Grigorescu, Felicia: Forme de artă în cimitire evreieşti din nord-vestul Romaniei (Satu Mare, 2013)
Glosar de termeni
The funeral stone usually displays a single element of decorum in the monument’s fronton. Nevertheless, almost all decorative elements from Moldova can found in the Transylvanian cemeteries, as well. Most of the shapes, however, are treated with more refinement, proving a superior level of elaboration, and thus they cannot be confused with the naive fine art. When they do, however, appear - especially in small rural cemeteries - they only increase the diversity of the area’s Jewish cemeterial universe. This type of moderate approach to ornamental motifs is also evident in the case of the monument destroyed in 1672, from the collection presented by Scheiber Sándor, where the rosette is the ornamental motif. The symbolism of the Jewish art of the Synagogue and of the cemetery in North-West Romania The Jews, as people whose history was lived rather outside a country of their own territorial property, have managed to keep their being, especially through the religion they chose. The means they used were unusual, resulted from a preservative behaviour that was shaped in time by the trials they had to suffer. Its permanent goal was maintaining their identity, related to both their own group and the integrating society that accepted them. The identitary symbols are always present in the cult architecture and in the Jewish cemeteries, because the Jews have respected them, preserved them, and seen in them an important means of keeping their own being. The synagogal architecture displays them both in the exteriors, especially in the upper visible parts, and in the interiors, mostly to underline the sanctity of the shrine. The cemeteries, as miniature architecture, are the carriers of a rich Jewish symbolism themselves. The usage of these symbols in connection to their main cubic institutions becomes for the European Jews a priority of display towards the outside, along with the great transformations that take place in the more and more democratized society of Europe after the French Revolution. An interest coming from all the nations for their national identity will become generalized and, in this widespread effervescence, the Jews themselves will make great efforts in this respect. Compared to the European minorities, the case of the Jewish minority is different, in that, that it existed in almost all the continent's states, yet not as a historically native ethnic group, but with premises of temporary dwelling, never claiming territory, like other minorities. The greatest part of the symbolism of the Judaic art is connected to the religion of the Jewish people, but also to elements of different categories, which keep ancestral references to the country of origin. The motifs used were, first of all, elements of the prime philosophic-aesthetic matrix of the Jewry. For all the peoples, the history of their beginnings is of great value, being a modality of legitimating through the recourse to the origins. Besides those, the specific motifs from the ancient Israel were kept, The two syntagms circulated in parallel in the Mediaeval period, the Star of David being the one that eventually asserted itself. Charles IV granted the Jewish community in Prague the right to have their own flag, in 1345; the Jews displayed the hexagram on it, which thus became the official symbol. In the following centuries, the Shield of David would be taken as the identitary Jewish symbol of the Jewish community in the centre of Europe. This symbol knew a great propagation in the 19th century, seeking its equivalent in the Christian cross. 126
