Written by: Keri Rosenbluh
When Israel Prize laureate Professor Bezalel Narkiss founded the Center for Jewish Art in 1979 at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, his goal was both visionary and deceptively simple: to systematically document and research objects of Jewish art and create a comprehensive iconographical index of Jewish subjects.
Nearly half a century later, the Center has become the world’s leading scholarly institute for study of Jewish visual culture, bridging past and future through documentation and research. At its core stands The Bezalel Narkiss Index of Jewish Art and Material Culture (originally the Index of Jewish Art), an unparalleled digital archive of more than 617,000 images spanning illuminated Hebrew manuscripts, ritual and sacred objects, synagogue architecture, funerary art, printed books, ephemera, and memorials.
What began in the 1970s as a set of iconographic cards modeled after Princeton University’s Index of Medieval Art (formerly Christian Art) has evolved into a vast open-access resource, now used by thousands of scholars, students, and global audiences every month.
For Academic Head Professor Sarit Shalev-Eyni and Director Dr. Vladimir Levin, the Index is more than a digital catalogue: it is a living archive, a platform for cutting-edge research, and increasingly, a gateway for students and scholars to engage directly with Jewish history, heritage, and identity.
Building on a Legacy
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| Vladimir Levin |
Dr. Vladimir Levin’s connection to the Center stretches back more than thirty years. A history student in St. Petersburg when the Iron Curtain lifted, he guided Narkiss and then-director Professor Aliza Cohen-Mushlin through Jewish sites in his hometown. Impressed by his knowledge of local Jewish landmarks and basic Hebrew—and given the wave of immigration from the former Soviet Union at the time—Cohen-Mushlin asked if Levin planned to immigrate to Israel, welcoming him to contact her if and when he did.
A few years later, as a Jewish history student at Hebrew University in need of work, Levin took her up on her offer and came knocking on the Center’s door. He started out in the mailroom, but soon moved into research, steadily assuming greater responsibilities until his appointment as Director in 2011.
Under Levin’s leadership, the Center has greatly expanded its scope of documentation. “In a sense, we are in a race against time,” he reflects, noting that synagogues and even ritual objects remain vulnerable to decay, theft, abandonment, or destruction. “We cannot preserve everything—nor is there always a need to—but we can document it and safeguard it digitally.”
Recent projects continue to build on the Center’s legacy, while highlighting its range and ambition. One of the most successful projects based on the Index is an inventory of historic synagogues existing today across Europe. Each building was rated according to its significance and condition. The research identified over 3,400 sites, of which less than a quarter are currently functioning synagogues. The inventory is widely used by historians and serves as a crucial tool for practitioners in the field of Jewish heritage and its preservation.
Inspired by the international acclaim of the synagogue inventory, the Center is currently working on the Holocaust Memorial Monuments Project to catalogue and research thousands of sites worldwide—from modest markers at Eastern European mass graves to modern sculptures at deportation sites across Western Europe, and synagogue plaques in the United States. Another project, conducted with the Bet Tfila Research Unit for Jewish Architecture in Europe at Technische Universität Braunschweig, investigates the architecture of women’s sections in synagogues, tracing how spatial arrangements reflected shifting notions of gender and community in Judaism over centuries.
Together, these initiatives exemplify the Center’s dual mandate: rigorous documentation and research that spark new scholarly conversations. For Levin, the task ahead is to ensure that this vast documentation remains both accessible and meaningful for researchers worldwide, creating a foundation for discoveries yet to come.
Charting New Directions
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| Sarit Shalev-Eyni |
While Levin underscores the Center’s global reach, Professor Sarit Shalev-Eyni also emphasizes its academic integration within the Faculty of Humanities. A medievalist and historian of illuminated manuscripts, Shalev-Eyni studied under Narkiss himself. For her, taking on the role of academic head two years ago felt like a natural extension of her scholarly path.
“I was always connected to the Center, following its work closely even before I formally joined,” Shalev-Eyni explains. As a student, she worked in the manuscripts department and even carried out research on Hebrew manuscripts in London on behalf of the Center. Though her career later took her in new directions, she continued to keep “one eye on the Center,” tracking its projects and developments over the years. “But stepping inside as academic head, I realized it was even more extraordinary than I had imagined.”
Shalev-Eyni has set two priorities for the Center in the years ahead. The first is to deepen student engagement: ensuring that the Index is a central tool for teaching, learning, and research at Hebrew University, in addition to expanding its role as an international resource. The second is to amplify the study of Jewish communities of Asia and North Africa, particularly those shaped under Muslim rule.
