​Childbirth and Jewish Magic—Amulets and Popular Beliefs among the Jews in Europe and Lands of Islam; The Binding of Isaac in Jewish, Christian and Islamic Art; The Sabbath in Jewish Art and Folklore ; The Image of Jerusalem in Jewish, Christian and Muslim Art; Jewish Visual Symbols and their Development (Menorah, Magen David, the Ten Commandments, etc.)  

Shalom Sabar is Professor of Jewish Art and Folklore at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Sabar is the last Jewish baby born and circumcised in the ages old neo-Aramaic speaking Kurdish-Jewish community of Zakho. He earned his PhD in Art History from UCLA (1987), writing on the illustrated marriage contracts of the Jews in Renaissance and Baroque Italy. His research joins together the disciplines of art history and folklore, highlighting issues pertaining to the folk nature of Jewish art and Jewish material culture, visual materials and objects associated with rituals in the life and year cycles, and the evidence these materials provide about the relationships between the Jewish minorities and the societies that hosted them in Christian Europe and the Islamic East. 

He serves as a visiting professor and lectures widely in universities, museums, and public institutions in Israel, Europe and the US. Prof. Sabar additionally guides travelling seminars to Jewish sites in Europe, North Africa and Central Asia.    

Contact: Sabar@mscc.huji.ac.il