It was long believed that the great Dutch artist Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606-1669) was a special friend of, or at least had some unusually positive connections to, the Jewish community of Amsterdam.
However, some modern scholars and exhibitors — including the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam in a 2006-07 exhibit — have been trying to claim that this is a myth.
Shalom Sabar, professor of Jewish art and folklore at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, does not believe this revisionism.
And in a presentation on “Rembrandt: The Bible and the Jews of Amsterdam” that he gave to about 70 people at Eastcastle Place on March 17, he displayed what he regards as particularly telling evidence to the contrary — the use of Hebrew letters in Rembrandt’s paintings and etchings.
“His use of Hebrew was done so well, it has to be that he had some connection” to the Jewish community, Sabar said.
A specific instance seems especially suggestive. In 1635, the relatively young artist created a painting about “Belshazzar’s Feast,” the Bible episode of “the handwriting on the wall” (Daniel 5). The painting is located today at the National Gallery in London, UK.
Anybody who knows the story might be puzzled about how the writing appears in Rembrandt’s painting. He shows three lines of Hebrew letters, each line containing what looks like a five-letter word, but the words make no sense.
Sabar pointed out that one has to read the letters not right to left, but in columns up and down. Then they spell the famous Aramaic message mene mene tekel u’farsin.
This way of presenting the message comes from the Babylonian Talmud (Sanhedrin 22a). The rabbis there were debating why Babylonian King Belshazzar couldn’t understand the message and had to ask the prophet Daniel to interpret it. One rabbi suggested that the letters appeared in this odd fashion, and the king at first couldn’t read the words.
However sympathetic Rembrandt may have been to Jews, he clearly was no Talmud scholar. So where could he have gotten the idea of painting the letters this way?
Sabar pointed out that Rembrandt lived near the famous Rabbi Menasseh Ben Israel (1604-1657). Ben Israel “was interested in mystical interpretations of the Bible” and “liked playing with letters,” Sabar said.
In a 1639 book, Ben Israel wrote about the Belshazzar’s Feast story and showed the letters in the way Rembrandt painted them, Sabar said.
Obviously, Rembrandt couldn’t have seen a book written four years after he made the painting. Sabar said the most likely conclusion is that Rembrandt and Ben Israel knew each other and talked about this.
Moreover, said Sabar, x-ray analysis of the painting shows that Rembrandt changed that part of it. That makes it even more likely that Rembrandt at first intended something else, but altered his plan in response to knowledge probably received from Ben Israel.
“Belshazzar’s Feast” is only one example. Sabar also showed the painting “St. John Preaching in the Desert” (1634-35). The Christian saint’s audience not only looks like Jews of Amsterdam, but one of its members is wearing a tallis that has on it the Hebrew letters of the “Shema Yisroel.”
But appearances of Hebrew letters are not the only indicators of Rembrandt’s sympathy for Jews, Sabar contended.
For centuries, Sabar said, Christian theologians and preachers portrayed Judas Iscariot, the disciple of Jesus who betrayed him to the Romans, as an archetype of all Jews. Christian artists followed this interpretation by making Judas as ugly-looking and inhuman as possible.
But Rembrandt in 1629 created a painting of “Repentant Judas Returning the 30 Pieces of Silver.” He showed a Judas tormented by guilt and trying to atone. “Who would think in the past to show Judas as a human being?” said Sabar.
Sabar grew up in Jerusalem and earned his doctorate at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is currently a visiting professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. His books include studies of Jewish marriage contracts and of the art of Jerusalem.
Sabar’s Milwaukee visit was brought about by collaboration between the American Friends of The Hebrew University Midwest Region, Lake Park Synagogue, and the Israel Center of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation.
Ro’ee Peled, Israel co-emissary to Milwaukee and co-director of the Israel Center with his wife Michal Makov-Peled, explained that the presentation was given at Eastcastle Place because that is the home of renowned local art collector Alfred Bader and his wife Isabelle, both of whom attended.
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