Both aims converged in her latest MA seminar, Objects: Jewish Art and Material Culture in the Iberian Peninsula and the Maghreb. Students immersed themselves in artifacts which were part of Jewish worship or daily culture in the Maghreb communities and were documented in the Index—many drawn from decades-old collections such as those gathered from immigrant communities in Israel or later ones, including the Gross Collection, which was integrated into the Index more recently. Working collaboratively, the students explored these artifacts in broader cultural contexts, exposing their connections to Sephardic traditions originating before the expulsion of 1492, as well as their evolutions and independent developments on Maghreb soil, while examining the dynamics with the Muslim environment.
For many, this was their first encounter with Jewish material culture beyond Europe. “As part of the seminar, we introduced students to the Index and trained them in how to use it,” Shalev-Eyni explains. “They came to class with their laptops, dove straight into the Index, and it very quickly turned into both a living laboratory and a vital research tool. Each session brought the excitement of uncovering objects they had never studied before.”
The seminar also sparked interdisciplinary collaboration. One student, fluent in Moroccan Arabic, provided invaluable translations, while others from outside Art History contributed fresh perspectives. For Shalev-Eyni, this is only the beginning: “I want this seminar to be a model, a springboard for more courses that integrate teaching with the Index.”
Shalev-Eyni notes that these collaborations have already grown beyond the course itself, with students continuing to share expertise and resources. “The fact that students from different disciplines came together around the Index shows its potential to spark new partnerships and directions for research,” she shares. “I’m already thinking a few steps ahead, about how to build on these relationships for our forthcoming project, 'Jewish Material Culture in Asia and North Africa,' for which we are currently seeking funding."
Spotlight on the Index
The recent decision to expand the Index’s name to include Material Culture reflects both its breadth and its scholarly relevance. As Levin notes, Jewish art has too often been overlooked in favor of textual traditions: “For centuries, Judaism was understood as a culture of words, not of images. Professor Narkiss’ great achievement was to show that Jewish life, like Christian and Muslim life, is also rich in imagery.”
Today, the Index is divided into ten sections, encompassing illuminated manuscripts, ritual objects, architecture, funerary art, printed books, fine arts, ephemera, comparative materials, and memorials. Levin explains that books were eventually included in the Index because, for centuries, printed volumes have been a main medium through which Jewish imagery circulated across the diaspora. A book published in Amsterdam, for instance, could shape how communities in Eastern Europe or North Africa imagined biblical figures.
The Index fills a crucial gap left by traditional library catalogues: while libraries record titles, printers, and dates, they rarely note imagery. “No library will tell you that on page 25 there’s a depiction of King Solomon,” Levin observes. “That is what the Index does—it makes the visual language of Jewish culture searchable alongside texts.”
Its iconographic search function is uniquely powerful: one can, for example, search for “King Solomon” and instantly compare depictions across manuscripts, ritual objects, mosaics, and synagogue art. In doing so, the Index reveals visual continuities and innovations across centuries and geographies.
The database is already widely used, with around 4,000 monthly users worldwide. But for Shalev-Eyni, the next step is not only to increase the Index's international exposure, but to make sure that HUJI students—future scholars, curators, and educators—become not just casual visitors but active researchers drawing on the Index for their own work.
Bridging Preservation and Discovery
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| Dr. Anna Berezin of CJA and Dr. Katrin Kessler of Bet Tfila Research Unit, TU Braunschweig, take measurements of the Holocaust Memorial in Goldbach, Germany. Photo by Vladimir Levin, July 2025 |
The Center for Jewish Art is, in many ways, a microcosm of the Faculty of Humanities itself: rooted in deep scholarship, oriented toward global dialogue, and dedicated to supporting the next generation of researchers. Its vast resources advance the faculty’s mission to preserve and interrogate the complexity of human cultures—through texts, yes, but equally through images, objects, and spaces.
From the card catalogues of the 1970s to today’s dynamic digital platform, the Index continues to embody a unique scholarly promise. For Director Levin, it is not only “the largest corpus of Jewish material culture in the world,” but also a foundation for new discoveries, a resource he himself draws on daily for research. For Academic Head Shalev-Eyni, it is also a teaching tool, a space of encounter, and a means of amplifying voices and communities too often left on the margins.
As the Center broadens its projects, it underscores a simple truth: Jewish art and material culture are essential to understanding the Jewish past and to shaping its future study. Within the Faculty of Humanities at Hebrew University, the Center continues to serve as a bridge between preservation and discovery—ensuring that this rich visual legacy not only endures, but continues to inform and inspire scholarship for generations to come.