with its side-lines, was familiar to the Hebrews, judging from their temples, gardens, pleasure grounds. The plas tic arts and painting were not cultivated from religious motives, not from any want of taste or capacity. The mimic art, for a similar rea son, was adopted at a late period, but with great success. The dance had been early de veloped into an art, and with musical accom paniment. Upon the whole, however, the nur ture and development of art was neither the task nor the strength of old Israel, which lacked all the conditions to its growth. The period of
national prosperity under Solomon and his suc cessors, the most favorable time for such ar tistic achievements, occurred at too early a stage in the intellectual development of the race, and when this gradually reached its ma turity art found little sunshine.
In the Middle similar condition occurred in the Middle Ages, but to a greater degree. Persecution, leading to incessant wan dering from city to city, and land to land, pre vented any growth of art, even in countries where the Jews enjoyed comparative rest for some centuries. In Spain, of all lands, where they dwelt in free competition with the Arabs, shared joyously the pleasures of life, hard ened themselves in knightly exercises, sang and danced, spoke the vernacular like a mother tongue, and participated in intellectual progress, the religious prohibition against idolatry was carried out by the rabbis to the extremest limit. Islam, with its fanatic hostility to plas tic art, was a worthy model; not only the rep resentations of the Deity, but that of living beings, man and animal, was not allowed. Yet we hear in Spain of a famous Jewish portrait painter, whose name is unknown; and in Ti tian's days, on the border lines of the 15th and 16th centuries, we learn of an Italian portrait painter and illustrator, Mose dal Castellazzo, who attained high fame in art-loving Venice and then elsewhere in Italy.
Art in the form of art was cultivated by the Jews in the Middle Ages — the ecclesiastical. If the synagogue interior was usually free from any decoration, there were exceptions, when this was permitted, if rabbinical authorities assented. One of the most eminent sages in the 15th century allowed painting of forms of animals and plants in the synagogue on the ground that there was no likelihood of the Jew becoming an idolator. Hence we find in the synagogue windows painted glass and on the walls birds and plants. In some MSS. of prayerbooks and ritual works the illustration is a real adornment — an art that attained great development in the later Middle Ages. The goldsmith's art and silver embroidery employed in the decoration of the scrolls of the law, the curtains, coverings, little bells, goblets, lamps and other objects used in the synagogue, reached high perfection in the ghetto.