Over the last 140 years there have been several thousand public exhibitions in which objects of Judaica (ritual objects, books, manuscripts, photographs, items of specific Jewish content, etc.) have been displayed. While some of these presentations were not recorded by a catalog, printed material does exist for over 2,200 of these events. The first of these documented exhibitions took place in Amsterdam in 1876 and then a second two years later in Paris. In the Amsterdam exhibition, Judaica formed only one small section of an enormous display while in Paris the exhibition exclusively displayed Jewish material from a single collection. Catalogs were issued for both shows, the one from Paris with 12 illustrations.
Over the years, the form of these publications varies from thin brochures without item listings to substantial volumes containing original research. Most carry images of at least a few of the exhibited objects. In many instances this illustration is the only published image of the item. The printing methods range from simple mimeographed pages to sumptuous, finely printed publications containing beautifully-rendered color photographs.
In most cases the subject of the entire exhibition and the items presented are of a Jewish nature and character. However, there are many publications as well in which the Jewish material is simply a part of an exhibition helping to illuminate a much broader theme. And while most of the catalogs represent exhibitions in Jewish institutions (museums, synagogues, community centers, etc.), in recent years the percentage of such catalogs is declining, and more and more Judaica is being exhibited in general cultural institutions.
It is an unfortunate fact that many of these publications, whether small or large, are not cataloged at all in libraries. Even when they are, their contents are not cataloged in a specific or comprehensive manner. All together, these catalogs are an immense repository of documentation and information that remains largely unused by scholars and researchers simply because the publications are neither well known nor recorded in enough detail to assist the researcher. They are a vast source of unmined material for Jewish history that reveals aspects of the past and present in art, religion, culture, economics, social conditions and the context of Jewish existence in the numerous places and cultures within which Jews lived. The purpose of the present reference guide is to provide researchers with the ability to access this material for the first time.
My own first published article was a modest attempt to bring this material to light and facilitate its research. The text appeared in the Journal of Jewish Art, vol. V, 1979 and was entitled “Catalog of Catalogs”, as is this book. At that time my bibliography of temporary exhibition catalogs containing items of Judaica totaled 345 examples. The subject index was very basic. Since then I have always felt the need for a more comprehensive treatment of the subject and continued my acquisition and recording of such publications both as I found older items and as new catalogs appeared. The current volume is the fruit of these many years of labor, and contains no fewer than 2,269 catalogs, some in multiple editions and languages. They represent exhibitions shown in more than 650 cities and towns in 52 countries.
The entries in the present Catalog of Catalogs are highly-detailed and indexed. The catalog’s indispensable bibliographic details are listed first, followed by a record of its exhibition (venue and dates). Next is a description of the catalog’s contents, and a list of terms that identify the topics, objects and geographical locations included in the catalog. Principal topics are listed first in uppercase letters, providing an at-a-glance summary of the catalog’s main subjects, object types and regions. A comprehensive list detailing the individual objects exhibited and other subjects/regions addressed are then specified in lowercase. Supplemental material, including related ephemera, related publications, other catalog editions, and catalogs from other venues, is listed whenever possible, as is a record of additional venues that hosted the exhibition.
The five indices generated from these entries provide ready access to their contents: venues, contributors, collections, artists, and, most significantly subjects and objects. The Subject Index is the key element in this publication, comprising more than 1,800 terms that detail the contents of the catalogs (illustrations and text), and provide access to this mass of material from every reasonable point of view.
The criteria for including catalogs in the listings are relatively broad. In general, the exhibition catalogs that I chose for inclusion focused on ceremonial objects, synagogues, cemeteries, primarily older printed Hebrew books, paleography, archaeology, manuscripts, folk art, early illustrated non-Hebrew books and printed and manuscript single pages with pertinent material. Exhibitions of individual Jewish artists in the fine arts were only included in a few specific instances where I considered the content to be directly relevant. Their inclusion or exclusion is my own personal decision.
While I believe that I have found most of such extant catalogs, there are items still missing. More than 90 % of the listings were cataloged from physical or digital copies, principally from the more than 2,000 relevant exhibition catalogs in my own library, which form the basis for this bibliography. Other catalogs are known only from bibliographical references, and their records here are therefore only partial. I would be most appreciative for any additions and corrections that readers find, regarding both additional catalogs and errors or omissions in the descriptions or indices relating to the listings. I take personal responsibility for any such occurrences.
While there are only 12 catalogs listed from the 19th century, the initial establishment of organized Jewish Museums at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries gave impetus to more frequent exhibitions. Whether these presentations resulted from an increased Jewish cultural awareness towards the end of the 19th century or rather gave impetus to the development of that awareness is not clear. But such awareness clearly flowered at that time. Through the attempts to save artifacts resulting from the decline of rural Jewish settlement or from urban renewal or through the donation of previously formed private collections of Judaica, the first Jewish Museums emerged in Vienna, Prague, Frankfurt am Main, Danzig and Warsaw.
