Rembrandt's Jews (review)

Rembrandt's Jews is an uncommon construction — part scholarly study, part conversation. It moves easily from seventeenth-century historical narrative, and at times artistic and architectural description, to accounts of contemporary happenings. I found it a most congenial read.

The work is nearer an account of Jews in the age of Rembrandt, actually in the seventeenth century, than a study of Rembrandt. The intriguing six-page discussion of Sabbatai Zevi, the false Messiah, does not have a single reference to Rembrandt, though Nadler does once use Romeyn de Hooghe to the same purpose. Comments and allusions to Rembrandt seem more for the purpose of placing the Jews, and often individual Jews, in the Dutch world of the period. Nadler does, however, examine the numerous varying traditions of Rembrandt's relations with Amsterdam's Jewish community. In some instances observations on other seventeenth-century Dutch artists are as illuminating as those on Rembrandt. The three paintings of the Jewish Cemetery at Ouderkerk by Jacob van Ruisdael and the prints of the same subject by Romeyn de Hooghe are embedded in an extensive description of Jewish funeral customs and of the cultural importance of Beth Chaim, the Ouderkerk Cemetery.

Though Nadler does not draw parallels with popular analogous moments today, his discussions relating to Jewish millenarianism, the of the Messiah, and the conversion of the Jews reveal how deeply embedded in biblical mythology Jewish-Christian relationships are. Of similar interest are his comments on Jewish discussions of the fate of the soul, immortality, and eternal rewards or punishments, doctrines high on the scale of Christian theological concerns but not so high among traditional Jewish beliefs.

The book has twenty-four well-chosen and well-reproduced black-and-white illustrations and eighteen superbly reproduced color plates. The descriptive bibliography and extensive index also add to the usefulness of this most engaging volume.