Beyond the Graven Image

The biblical prohibition of images sets Judaism apart, together with Islam, from all other religious systems. This book attempts to explain the reasons for the prohibition - as well as its limits - and then shows how influential it has been in determining aspects of Jewish thinking in relation to such key concepts as holiness, symbolism, mediation between man and God, aesthetics and the role of memory in religion. Why is music the one art to which Judaism is hospitable? Is Judaism a religion of the ear rather than the eye? What is the real issue at stake in the age-old debate between Jerusalem and Athens? How do these issues relate to the iconoclastic movements in Byzantine Christianity and the Reformation? Lionel Kochan makes clear that to the prohibition of the graven image there is more than meets the eye.

LIONEL KOCHAN graduated in modern languages and modern history at Cambridge and the London School of Economics. After war service in the Intelligence Corps he devoted his subsequent academic career, first, to the teaching of modern European history at the Universities of Edinburgh and East Anglia, and then to the teaching of Jewish history when he was appointed Bearsted Reader in Jewish History at the University of Warwick. His publications reflect his wide-ranging interests: they include studies of modern Russian and German history, as well as the prize-winning The Jew and his History and the noted Jews, Idols and Messiahs. He was appointed Littman Lecturer in Jewish Politics at Oxford and Sherman Lecturer in Jewish Studies at the University of Manchester. This was the series of lectures that gave rise to Kochan's controversial study of the Jewish world in the aftermath of the Second World War, The Jewish Renaissance and Some of its Discontents. He has also lectured at Jerusalem, the Sorbonne, Berlin and Washington. Lionel Kochan served as President of the Jewish Historical Society of England, 1980-82, and has also been active as a member of the Board of the Leo Baeck Institute, London and of the Research Board of the Institute of Jewish Affairs.