The Hungarian painter Isidor Kaufmann was born in Arad (now in Romania), where his father commanded an army regiment in the Austro-Hungarian imperial army. Kaufmann studied at the Budapest Drawing School and later in Vienna, where he spent the remainder of his life. Winning an award for his painting The Skeptic at the Vienna World’s Fair in 1873, he would go on to become particularly known for his paintings of Hasidic folk-life and for his genre scenes of Jewish life in East Central Europe, including The Rabbi’s Visit (1898/9), Friday Evening (1897/8), and Young Rabbi from N. (ca. 1910).
A Difficult Passage in the Talmud is one of the many scenes of Jewish life in Hungary, Moravia, Slovakia, Galicia, Ukraine, and Russian Poland that Isidor Kaufmann was best known for. His idyllic…
Sometimes, when I return from a trip abroad, I try to imagine that I am a new immigrant. You know, the first time that I arrived in Israel from the Diaspora, with all the pekelech and hopes, and…
Fanny von Arnstein (née Itzig; 1758–1818) was born into a prominent Jewish banking family in Berlin and married a leading Viennese financier. She entertained many luminaries at her famous salon. Having…