Maurycy Gottlieb: The Troubled Painter of the Jewish Soul
and the Mystery of the Yom Kippur Painting
Maurycy Gottlieb (1856 –1879) was a Jewish painter, of Polish-speaking Galician background from the western part of what is now Ukraine. His life was tragically cut short in one of the saddest episodes in the history of Jewish art, shortly after painting his most famous image, “Jews Praying in the Synagogue on Yom Kippur.” What exactly does that painting have to tell us? How did the strange story behind it precipitate Gottlieb’s untimely death? And what lessons are contained for us in this image about the very nature of the High Holidays?