The painter Rem­brandt (1606−1669) lived and worked in Ams­ter­dam dur­ing its famed Gold­en Age. Many Jews had found refuge in the city because of its rel­a­tive reli­gious tol­er­ance, and the artist undoubt­ed­ly had con­tact with many of his Sephardic neigh­bors. His­to­ri­ans have long been intrigued by this inter­ac­tion as one source of influ­ence on his paint­ings of bib­li­cal sub­jects. Tami Lehman-Wilzig and Ani­ta Barghigiani’s point of depar­ture in their new pic­ture book, Rembrandt’s Bless­ing, is the rela­tion­ship between the Dutch mas­ter and Rab­bi Menashe Ben Israel, a leader of Amsterdam’s Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty. Although the extent of their friend­ship has been debat­ed by schol­ars, there is enough evi­dence to sup­port this fic­tion­al­ized account. The painter’s many evoca­tive images of Jew­ish life, and of scenes from the Hebrew Bible, emerge from a per­son­al context.

Although the major­i­ty of Rembrandt’s works were not based on bib­li­cal themes, Lehman-Wilzig sim­pli­fies his unde­ni­able inter­est in this genre, even sug­gest­ing that his lucra­tive por­trai­ture, which enabled him to buy a home, gave him the free­dom to focus on ​“his pas­sion.” She also claims that the phys­i­cal appear­ance of Amsterdam’s Jew­ish pop­u­la­tion inspired him to accu­ra­cy in his por­tray­al of them and of their ances­tors. There is a pop­u­lar image of Rem­brandt as a kind­ly, avun­cu­lar fig­ure. In the book, he hap­pi­ly responds to a group of neigh­bor­hood chil­dren who ask to use his col­lec­tion of cos­tumes for their imag­i­na­tive play. One boy, Jakob, intro­duces the painter to his uncle, Rab­bi Menashe Ben Israel, and a fruit­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion between the two men ensues. Not only does the rab­bi encour­age Jew­ish res­i­dents of the city to pose for Rembrandt’s bib­li­cal scenes, but also he wel­comes the artist into his own home and edu­cates him about Jew­ish tra­di­tions. The ​“bless­ing” of the book’s title embraces both the pater­nal bless­ing con­ferred by Jews on their chil­dren, and the broad­er idea of coex­is­tence between Jews and oth­ers as an alter­na­tive to prejudice. 

One of Ben Israel’s books of bib­li­cal com­men­taries, Piedra Glo­riosa, is enhanced by Rembrandt’s etch­ings. Barghigiani’s beau­ti­ful ren­di­tion of this vol­ume shows its title page in Hebrew and Latin with her own inter­pre­ta­tion of Rembrandt’s art­work on the fac­ing page. Her illus­tra­tions of Rem­brandt, Ben Israel, and the vibrant city of their era, reflect some of the fea­tures of Dutch Gold­en Age por­traits and still lifes with­out becom­ing straight­for­ward imi­ta­tions. The two-page spread of Shab­bat din­ner at the home of Ben Menashe cap­tures the dig­ni­ty and warmth of a Jew­ish par­ent bless­ing his chil­dren. Rem­brandt is seat­ed at the table watch­ing care­ful­ly with an expres­sion of respect. His col­or­ing is notably lighter than that of his Jew­ish hosts. With­out roman­ti­ciz­ing Amsterdam’s famed diver­si­ty, the image implies that this scene is not typ­i­cal in a time when most Chris­tians viewed Judaism with con­fu­sion, or even contempt.

Nei­ther art his­to­ry nor the his­to­ry of Amsterdam’s Jews is a fre­quent sub­ject of children’s pic­ture books. Rembrandt’s Bless­ing​’s acces­si­ble and intel­li­gent text, accom­pa­nied by rich­ly drawn illus­tra­tions, help young read­ers to con­struct a vivid pic­ture of a great artist and an emi­nent rabbi.