>> Rimon- Milgroim<<:

Historical Evaluation

of a Cultural Phenomenon¹

Naomi Feuchtwanger- Sarig

>> Thy shoots are a park of pomegranates, with precious fruits...<<( Song of Songs 4:13)

Introduction: The Nascence of a Jewish Arts Periodical

In 1994, Katharina Sabine Feil dedicated her dissertation to one of thepioneering scholars in Jewish art, Rachel Wischnitzer- Bernstein². Herdissertation, entitled» A Scholar's Life: Rachel Wischnitzer and the De-velopment of Jewish Art Scholarship in the 20th Century<<, was sub-mitted to the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 1994³. In theintroduction to her dissertation, Feil stated her main thesis:» More thanany other scholar of the Twentieth Century, Wischnitzer was responsi-ble for transforming the study of Jewish art into an accepted- and re-spected- discipline within the international academic community.<< Herpersistence and vision on the one hand, and her own studies that high-lighted Jewish art on the other, were all the more pioneering in a period

1 This research was carried out during my term as Research Fellow at the FrankelInstitute for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in2009/2010.

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Minsk, April 14, 1885- New York, November 20, 1989. Rachel Wischnitzer beganpublishing under the name Wischnizer- Bernstein( Yiddish: Vischnitzer- Bernshtain),her married and maiden name. Later she used her married name only.Katharina Sabine Feil: A Scholar's Life: Rachel Wischnitzer and the Developmentof Jewish Art Scholarship in the Twentieth Century. Ph.D. Dissertation, submittedin partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Hebrew Litera-ture in Jewish History to the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1994( CJHDissertation Collection 7 M).