ABSTRACT
This article analyses perceptions of the Holy Land through the pictorial representations of Jewish holy places in the Romanian Moldavia synagogues from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century. These images implied the sanctity of the biblical land and the belief in its messianic revival by the Jewish people. Some synagogue artists ‘domesticated’ their paintings of a never-seen land by depicting those remote places according to features characteristic of familiar local landscapes.

issue 06 / December 2013 by Ilia Rodov