Grigorescu, Felicia: Forme de artă în cimitire evreieşti din nord-vestul Romaniei (Satu Mare, 2013)
Glosar de termeni
V. JEWISH ECLECTICISM IN THE CEMETERY ART OF NORTH-WEST ROMANIA This study refers to artistic manifestations of the Jews whose continuity has exceeded two centuries in north-west Romania, according to still present traces of their beginnings in this area up to the period of high bloom and prosperity of the communities, i.e. between the years 1850-1930. Most of them arrived here chased by the hardships of history. In all those areas where the Jewish diaspora art has developed, in extremely wide spaces - measured in continents, with all local influences which it assimilated, this shows an established common factor of Judaism. This common factor is the stone base, like a foundation upon which, the times and spaces gave birth to and developed a unique style: Jewish eclecticism. The consistent theme of this style is the biblical commandment, which concentrates the unity of style, its diversity being determined by opening out to local context. As in all things that concern them, the artistic style which they developed, they had it on, and inside them, leaving it as legacy in their temporary stays in north-west Romania or elsewhere, the Jews are unique. Their attachment to identity given by Law is unconditional and unlimited, being allowed one single measure: the infinite divine. We have tried to identify the causes that determined this great attachment that founded the complex Jewish miracle and the effects it generated on the artistic plan within the concerned area. The complexity of this phenomenon and the successive hierarchical resetting, interrelations, connections, determinations or classifications, will be much better understood after the crystallization made in time, as we move away and expand our perspective on events. The certainties of style seem to arise from the Jewish People’s paradoxical affiliation to a land much more of promise than of possession, the reality being a migration in a perpetual diaspora. And yet, the style constant is related to the idea of promised land, and the variables are determined by inhabited territories, that changed periodically, after an unproven mystery of history. These changes were caused either by brutal fractures in some stages of history, as a result of intolerance, or by natural inclination toward travelling, occurred under the dominant memory of the beginnings, which was forwarded to all as (via) law, have loaded (supplied) what has been fixed over time as Jewish eclecticism, of anxiety, dynamic and surprise in the acceptances heterogeneity for defining an identity core. Here is concerned the most obvious feature of Jewish eclecticism, convergence of fabulous heterogeneity of the forms towards the construction-command, Solomon's Temple. Style that does not leave the Bible pattern, receiving only local influences that charge it with new poetry, on the same structural core. The fact that Jewish eclecticism is much more visible after emancipation is obvious, but its development seems to have started from the first day of the Babylonian exodus, from the people’s sorrow in losing the Temple. The people, its religion, synagogue and stone seem to have been defined at the same time, merging into the development miracle. 151
