Moving from the origins of the world at large in Genesis 1–11, the spotlight focuses on the origins of Israel. First to appear is Abraham, to whom God promised the land of Canaan and the progeny that would ultimately become the nation of Israel. God’s promise is not easily fulfilled but is threatened by episodes of famine, childlessness, and family strife during the lives of Abraham and his wife Sarah. The narrative continues through the stories about Isaac and Jacob, and their wives, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah, and about Joseph and his brothers. Jacob is the progenitor of the twelve tribes, the nucleus of what will become the people of Israel. The ancestors’ movement in and out of Canaan culminates in the Joseph story, when the entire family of Jacob settles in Egypt. The sustained focus on life and relations within the family in the formative generations of the nation, as distinct from the heroic battles of epic literature, is one of the notable features of these narratives.
Inscribed weights, late 8th or 7th century BCE. These weights, used on a balance scale, correspond, from lightest to heaviest, to (a) payim, (b) netsef, (c) one shekel, and (d) two shekels. (The…
This intricately decorated textile, possibly used as a Torah cover, was produced in Prague around 1600. Four squares adorn its center, the top two containing vases ringed by flowers and vines and the…
New York exemplifies the precisionist, futurist style favored by Lozowick in the 1920s. Like works by other precisionist artists, this lithograph reduces the elements of a cityscape into simple…