The Visual Culture of Chabad

This book presents the first full-length study of a vast and complex visual tradition produced, revered, preserved, banned, and destroyed by the Hasidic movement of Chabad. This rich repository of visual artifacts provides the archaeological data for an analysis of how the movement consolidated its influence during a period of political and economic transformation and survived its immigration to America in the wake of the Holocaust. As one of the most self-documented and media-preserved modern Jewish movements, Chabad's rich material culture, including the hand-held portrait, the "rebbishe" space, the printer's mark, and the public menorah, afford scholars a wider range of interpretive strategies for understanding the movement and the role of the visual experience in religion.

Author: Maya Balakirsky Katz
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 10/11/2010
Pages: 260
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.14lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.50w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9780521191630

Review Citation(s):
Books & Culture 03/01/2011 pg. 32

About the Author
Katz, Maya Balakirsky: - Maya Balakirsky Katz is Associate Professor of Art History at Touro College and on faculty at Touro's Graduate School of Jewish Studies. She specializes in the intersection of religious identity and media, particularly surrounding public protest, such as the Dreyfus Affair and the Soviet Jewry movement.