Arthur Szyk and the Art of the Haggadah

But Szyk’s Haggadah was unique. Keenly aware of current events, Szyk drew striking parallels between the Jews’ plight in Egypt and the threat of a rising Nazi power. Adopting the ancient techniques of Medieval illuminated manuscripts, Szyk created a powerful visual commentary on the politics of his day and gave the world what one early reviewer for The Times of London called “among the most beautiful of books that the hand of man has produced.”  

The exhibition includes all forty-eight original illustrations of Szyk’s masterpiece that has become a mainstay in Jewish homes, on view together for the first time in over sixty years. Historical illuminated haggadot from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as contemporary versions, are also featured. 

For most of the 1920s and 30s Szyk lived and worked in France and Poland, moving to the United Kingdom in 1937. In 1940, he settled permanently in the United States, where he was granted American citizenship in 1948.

Szyk became a renowned graphic artist and book illustrator as early as the interwar period—his works were exhibited and published widely. However, he gained greater popularity due to his war caricatures, in which, after the outbreak of World War II, he depicted the leaders of the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) as grotesque caricatures of greed and evil. A self-described “soldier in art,” his ferocious depictions of the Axis leaders soon graced the covers of such popular periodicals as Time, Colliers, The New York Times, and Chicago Sun. As a result, he ran afoul of the House Un-American Activities Committee in early 1951. Within a few months, he died at the age of 57 of a heart attack.