Reclaiming the Maccabees

Zeev Raban (1890–1970), designer, painter, and sculptor of the Bezalel Art and Crafts School in Jerusalem, imbued all his works with his passion for Jewish history. This miniature-like watercolour, one in a series of twelve, is no exception.

In line with his work as book illustrator, Raban offers a literal representation of the events in 1 Maccabees 2:1–22. The Judean priest Mattathias, introduced in the opening verse, stands with his five sons before a statue of Zeus. Guarding it are the officers of King Antiochus IV, dispatched to ‘make them [the Jews] offer sacrifice’ on the altar (v.15). Mattathias’s refusal to obey appears in the Hebrew inscription painted below, which cites his loyalty to ‘the covenant of the fathers’ and ‘the law and ordinances’ (vv.19–22)

His proud resistance is echoed in the painting’s border, decorated with ancient Judean coins. Rather than the artist’s imaginary creations, these are reproductions of coins struck during the Jewish revolts against the Romans (66–70 and 132–135 CE). They bear symbols of the land of Israel—the palm tree, vine leaf, and pomegranates—and motifs of the Temple—the façade, an amphora, and a chalice (Meshorer 1983: 27–30, 36–41)

Other features demonstrate Raban’s adherence to the text. The long, white robes of the Hasmonaeans is the sackcloth worn in sign of mourning for the destruction of Jerusalem (2:14). The houses clustered together in the distance stand for the hilltop village of Modein, where Mattathias withdrew from the holy city (v.1). The pig on the grass, absent in chapter 2, refers to the King’s order of the previous chapter to ‘sacrifice swine and ritually unfit animals’ (1:47).

In spite of his loyalty to the text, Raban does not illustrate 1 Maccabees 2 in its entirety. What is especially significant is his decision to show Mattathias’s peaceful resistance, while omitting what immediately follows: his outburst of violence, and killing of two men. (2:24–25). His zeal may be ‘burning’ but here the fire remains contained.

References

Meshorer, Yaacov. 1983. Coins Revealed, The Jewish Museum Collection Handbooks, Vol. I (New York: The Jewish Museum)

The son of an orthodox Jewish-Lithuanian shoemaker, Jack Levine (1915–2010) became one of the leading figures of post-war Boston Expressionism. Although best known for his biting visual commentaries on social injustice, Levine also showed a profound interest in Judaic themes. He produced dozens of works—drawings, engravings, and paintings—depicting rabbis, biblical kings, and heroes. One of these was this small and striking etching: Judas Maccabeus.

Levine’s exceptionally direct depiction of Judas as a fearless soldier reflects 1 Maccabees’ praise of his military prowess, first conveyed in chapter 2. At chapter’s close, the dying Mattathias, Judas’s father, utters these last words: ‘Judas Maccabeus has been a mighty warrior from his youth; he shall command the army for you and fight the battle against the people’ (vv.66–67).

Immediately following the patriarch’s death, the author embarks on a poetic description of Judas as a hero ‘putting on his breastplate, girding on his weapons, waging war and protecting his camp by his word’ (3:3).

Through an extraordinarily economical rendition of his subject, and just a few, nervous lines, Levine captures precisely this image—a tenacious warrior, one hand holding his spear, the other a shield. Rather than the breastplate featured in the text, the artist depicts Judas’s naked, muscular torso, as though to emphasize his fearlessness and strength. The focus on Judas’s chest and face—staring out at the viewer with a stern gaze—conveys his steely determination in the face of death, a demonstration of his faith in God.

This silver Hanukkah lamp, so striking in its highly polished backplate, applied filigree work, and coloured stones, is marked in Hebrew and English ‘Sterling; Yemini, Bezalel Jerusalem’. Yehye Yemini (1896–1983), a gifted Yemenite silversmith, was 12 years old when he joined the silver department of the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts in Jerusalem.

The relief on his lamp shows the purification of the Jerusalem Temple, with the high priest standing tall in the centre, and crouched figures busily tidying the overturned vessels. This event is also referred to in the Hebrew text directly below it: ‘And they purified the courtyard and all that was in it and they renewed all the holy vessels’ (1 Maccabees 4:48–49). The Festival of Hanukkah, in Hebrew ‘dedication’, celebrates this moment: the re-inauguration of the Temple that took place immediately following the defeat of the Seleucid army by Judas Maccabeus.

Chapter 2 foreshadows these events: in it, Mattathias abandons the holy city precisely because the Temple had been desecrated. It is his initial refusal to offer impure sacrifices, or to ‘steer right and left from God’s covenant’ (2:20–22), that comes to its eventual fruition in this lamp’s scene.

By citing Maccabees, artists of the Bezalel School challenged an old tradition: before the twentieth century, Hanukkah lamps typically featured ancient symbols (for example, the seven branched candelabra, the Tablets of the Law, and the lion of the tribe of Judah), but almost never showed narrative scenes and inscriptions from Maccabees. This omission is hardly surprising if one remembers that the books of Maccabees never entered the canon of the Hebrew Bible. But for the Bezalel School, their message of Jewish heroism inspired a sense of national pride and merited a place in the ‘visual canon’ of Hanukkah’s iconography.