Summary What did the world look like for Jews living in medieval Europe? How did they perceive and make use of the elements of their daily life, from items on the street to religious iconography within holy spaces ? in particular synagogues and at the exterior of churches ? and profane elements from the home? And how did they experience the visual and material cultures of their non-Jewish neighbours? These questions form the core of this volume, which explores pre-modern Jewish approaches to images and material objects from a variety of perspectives. From clothing to manuscripts, and from lighting devices to the understanding of the invisible, the chapters gathered together in this multifaceted volume combine analyses of images and artefacts together with in-depth analyses of texts to offer fresh insights into the visual cultures that informed the world of European Jews in the Middle Ages. TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface and Acknowledgements List of Illustrations Introduction Elisheva Baumgarten, Elisabeth Hollender, Katrin Kogman-Appel, and Ephraim Shoham-Steiner Part One: The Perception of the Visual, the Material, and the Tangible in Shared Public Spaces 1. The Writing on the Wall ? A Mahzor, a Bimah, and a Privilege. A Look at Social Processes in the 13th-Century Jewish Community of Cologne Ephraim Shoham-Steiner 2. Illuminations: Lights, Identities, and the Society of Spectacle in the Late Middle Ages Eleazar Gutwirth 3. Materialization of Memoria Memory and Remembrance of Benefactors in Building Inscriptions in Medieval Ashkenaz Rainer Josef Barzen 4. Differing Perceptions of Church Garments and Worship Implements in the Writings and Thought of the Tosafists Ephraim Kanarfogel 5. Not Black and White Clothes and Difference in Medieval Ashkenaz Elisheva Baumgarten Part Two: Utilizing the Faculties of Visual Means 6. Jewish Chivalry in Late Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts Sara Offenberg 7. The Handling of Diagrams in Medieval Scientific Manuscript Transmission The Sefer ha-mar?im le-Eqlides and its First Proposition Sabine Arndt 8. Non-Verbal Aspects of Astrolabe Knowledge (Fifteenth- to Eighteenth-Century Hebrew Manuscripts) Josefina Rodr guez-Arribas 9. Artifacts that Desire Medieval Perspectives Kalman P. Bland (OBM) 10.The Agency of Images The Temple Vessels in Hebrew Bibles from Roussillon (c. 1300) Katrin Kogman-Appel 11.Visualizing the Invisible: Portrayals of Elijah the Prophet in Fifteenth-Century Ashkenazi Haggadot Chana Shaham-Rosby 12.Visualizing Divine Communication in Medieval Jewish Art Shulamit Laderman Index About the Authors