Abstract Bruce Jenkins' essay examines the critical and theoretical grounds for artist and filmmaker Chantal Akerman's interventions both within the cinema and within the space of the gallery. The curatorial perspective posed by Documenta 11 and its focus on "diasporic consciousness" forms the basis for examining Akerman's work through the lens of her experience as the daughter of Holocaust survivors—displaced Polish Jews who ended up in Belgium. Part of what she has called the generation for which the repressed returns, Akerman began to focus on this past in her 1989 feature film Histoires d'Amérique, a loose adaptation of the stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer.Central to the analysis is her 1995 installation Bordering on Fiction, a work noted for its distinctive mode of interdisciplinary practice bridging film and video, projection and monitor display, the darkened hall of the cinema and the white cube of the gallery. Akerman's concerns with finding "other strategies" for dealing with the Holocaust are examined, as is the lucid analysis of her work by the artist Christian Boltanski.The essay lastly examines Akerman's recent film and installation From the Other Side (shown at Documenta 11), which represents a significant shift in perspective and tense. While Bordering on Fiction was a retrospective work searching for a lost past that could be captured only through absences and silence, From the Other Side, by contrast, focuses on the present and unfolds in a manner bordering on reportage.

Abstract"Printing, Patronage and Prayer: Art Historical Issues in Three Responsa" presents texts from 16th-century Italy, 17th-century Bohemia, and 20th-century Russia that explore the following issues: the impact of the new technology of printing on Jewish ceremonial art and limits to the dedication and use of art in the synagogue.

Abstract Mendelsohn's contribution raises the issue of a Jewish "artistic canon," paralleling the better-known efforts to establish a Jewish literary canon. Which works of art—painting, photographs, sculptures, buildings—should be included in such a canon? What are the criteria for making such a selection?

Abstract Rachel Neis' article treats Hekhalot Rabbati, a collection of early Jewish mystical traditions, and more specifically §§ 152–169, a series of Qedusha hymns. These hymns are liturgical performances, the highlight of which is God's passionate embrace of the Jacob icon on his throne as triggered by Israel's utterance of the Qedusha. §§ 152–169 also set forth an ocular choreography such that the gazes of Israel and God are exchanged during the recitation of the Qedusha. The article set these traditions within the history of similar Jewish traditions preserved in Rabbinic literature. It will be argued that §§ 152–169 date to the early Byzantine period, reflecting a Jewish interest in images of the sacred parallel to the contemporaneous Christian intensification of the cult of images and preoccupation with the nature of religious images.