In the index chart to this volume that records the yearly totals of exhibition publications, one can follow the increasing frequency of documented Jewish exhibitions through the following decades. Although there are only some 90 catalogs listed during the 20th century prior to 1945, from that date until 1959 another 116 entries are recorded. It is from 1960 that a truly massive expansion of exhibition activity began, with an average of more than 35 cataloged exhibitions each year until today. Perhaps the genesis of this expansion lay in the deep sense of the catastrophic losses of the Holocaust and the physical and cultural dislocation of almost a million Jews from North Africa and the Near and Far East. It is probable that this sense generated the renewed cultural energy, expressed by exhibitions and catalogs that were documentations of remnants and memories of Jewish communities now largely destroyed or dislocated. In Germany alone, on the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht in 1988, almost 100 catalogued exhibitions were held in various locations.
Naturally, the establishment of the State of Israel and the growing scope of its museums over the years contributed significantly to this expansion of activity. As well, the increasing number of Jewish Museums in the United States and the dozens of Jewish Museums established in Europe in the recent three and a half decades significantly increased the number of publications as well.
From the 1960s and after, not only the number of published catalogs increased, but the quality as well. The German exhibition catalog Monumenta Judaica (#267) from Cologne in 1963 marked a milestone in the production of Jewish catalogs because of the lavishness of treatment and the systematic attention to detail. This thoroughly researched, two-volume publication ushered in an era of catalogs unmatched since the unique luxury edition of the Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition of 1887 (#7). This German publication contains 1,542 pages with 500 images covering more than 2,000 items. This new level of size, printed quality and researched texts continued to develop through the rest of the 20th century and into the current one. Many of these newer exhibition catalogs are serious and significant scholarly contributions to the knowledge of Jewish history, culture and identity.
During the almost forty years since the publication of my 1979 article I have attempted to register all catalogs that have come to my attention. But several years ago, it was already clear to me that my efforts alone were inadequate to complete the project; I sought partners to my enterprise. To my great benefit and pleasure, I found two such talented individuals to be my co-editors in sharing the task, first in Orly Tzion and then in Falk Wiesemann.
Orly has been working for nine years on completing the thorough cataloging of the publications, creating the informative entries and building the extraordinarily detailed index by which people will be able to easily determine those publications that are relevant to their interests. I cannot adequately praise Orly’s dedication and attention to detail.
Falk Wiesemann, historian at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, whose published bibliographies concerning Jewish subjects are classic, exemplary models of the genre, has been an invaluable advisor for guiding the final shape and spirit of the framework that determined the form of the volume. Additionally, he found much material for the book that I had been unable to discover. Without the co-authorship of these two friends and colleagues the text would not have been brought to press. I cannot exaggerate the pleasure of working beside them.
For the last almost 40 years, numerous colleagues have rendered important help to me in finding catalogs for the project. Charles Berlin, Moshe Brown, Julie-Marthe Cohen, Paul Dahan, Michal Friedlander, Rafi Grafman (z”l), Grace Grossman, Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek, Gabriele Holthuis, Anne-Helene Hoog, Rudolf Klein, Gabriela Kohlbauer-Fritz, Sharon Liberman Mintz, Al Moldovan (z”l), Bezalel Narkiss (z”l), Arno Pařík, Leo Pavlat, Bernhard Purin, Brad Sabin-Hill, Benigna Schönhagen, Emile Schrijver, Chanah Schutz, Zsuzsanna Toronyi, and Edward van Voolen have all been partners in support of this project and have been most gracious in terms of pointing out and also sending both known and unknown catalogs to me for inclusion.
Colleagues at many of the institutions that issued these catalogs have lent their time and expertise through the answers to innumerable inquiries that the three co-editors have sent to them. I apologize for not being able to mention all of them, but their contributions are exceptional and important.
Our colleagues from Brill Publishers have made the publication of the book an easy task. When we first talked, they immediately accepted the challenge of the publication, proffering invaluable advice as well as the technical skills to give a clear and comprehensible form to the vast quantity of material we sent to them. The contact with them is always calm and warm. Sincere thanks go to Liesbeth Hugenholtz, Frans Havekes, Suzanne Mekking and all the others at this publisher who have helped us so very much to complete this joint effort.
Finally, my loving gratitude and my dedication of this book to my wife Lisa, who has supported me for decades in my rather obsessive work in the field of Judaica. She has tolerated my consequent absences both at home and abroad with constant understanding. She has provided warm hospitality to the constant flow of visitors who for decades have entered our home to share my passion. My hope is that the publication of this book will somehow provide some justification to her, to my children Daniella, Aaron and Noah and to my grandchildren Maya, Ella, Lia and Tom. Their love and encouragement are what keep me going. I return it to them doubled and re-doubled.
William Gross and a selection of exhibition catalogs from the Gross Family Collection.
Photo by Rani Moscowitz
William Gross
Ramat Aviv
Autumn, 2019
Graph 2
Exhibitions per year, as per the catalogs indexed in this publication
