Art

From a shadowed queen in the third-century synagogue frescoes of Dura-Europos to a defiant heroine recast in the shadow of the Holocaust, Esther’s image has never stood still. Across centuries of Jewish art—medieval manuscripts, early modern megillot, linocuts, mosaics, and mystical modern paintings—artists have reshaped her image from demure beauty to decisive leader. Each generation paints the Esther it needs.

The biblical narrative presents Isaac bound on the altar and spared by an angel—but hints in the text suggest that in an earlier version Abraham actually sacrificed his son. Medieval midrash, projecting national grief and destruction onto the biblical story, imagines Isaac was killed and resurrected. In the 20th century, Jewish artists likewise depict Isaac as dead as a symbol of mourning over the Holocaust, war, and more recently October 7th.

In a Yom Kippur afternoon (minhah) liturgical poem (piyyut) about Abraham, the artist of the 13^th century Leipzig Mahzor chooses a scene of Abraham standing up to Nimrod and God saving him from death by fire.

Wheat, grapes, citrons, figs, pomegranates, and olives have all been presented as the fruit that Adam and Eve ate, yet the apple, which only entered the scene in the 12^th century C.E., became the most popular candidate.

Jacob the patriarch’s face is said to be carved on the divine throne. Similarly, a 13th cent. masorah figurate of the four creatures drawing Ezekiel’s chariot portrays Jacob as the human creature in the form of a knight, playing off the phrase אביר יעקב, avir Yaakov (Genesis 49:24).‎

Lot’s wife looking back at Sodom is traditionally understood as an act of disobedience to God. Yehuda Levy- Aldema, an Israeli Orthodox-Jewish artist, offers a visual reading that instead interprets her turning as an act of resistance to her sexually violent husband.