The pioneering modernist sculptor Jacob Epstein was born on the Lower East Side of New York. He studied art in New York and Paris and settled in London in 1905. Much of his early work, with its explicit sexuality, rough-hewn composition, and indebtedness to non-European sculptural traditions, challenged taboos on what was appropriate for public art and aroused intense controversy. Later he became known for his bronze sculptures of the heads of public figures.
Jacob Epstein, “Morris Rosenfeld,” from Hutchins Hapgood’s The Spirit of the Ghetto: Studies of the Jewish Quarter in New York. Epstein was best-known for his sculptures, but he also created the…
In 1840, thirteen leaders of the Jewish community in Damascus were arrested and imprisoned because of an accusation of ritual murder. Appeals from the local Jewish community reached Jewish communities…
This relief from Sennacherib’s palace shows workers rebuilding Nineveh, harnessed by shoulder straps to ropes by which they haul a large bull colossus toward the palace. Workers from various places…